( – promoted by buhdydharma )
From our friends at the Iraq Moratorium:
Reports from Moratorium Day #8, just over a week ago, are still coming in and being posted on the Iraq Moratorium website, and a few got us thinking. One report, our first ever from Point Arena, CA said:
Three of us came out to honor Iraq Moratorium on Friday, April 18, 2008 in front of the local post office.
We carried a sign and displayed it prominently, and we handed out flyers to interested people.
The weather was very cold and exceptionally windy; I think that kept people away. However, we felt really good about joining people all over the U.S. to stand against the Iraq war.
Looked at in a vacuum, three people doesn’t sound too impressive, does it? Well, we Googled Point Arena. It’s a tiny rural town with a population of 486. Not an easy place to build an anti-war presence. And for us, their conclusion gets to the essence of the Moratorium:
“We felt really good about joining people all over the U.S. to stand against the Iraq war.”
And they did. They joined Raging Grannies in San Mateo. Fifth graders in Milwaukee who call themselves Kids Against the War and have started their own website, Kids Against War.. Women in Black in Baltimore. Students for a Democratic Society in NYC. Very, very slow pedestrians in the main crosswalk in Greenfield, MA. And thousands of others who came to vigils, speeches, letter-writing sessions and other organized activities. 
And they joined who-knows-how-many other people who did something on their own on Moratorium Day #8. We have reports from a guy who puts the number of US dead in his apartment windows on the Third Friday of every month, a veteran who made bio-diesel to fuel the tractor he uses to do clean-up in New Orleans, and a Tulsa resident immobilized by diabetes who distributed a Move-On alert to 160 friends via email. We all broke our daily routine and took some action to end the war.
What did you do?
Please, file a report from the link in the Moratorium Day #8 section on the home page of the Iraq Moratorium website, a couple of sentences is fine, and let others draw strength, and maybe even new ideas, from your actions. While you’re on the site, please check to see that planned activities you know about for Moratorium Day #9, on May 16, are listed, too.
In closing, the handful of overworked volunteers who make up the Iraq Moratorium Committee will be meeting face-to-face for the first time ever very soon. If you have any thoughts concerning the Moratorium you’d like to share with us or anything you wish we would do to make the Moratorium more useful to you, holler at us. Just send an email to [email protected] and let us know what you’re thinking.
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Join them if you can.
For a general protest. Trying to narrow down the Pissed Off list was getting impossible. All I coud do was prioritize with War #1, Economy #2. But when you get right down to it, the War impacts every aspect of American life in 2008.
I hadn’t heard of the IM protest. I’ll add the next date to the info handouts for the Boston get together.
Like you, I don’t care how many show up. The only thing I know is that one person has to show up and this Thursday that’s me.
BTW, got lost in a Staples today. It’s like protest party favors if you look at it right. They’ve got everything we need. Just bring your own words and outrage.
What should I do? What should I do?
Oh. Right!
Something!!
We should do something!
I just remembered (slapping my forehead like I coulda had a V-8)! The war won’t stop itself! (I just hate it when I forget things like that.)
We should all get off our asses and do something!
Strike on May 1! Join the Iraq Moratorium, and tell everyone else you know about it!
(I’ll stop shouting now.)