** FILE ** Sgt. Sherwood Baker, 30, is shown in Iraq on March 29, 2004. Sherwood, of Luzerne Co., Pa., was killed in an explosion Monday, April 26, 2004, in Baghdad while serving in Iraq with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. (AP Photo/handout)
He was 30, born and raised in Philly. Joined National Guard to helps his community in natural disaster, etc. and to help meet their financial needs and repay student loans, so he could work as childcare worker/teacher. He went to college at Kings' College and lived in Wilkes Barre with his nine year old son James-Dante (JD) and wife Debby, who's from Wilkes Barre. Sent to Iraq in March. Killed on April 26 this year. His passions were DJing, working with children. He also worked as a well-loved caseworker working with mentally retarded adults in the Luzerne County, PA.
Sherwood joined the National Guard to help his community. That was who Sherwood always was - a family and community man who loved people and especially his family. He joined so that he could help his community when it was in danger from floods and the like. And he joined to help support his family, his wife and their young son, when his salary as a childcare worker and later as a social worker with the mentally retarded, did not meet their basic needs.
His decision to join the National Guard was based also on a desire to turn his lifelong love for children into a profession, by studying early childhood development to become a teacher or childcare worker after college. The National Guard, he was told, would help him to repay his loans so that he could follow this calling.
And so Sherwood, like so many thousands of people of our generation, joined the National Guard - because he was born and raised in a country in which he did not have a human right to a higher education or to a living wage job. While young people and families in many countries around the world enjoy the rights to a higher education, health care and a living wage job as birthrights, Sherwood, like thousands in our rich country, saw joining the National Guard as one of the only ways to meet his most basic needs and to help his family and community.
The war in Iraq and Sherwood's deployment in March as a soldier in that war, was a betrayal of the commitment to his family, community and country that had led him to join the Guard. Furthermore, it is this war which is costing lives not only abroad, but at home, as millions are denied education, health care, housing and food while billions are spent on the war.
Sherwood's death is one of the growing numbers of human rights violations, of crimes against humanity, for which we must make this administration accountable. The war at home and the war abroad are feeding each other, and it is we who must build the power to stop both. It is our responsibility - to our future and to the world - to unite our people with the worlds' people in a global struggle for "another world, " an international struggle for our VERY LIVES.
