Tag: anti-war

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.

~or~

The US takes the Missionary position to the World

(Cross-posted from the Wild Wild Left, and to One Wing Left, and Station Charon)

Its been five years.

Tommy can you hear me?  Tommy? Tommy?

It was over, wasn’t it? Is that not what we read, heard, saw?

Can I help to cheer you?

The surge, its working isn’t it? Are you relieved?

Tommy can you hear me?

Can you feel me near you?

Were we this near them?

Seal our eyes, our ears, our mouths.

This cannot be us.

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.”

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?

WARNING:  Fund-raising appeal ahead.



When a handful of people decided to launch the Iraq Moratorium to take on the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, we knew it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

We knew we’d be outmanned, outgunned and outspent by those whose interest seems to be to keep this nation at war.

But we didn’t realize that the Pentagon would spend as much on the war every five seconds as the Iraq Moratorium spends in a year to try to stop it.

We’ve done a lot with very little money.  Since September, more than 800 events, from Vermont to California, from Florida to Washington state, have joined under the Iraq Moratorium umbrella to call for an end to the war and occupation.  Tens of thousands have taken individual action as well on the Third Friday of each month.

But we really need your financial help to keep this national grassroots movement alive and growing.

The magnitude of what we’re up against really hit us with recent reports of the war’s cost — $5,000 a second! That’s more than double what we spend in a month.

 

Another good idea undoubtedly doomed to fail, but worth the effort to try:

Military Families Speak Out is challenging U.S. Senators — starting with two named Obama and Clinton — to filibuster and stop President Bush’s request for more money for the Iraq war and occupation, another $102-billion.

Democrats aren’t even talking about saying no.

The Democrats’ plan appears to be to load up the bill with more domestic spending, rather than trying to stop the war spending. They want to add money for everything from storm-damaged national parks to local law enforcement grants to trying to use nuclear fusion to produce energy, CQ reports.

Instead of trying to stop the war, they’ve written Bush a letter, politely suggesting that he should change his strategy and plans.  Right. That’ll be happening any day now, no doubt.

Military Families Speak Out has a simple idea:  Stop the war by refusing to fund it.  That, you may recall, is how we finally got out of Vietnam.

They start by quoting Obama and Clinton, then ask them a simple question:

“Let me be clear: there is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year – now.” — Sen. Barack Obama, September 12, 2007

“Our message to the president is clear. It is time to begin ending this war — not next year, not next month — but today.” — Sen. Hillary Clinton, July 10, 2007

On the campaign trail, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both say that the war in Iraq needs to end. Military Families Speak Out has one question for them: what are they doing now as sitting United States Senators, to bring our loved ones home from Iraq?

I was born at the tail end of 1951.  My father was a soldier who served in WWII and Korea.  His brother came back from Korea so psychologically devastated that he never recovered.  He lived nearly fifty of his seventy years haunted by the horror of what he witnessed in the Korean War.  He was not alone.  Every war produces more casualties than are accounted for in the body counts.  My uncle died just a few years ago but it was the Korean War that killed him.  

Dr. King at Riverside Church, April 4, 1967

“Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Iraq. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Iraq. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours…

“America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood…

“We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate…

“We must find new ways to speak for peace in Iraq and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

–April 4 is the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968.  It is also the anniversary of the speech he gave a year before his death, entitled “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence.”  This is taken from that speech.  I have taken the liberty of changing only the name of the country.

Read or listen to the whole speech here.