Buffalo News
By Phil Fairbanks
News Staff Reporter
on September 1, 2014
Russell Brown, a Buffalo resident and Vietnam veteran, was arrested in Central New York in April 2013 while protesting the use of drones.
Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News
In a suburban courtroom outside Syracuse, before a jury of six men and women, Russell Brown talked about his days as a Marine in Vietnam.
He talked about the fighting and killing – he was in Quang Tri Province, a bloody battleground in the late 1960s – and how a lot of innocent Vietnamese died there.
He also talked about why, 45 years later, his experiences during that war led him to an anti-drone protest and the decision to lie down in front of an Air National Guard base in Central New York and cover himself with paint the color of blood.
It was the “most peaceful experience” since his return from the war in 1968, he told he jury.
“When I was in Vietnam, I didn’t say anything,” the 67-year-old Buffalo resident said. “I never spoke out.”
Brown, who represented himself during the two-day trial in Dewitt Town Court, portrayed his protest as an act of redemption, a way for him to ease some of his guilt and regret about the war.
The jury, after just two hours of deliberation, found him not guilty.
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