Tag: Peace

San Francisco organizers are taking it to the streets — their ironing board, that is.

Here’s what they’re suggesting as an Iraq Moratorium activity on Friday, the ninth monthly Moratorium action:

Make a difference – join us in neighborhood outreach! Stand at an ironing board at a busy location with a partner to help you and speak to that frustrated, angry person who doesn’t know what to do. Get them to write a message on a postcard to their congressperson or presidential candidate. It’s fun, people are so appreciative and eager to speak out! In an hour or two you will reach 50+ people. Please help, choose a time and location of your choice, we have materials! Locations: Golden Gate Park, City Hall, Farmer’s market, 9th and Irving, City College, Tenderloin and more.

One woman who’s tried it out lately says that is an effective way to engage people and get them to do something.  Why an ironing board?  They’re portable, quick and easy to set up, and allow people to write standing up.

Progressive organizers have spent many hours over the years sitting behind tables filled with literature, signs, petitions, and buttons — so many that the act of sitting at such a table has developed into a verb.  They call it “tabling.”

One of these days, will we be at a meeting where we hear talk of “ironing boarding?”

The ironing boards are but one facet of plans for Iraq Moratorium #9 on Friday, as evidenced by more than 100 events listed at the Moratorium website.

Cincinnati’s Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center will sponsor half a dozen neighborhood vigils in different parts of the city on Friday night.  

In Manitou Springs CO, Iraq Veterans Against the War will sponsor “Words of Resistance,” an evening of poetry and spoken word from Iraq veterans, and a chance to share your own as well.

In Naples FL, a group of military veterans and spouses from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and parentswho have sons in Iraq will hold a roadside vigil.

In Chicago, it’s Art Against war, with a night of music and poetry at the Heartland Cafe.

And in Laramie WY, there will be a vigil on the corner where there has been a vigil every Friday since January 2003.  In Lansing MI there’s been a Friday vigil at the State Capitol since September, 2001.  Oak Park IL has more than five years of vigils as well.

There’s a full list on the website, along with some ideas about what you can do as an individual if you can’t find or attend an action where you live.

The whole idea is to do something — anything — to show your opposition to the war, whether it’s wearing an armband or writing your members of Congress or donating to a peace group working to end the war and occupation.  Or get out your own ironing board and do some outreach.  All it takes to have an action is two people and a sign.  Or maybe one person and an ironing board.

Friday’s the day.  Please do something.

 

By Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator, UFPJ:

Since last fall, on the third Friday of every month, people in cities and towns around the country have organized protest activities and other events as part of the nationally coordinated Iraq Moratorium. This coming Friday, May 16th, is Iraq Moratorium #9.

First, we want to congratulate the local organizers who keep pulling together these activities. And we also want to congratulate the national organizers who have maintained and expanded this effort, including the Iraq Moratorium website at: www.IraqMoratorium.org



Second, we want to encourage more local groups to get involved. There is still time to organize something in your community, at your school or workplace, or anywhere you might be able to reach people.

You can find reports from past Moratorium actions, as well as listings for events already planned for this Friday, at the Iraq Moratorium website. Reading through all of this will inspire you and might give you an idea of something you can do as part of this project. If you do plan something, please be sure to list it on the calendar.

Finally, if you are planning something for May 16, try to take some photos or video. Then we hope you’ll take a few minutes to go back to the site and post a report on what happened — not just numbers but anecdotes, descriptions of who came, etc. If you have them, include photos or video. What you do, and the stories you tell, can inspire others for future actions.

Again, the website for the Iraq Moratorium is www.IraqMoratorium.org – be sure to check it out!

(UFPJ — United for Peace and Justice — is the nation’s largest peace coalition, with more than 1,400 affiliated organizations.)

Kathy Kelly has more than paid her dues in the movement for peace through non-violence, putting herself in harm’s way and risking her freedom.

She is the latest endorser of the Iraq Moratorium, a growing grassroots initiative which will be observed on Friday, May 16, as it is on the third Friday of each month.  (She explains her endorsement below.)

The co-coordinator of Chicago-based Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Kelly helped initiate Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end UN/US sanctions against Iraq in 1996. For bringing “medicine and toys” to Iraq in open violation of the UN/US sanctions, she and other campaign members were fined $20,000, which they’ve refused to pay.

Voices in the Wilderness organized 70 delegations to visit Iraq in the period between 1996 and the beginning of the “Operation Shock and Awe” warfare (March 2003). Kelly has been to Iraq 24 times since January 1996. In October 2002, she joined Iraq Peace Team members in Baghdad where she and the team maintained a presence throughout the bombardment and invasion. Kelly left Iraq on April 19, 2003 and has returned three times, most recently in May of 2006 when she traveled to northern Iraq.

Along with three other Voices activists, Kathy was in Beirut, Lebanon during the final days of the Israel-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006. (Photo at right.) They subsequently reported from southern Lebanon following a ceasefire.

In the spring of 2004, she served three months at Pekin federal prison for crossing the line as part of an ongoing effort to close an army military combat training school at Fort Benning, GA. In 1988 she was sentenced to one year in prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites. Kelly served nine months of the sentence in Lexington KY maximum security prison.

She is currently organizing Witness Against War 2008,a nonviolent walk for peace from Chicago to the site of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Kathy Kelly: Why I endorse the Iraq Moratorium

We’ve written in the past about the hardy and dedicated folks up in Hayward, in northern Wisconsin, who have led the nation in participation in the Iraq Moratorium, which will be observed again on next Friday, May 16.

They’ve turned out 80 people in a city of 2,100 for the monthly Third Friday vigil at a highway intersection — a participation rate that would translate nationally into 12 million people in the streets.

Wisconsin has more events each month than any other state except California, with seven times the population, in large part because the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, a statewide coalition of 150 groups, has encouraged its affiliates to take part.

Not resting on their laurels, two of the organizers of the Hayward vigils have written the following piece, which was distributed statewide by WNPJ. Please take the time to read it all the way through, so you don’t miss the powerful quote at the end from Martin Murie:

Rationale for participating in the Iraq Moratorium – “Let’s Work Together”

Dear Concerned Citizens,

When Russ Feingold was at his Sawyer County listening session in Hayward this last February, Peace North member Dan Krause (in front of one hundred people) informed him that Wisconsin is leading the nation, per capita, in Iraq Moratorium monthly events.  As north woods folks are sometimes inclined to do, Dan followed up with a bit of brag by telling Feingold that Hayward, per capita, is leading the nation in turnout for these events.  Much to our delight, Feingold responded that he was well aware of that fact!  After the session, he shook Dan’s hand and told him to “keep up the good work.”

Less than a week later Senator Feingold introduced troop re-deployment legislation, yet again, onto the floor of the Senate, telling his colleagues that at listening sessions throughout Wisconsin in January and February his constituents made it clear that they wanted an end to the war in Iraq.  Three weeks later almost 70 people came out again in Hayward for the March Iraq Moratorium Day to stand for peace.  Many folks said they felt like they owed it to Senator Feingold to take a stand.

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.”

If you can make it to Faneuil Hall in Boston around 11:30 this Thursday that’d be great. If you can do something locally wherever you are that’d be great. If you can take some time and write to your congress critters that’d be great. If you can take some time and write some LTEs that’d be great. If you can take some time and call your congress critters or local rag that’d be great.

If you can join one of the many protests that seem to be naturally occurring simultaneously that’d be really great. The longshoremen’s union, the truckers and the immigrants will all be making a statement on the born-in-the-USA (Haymarket, Chicago, 1886, 8 hr workday movement) International Workers Day.

Don’t know about all of you out there but I just can’t sit around flinging IP packets into the bit-stream and waiting for something to happen. We can type away until our fingers fall off. It’ll change nothing. We gather here in web space and piss and moan to the chorus. We’re intelligent, we’re creative, we’re outraged by what is happening around us. We pour our hearts out. Nothing happens. We’d still be in Viet Nam if people hadn’t gone out of their way to show up by the dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, to collectively vent their unwillingness to allow the desecration of all they held to be right to continue.

It has to start somewhere at some point in time with someone showing up in public to make the case for stopping the collective insanity. It looks like a lot of people have picked May One as the day. If you can’t bring yourself to participate, find something going on and go watch. Body counts matter. There’s enough of us who were around for the 60s and 70s protests to remember what it felt like to be part of a movement for peace. Movement is the key. Turn off the computer, go outside, find one other person to join you and go to the most heavily trafficked public place near you. See if anyone else shows up who may have the same feelings you do.

This May One thing is in our primitive neo-pagan history. It’s that cross-quarter day halfway between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice. There’s a primal nature behind the day. Get outside with other like-minded people and see what happens. Take pictures. YELL LOUDER!

May One. Take America Back.

More…

Just so you know it doesn’t snow year-round in Milwaukee, Friday’s Iraq Moratorium vigil was our largest rally since the first one in September, with 80 people of all ages on the four corners of downtown’s main intersection at rush hour.

It was very spirited, with large student contingents from Fratney Street Elementary School and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Progressive Students organization, and a few high schoolers, too.  Iraq Veterans Against the War, Peace Action Wisconsin, Veterans for Peace and Kids for Peace were all represented, with lots of creative signs.  A dog urging “Bones, not bombs” also joined us.

Flags, signs, banners, music from a boom box and a return of the chaing gang — Bush, Cheney and Rice in their prison suits — all added to the upbeat atmosphere.  Fifty degree weather, the warmest in months, didn’t hurt either. Huge positive responses from passers-by who honked their horns, waves and yelled encouragement, with rarely a discouraging word.  After a long, cold, dark winter of monthly vigils, this was rejuvenating.

The UW-Milwaukee contingent.

More reports about other actions are beginning to trickle in to the Iraq Moratorium website

Not even General Petraeus can see any light at the end of the tunnel.

There’s no exit plan, no timetable, not even any criteria to know when we’ve achieved the “victory” that George Bush keeps promising.

The Pentagon keeps sending the same troops into the combat zone, over and over and over.

And as long as that continues, the antiwar effort must continue just as doggedly, month in and month out, over and over and over.  There is no other choice except to surrender to the warmongers.

Friday is Iraq Moratorium #8, a day to do something to show that you want the war and the occupation to end.  Please do something.  

We know you’re plenty pissed off about the war.

Pissed off enough to write about it and comment on it, and to resort to some pretty rough language to describe how you feel.

Five years.  Thousands of Americans and perhaps a million Iraqis dead.  Four million refugees.  Trillions of dollars wasted. Government spying.  Torture.  Lies.  Coverups.

It’s enough to piss anyone off.

But are you pissed off enough to do something?