Tag: Peace

The convergence of the 5th anniversary of “shock and awe” with Christian Holy Week and Iraq Moratorium #7 has sparked hundreds of antiwar actions across the country this week.

The Iraq Moratorium, a loosely-knit grassroots movement, is usually observed on the Third Friday of every month, but March events are spread throughout the week.

It began last weekend, when more than 500 people gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco for a rally, march and vigil.

Speakers included Daniel Ellsberg, State Sen. Carole Migden and former San Francisco Supervisor and current Green Party vice presidential candidate Matt Gonzalez.

Ellsberg invited the crowd at the church to join him in a “die in” Wednesday at noon outside the San Francisco office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. “We may be arrested for disturbing the peace,” he said. “But there is no peace.

Golden Gate XPress, the student newspaper at San Francisco State University, reports:

[Cindy]Sheehan,(right) a congressional candidate … concluded the event by reflecting on her personal loss. She told the story of her son who was killed in the third bloody mission into Sadr City, a mission forced upon him against his will.

“Today I have one dead son,” she said to a silent hall, using a tissue to dry a tear. “When your child is killed in a war, they always say ‘Your child volunteered. Your child was a hero,'” she said. “What makes him a hero if he was ordered to kill innocent Iraqis?”

Sheehan further acknowledged the Americans and Iraqis who lost their lives in the war and the politicians who put them there.

“It’s bullshit that we’re not impeaching,” she said.

Because the Moratorium, which encourages local grassroots action on the Third Friday of every month, coincides with the Christian observance of Good Friday, March 21, some actions will include a religious theme.

The Pike’s Peak Justice Coalition will take part in Pax Christi’s Way of the Cross/Way of Justice procession in downtown Colorado Springs.  

A Hartford, CT “Lamentation and Protest” will begin with an interfaith prayer service, followed by a silent procession to the federal building, where marchers will pile stones bearing the names of victims of the Iraq war.  Church bells will ring in a number of communities in Massachusetts to mark Moratorium observances.

In Cincinnati, candlelight vigils will be held in eight neighborhoods, and dozens of street corner vigils are planned across the country.  Most vigils take place every month, and some have been going since the war began.  

In a session called “Write Some Wrongs,” people in Cornwall, CT will meet at the public library to write their Congressman about “what is in your heart about the Iraq war and what you want him to do about it.”

The Iraq Moratorium encourage local organizers to “do their own thing” on the third Friday of the month – but to do something, whatever it is, to end the war.  It is all a loosely-knit national grassroots effort operating under the Iraq Moratorium umbrella.

Friday is the seventh monthly Moratorium, and more than 800 events have been listed on the group’s website, IraqMoratorium.org , which has a list of this month’s actions and reports, photos and videos from previous months.

Cheney Five Years Ago: ‘We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators’

And so from the spectre of the summer soldier who shrinks from the hard truths and his country’s crises, comes the Winter Soldier who will not look away.

Visit War Comes Home to Replay previous testimony, opening statements, transcripts and much more.

Visit IVAW – Iraq Veterans Against The War to Watch, online, and get further information.

Broadcast of todays testimonies, 3-16-08, begin at 10am ET

Lest we think that opposition to the war and occupation of Iraq is limited to the left in this country, consider the lineup of speakers for a March 16 Iraq Moratorium event in San Francisco:

Several of the usual suspects: Sean Penn; Cindy Sheehan; the Rev. Gregory Stewart, senior minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church; Matt Gonzalez, ex-president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and rumored vice presidential candidate on the Green Party ticket.

And one Justin Raimondo, libertarian and paleoconservative (look it up; we did) author who also runs the website Antiwar.com, where he writes things like:

Our foreign policy has put us in mortal danger, and not only because it empowers the worldwide Islamist insurgency that aims to attack the American homeland, but also because the “Iraq recession” is fast threatening to become the Iraq depression. The U.S. is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and the $3 trillion war is going to sink us if it isn’t stopped.

It’s an interesting mix, to say the least, and helps explain how Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich could at least agree on one thing – that the invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake, and we should bring our troops home now. (It was interesting, at the Oct. 27 regional antiwar march in Chicago, that Ron Paul’s was the only presidential campaign represented, with signs, campaign material and even an airplane flyover with a banner.)

When I posted this on another unnamed blog, some commenters pointed out that Raimondo’s politics leave a little to be desired, and that I probably wouldn’t agree with him on much besides the war.  OK, granted.  My whole point here (aside from some shameless promotion of the Moratorium) is that if antiwar sentiment in this country includes nearly two-thirds of the population, the Iraq Moratorium must be a big tent — or big umbrella, if you will — that brings together people who have the common cause of ending the war and occupation of Iraq.  That single issue unifies us.  I met a Ron Paul enthusiast at our March Iraq Moratorium vigil in Milwaukee, so it’s not just hypothetical; people are uniting to end this war.

Details on Sunday’s event, sponsored by the Iraq Moratorium-SF Bay Area, are listed in the March events on the Iraq Moratorium website .

From our friends and colleagues at the Iraq Moratorium:

Sometime in the next few weeks, the 4,000th American service member will die in Iraq. Coalition deaths in Iraq reached 4,000 last August, but Americans focus on American casualties. Even approximate numbers of Iraqi deaths are estimates, so we will never learn when the millionth Iraqi is killed–and it may well have happened already.

On March 19, this unjust and unjustifiable war will enter its sixth year! Kids who were in first grade during the 2003 invasion will be entering Junior High this year, more than half their lives spent with the horror of war constantly in the background.

March 21, the Third Friday of this month, will mark the seventh Iraq Moratorium Day, a day to interrupt our normal routine and speak out against this senseless bloodshed and the damage it is doing to our country. Politicians and talking heads on TV speak calmly of the occupation lasting another decade–or another hundred years–or they try not to talk about it at all.

Many of us will be taking part in protests around the 5th Anniversary of the start of the war. It begins with some courageous Iraq Veterans Against the War holding Winter Soldier hearings March 13-16. Some Iraq Moratorium vigils will be held on Wednesday, March 19, this month to highlight the anniversary of the war’s start, and to link up with other protests called by United For Peace & Justice and a broad range of individual anti-war groups. Some will continue on the Third Friday as usual. Check the listings at IraqMoratorium.org for an action near you.

March 21 is also Good Friday, the religious holiday marking when the man many of us know as The Prince of Peace was killed by Roman soldiers occupying Judea.  Some of us will wear a button or black armband to services to remind others of the need to speak out and to act to end the war. In a growing number of towns, especially in New England, local churches will ring their bells at noon in observance of the Iraq Moratorium.

As we have said from the beginning: It’s got to stop! We’ve got to stop it!

So do something on March 21 to keep this issue on the front burner — and to turn up the heat.

If you’re traveling for Easter, or on spring break from school, take the Iraq Moratorium with you wherever you go.  Wear a button or a black ribbon.  Talk to your family about the war.  Find an event in the community you’re visiting. Send an email or write a blog post. Make a donation to a peace group.  But do something to mark the day. (You’ll find a list of activities and ideas for individual action on our website .)

Finally, if you can, please make a contribution to keep this grassroots, volunteer effort going and growing.  We operate on a shoestring.  American taxpayers spend as much on the Iraq war in four seconds as the Iraq Moratorium spends in a year.  Every dollar you can spare will go to immediate and effective use in the cause of peace.

Donate here.

In closing, we thank you for all you are doing to end this catastrophic war.

March 19th marks the 5th anniversary of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.  This debacle is costing us ,upwards of two trillion dollars, nearly four thousand American lives so far, and a million or so Iraqi lives.  

This diary carries a message or two but is also a tribute.  It is not hero worship.  I am well aware of JFK’s flaws and weaknesses as a human being – you needn’t remind me.  But John F. Kennedy was also a gifted orator who inspired and uplifted us with the poetry in his soul and the power in his words – and certain of his words resonate now more than ever.

[AUTHOR’S NOTE:  I retitled this and edited a bit to make it sexier (or should I say more alluring?) Hope that’s kosher.]

Maybe we shouldn’t complain about the news media’s lack of coverage of the antiwar movement. They don’t even cover the issue when it’s debated for two days in the US Senate.

Senate Democrats, failing to pass anything this week, promise to try again in April, when an appropriations bill comes up.  House Democrats are in a “wait til’ next year” mode.

All the more reason to turn up the heat in March.  And there are plenty of opportunities to take action — in Washington or in your hometown — as the 5th anniversary of the invasion approaches on March 19.  

The two proposals to change course in Iraq failed, predictably, this week, perhaps providing an excuse for the media’s lack of interest. (Depending, of course, on whether the chicken or the egg came first.) But what was taking place was nothing less than a matter of life and death, for US service members and Iraqi military and civilians alike.

The number of American service members who have given their lives in Iraq is nearing 4,000. Nearly 30,000 more have been wounded, and countless others have suffered permanent physical or psychological damage that will haunt them, their loved ones, and this country for decades to come. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and 4 million more have been displaced from their homes and become refugees.

Was the debate front page news? Hardly. It was hardly news at all. Here’s a brief CQ report, in case you missed the news entirely.

That’s all the more reason that the vast majority of Americans who want this senseless bloodshed to end must continue to speak out and act out, at every opportunity.

The sponsors of the two measures which were shelved again in the Senate, Sens. Russ Feingold and Harry Reid, say they will try again in April when appropriations for the war come up, even though House Democrats seem to have adopted a “wait til’ next year” strategy on Iraq.

Between now and then, let’s turn up the heat.

There are plenty of opportunities to do so in March.

Iraq Veterans Against the War will hold Winter Soldier hearings Mar. 13-16 in Washington, DC, modeled on the 1971 hearings held by Vietnam Veterans Against the War.  Here’s how IVAW describes the event:

The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan – and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans’ health benefits and support.

You’ll be able to follow live audio and video links on the web, and some groups are now making plans to screen the hearings in public places across the country, too.

The next week, March 19, is the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.  Will we ever forget the shock and awe when we learned we had been duped about the reasons to invade?   United for Peace and Justice, the nation’s largest antiwar coalition, is planning to mark the day:

March 19th will mark the beginning of the 6th year of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Enough is enough! We are organizing creative, nonviolent acts of civil disobedience in Washington DC to interrupt business as usual for those promoting and profiting from war and empire building. Focusing on the pillars of war, our actions will take place at multiple sites, demonstrating the real costs of war and offering visions for a more just and sustainable world, a world at peace.

Actions are bring planned in local communities as well to mark the anniversary.  

Friday, March 21, is Iraq Moratorium #7, a day to take individual or collective action to call for an end to the war and the occupation.  The Moratorium, a national grassroots movement, asks people to do something on the Third Friday of every month to disrupt their normal routine and call for an end to the war.

You’ll find lots of ideas for actions on the Moratorium website , along with a list of events on March 21 and reports, videos and photos of previous actions.  There have been more than 600 group actions under the Iraq Moratorium banner since September.

So, march in March.  Or do something, anything, besides waiting for the election.  Unless we keep the pressure on, a Democratic president and Congress may not make this a priority, either. If you doubt that, ask Nancy Pelosi what she’s doing to end the war.    

Instead of “Where the Boys Are,” the old-time spring breaks that used to bring waves of partying college students to Florida beaches, the theme for some students this spring will be “Bring the Boys Home.”  (It’s not just boys at war any more, of course; that just fit better.) Our Spring Break invites students and young people to Washington DC for a wide range of antiwar actions in March.

Meanwhile, Campus Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress, is sponsoring Iraq Action Camp, three days of education, training and action for students March 15-17 in Washington. It’s free for college students, but they should register now.

Says Robin Markle of Drew University SDS in New Jersey:

“I don’t think we can rely on the government to stop the war, despite what politicians may say when they’re on the campaign trail. I’m really excited about the Iraq Moratorium campaign, which invites anti-war activists to hold actions the third Friday of every month in their communities. I think that locally-based grassroots actions like these, with people talking to their friends, co-workers and neighbors, is our best strategy for steadily growing the movement until it’s something that politicians can’t simply pay lip service to.”

Is antiwar action and energy being transferred to the presidential campaign?

Says Kati Kesh of UNC-Asheville:

From my perspective … it seems that although some students are very much swept up in the election process most students remember what happened in 2006 when they put their faith in the Democrats–the Democrats failed to do anything about the war. Because it’s an election year it seems that the student body is becoming more politicized and wanting to be more active about issues such as the war in Iraq.

More on what students are thinking and doing in this CounterPunch article.

The Peace sign is 50 years old today!  

This icon was designed by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and artist in Britain.  It was originally an anti-nuclear emblem for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament adopted it as their logo and thereafter it became an international icon for the 1960s anti-war movement.  More about the history…

Happy Birthday Peace.com has a peace sign gallery to celebrate the occasion.  Anyone can upload their own art.    

My submission: Dharma Peace