In my lifetime I have witnessed two major acts of war against America. The first occurred on December 7th, 1941 when the military forces of the nation of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. "A day that will live in infamy"

declared President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Four years later, the allied forces of World War II celebrated VJ Day – Victory in Japan! The war was over. My family and I, and a lot of our fellow migrant workers who were picking and cutting peaches in the orchards around San Jose, California, celebrated the war's end when the orchard owner showed up with a truck load of fresh watermelons and we all dug in!

Some sixty years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, on September 11th, 2001, I experienced the second major act of war against America – the suicidal bombing by terrorists of the World Trade Center towers in New York City using airplanes as armed missiles with hundreds of passengers on board.

Seven months later, in April 2002, I was in New York to present a seminar at the Literacy Assistance Center (LAC), one of the premier adult literacy organizations in the nation. It was utterly devastating to walk past the memorials pasted on walls in remembrance of loved ones in the vicinity of the bombed out World Trade Center. It was even more moving when I met with and talked with members of the LAC and listened to their stories about how they had experienced the 9/11 attack.

A couple of months later, in June of 2002, writing in the Literacy Harvest, the journal of the LAC, Jan Gallagher, the editor, said,"As I write at the beginning of June 2002,the cleanup effort at the former World Trade Center has just ended. I suppose this could be another opportunity for New Yorkers to put the events of September 11, 2001, behind us and get on with our lives and our work.

Perhaps some New Yorkers —at least those not closely affected by the tragedy —are managing to do just that. But at the Literacy Assistance Center (LAC)—located six blocks from what we still call Ground Zero —we continue to be affected by last year 's terrorist attacks and their aftermath in ways large and small. We cannot escape the fact that the adult education programs we serve —and, more to the point, the poor, working-class, and immigrant students they serve —continue to be affected by the economic, political, and social consequences of living in a city that has been bombed and in a nation that is at war."

Even now, seven years after 9/11, we are living in a nation that is still at war. Adult literacy educators know that millions of the students they have served and continue to serve suffer from a form of terror that results from fighting chronic poverty, marginalization, and social exclusion. In the past I have likened the life circumstances of millions of our adult learners as experiencing conditions similar to the use of the "3 Ds" - dread, debilitation, and dependence - used to break down the resistance of prisoners of war so that they can be "brainwashed" to accept the conditions of their life.

Today, dread, debilitation, and dependency instill constant stress, fatigue, and terror in the lives of millions of undereducated, poorly literate adults and too often form a psychological barrier that keeps them from enrolling in literacy programs. But through literacy education, adults may not only learn to read and write, they may learn to overpower the psychological brainwashing of the 3 Ds that has kept them and their families in poverty, social exclusion, and political subservience. Conceivably, by combating the terrorism caused by the 3 Ds amongst impoverished and illiterate or marginally literate adults, in all nations, we can also combat a significant part of the terrorism caused by bombs and other weapons of war.

Adult literacy education is a formidable weapon against terrorism in both war and peace. It is a weapon drastically in need seven years after the terror of 9/11. I was there to celebrate the end of World War II. I wonder when this present war will end. Soon, I hope.I'm waiting for the watermelons.

Published September 7, 2008