Jan Barry

Jan Barry Crumb (born January 26, 1943) is an American poet, journalist, author, and activist. A Vietnam veteran and former National Officer of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he resigned from West Point in 1964 "to become a writer and peace activist".

American poet and scholar W. D. Ehrhart described Barry as an integral figure to Vietnam veterans' poetry, "not only for his own pioneering poems, but especially for his tireless efforts to encourage and promote the work of others".

Life

Early life and military On January 26, 1943, Jan Barry Crumb was born in Ithaca, New York. and had a "small town, Republican, patriotic upbringing". He graduated from Interlaken Central School in Interlaken, New York in 1961. After the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, Barry found himself "disgusted" by the escalation of American presence in Vietnam.

In May 1963, he had witnessed a Buddhist anti-war protest in Nha Trang, and found himself appalled that the Saigon government "would turn loose tanks and machine guns and barbed wire all over the country".

Concerning this time, Barry has stated, "Before I met these other fuming former soldiers, upset sailors, angry airmen and mad Marines, I was a lonely voice of seething outrage"; he stated that he was "mad as hell, but nobody would listen". The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam's anti-war demonstration in New York City was titled Spring Mobilization to End the War. The April 15 demonstration had 400,000 attendees, marching from Central Park to the United Nations, with speakers including Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Belafonte, James Bevel, and Dr. Benjamin Spock.

During the march, Barry "took his place among [the veterans], at the very front of the parade" and was nervous about the possibility of snipers and counterdemonstrators. However, no such violence occurred.

In September 5 and 6 (Labor Day Weekend) 1970, Barry and Pierce (his future wife) participated in Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal), a three-day protest march from Morristown, New Jersey to Valley Forge National Park, after which a mass rally was held. Over 200 veterans marched, and 1,500 attended the mass rally. Together with the Ramapough Lenape, Barry exposed the toxic waste dumping done by the Ford company. This began the "battle of the Ramapough Indians in a bid to secure a healthier future for their children in the face of alleged atrocities committed by the Ford Corporation and the EPA". This culminated in Mann V. Ford, a documentary film about the Ramapough Lenape Tribe's lawsuit of the Ford Motor Company.

In 2011, he appeared in Mann V. Ford, a documentary detailing the 1975 lawsuit in which Barry had been a reporter.

In 2021, he appeared in American director Talia Lugacy's film This Is Not a War Story (2021).

Selected works

A Citizen's Guide to Grassroots Campaigns (2000) Earth Songs II: Poems of Love, Loss and Life (2018) Waging Art: Tackling Grief and Trauma with Creative Arts (2023)