5th Anniversary, Iraq Moratorium demand action

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.

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David Swanson: "To Nancy With All Due Respect"

To Nancy With All Due Respect
By David Swanson, After Downing Street, Thursday, January 10, 2008

Dear Nancy. Cindy asked me to write you a letter and promised she would deliver it. So I picture the two of you in your home over tea as you peruse this and a four-foot stack of similar missives, and I hope mine catches your eye, and I hope there are no more of those annoying poor people out front, or that you're able to have them arrested quickly and quietly.

I know that there is good in you, Nancy, and I know that you are extremely smart. I can tell by the skill with which you've hidden from us that aforementioned good. But I'm concerned about how you will be remembered in history. Specifically, I'm concerned that you may not be remembered at all. If you were the leader who ended the wars, made peace, and impeached criminals, you would be remembered and quite possibly elected president some day. Attempting to impeach a president for an illegal war seemed to work pretty well for Congressman Lincoln.

If you plan to continue, instead, down the present course, then I feel obliged to let you in on a little secret: It won't be remembered as your war. If the planet survives and the occupation of Iraq is glorified with statues, none of them will be of you. And, as for your historic act of removing impeachment from the Constitution, the republic won't survive it, and neither will any memory of the Constitution. So there will be no history of your having ended it. Even if the rest of us are spared nuclear holocaust and global warming, your memory will, I'm afraid, be pretty well lost.

I'm sorry that you feel you have no good choices. I'm sorry that the media scares you so much. I'm sorry that your kids had to grow up with the name Hairy. But I think there is a pretty good option still open to you. Pretending you have other things to do won't work. After a year, the public now understands that any good bills on any issues will be vetoed, and that the way to end the occupation of Iraq is not to pretend to try to pass bills, but to refuse to pass any more bills.

Remember when you said that we should elect Democrats in 2006 so that you would have the power of subpoena? Well, you don't. Bush, Cheney, and gang have simply refused to comply. Remember when you said that your top priority was ending the occupation of Iraq? I'd hate to be any lower down on that list. Nancy, I've gone to rallies around this country and other countries and asked crowds if they can name the woman responsible for continuing to fund the occupation and for refusing to impeach. Each time, the shouts come: PE-LO-SEE

That's what you'll be remembered as, if you're lucky.

In contrast, the woman delivering this letter to you has withstood two years of full frontal corporate media assault and walked away smiling. If you grow a spine, I'm sure she'll be glad to give you tips on how to handle the corporate media. She is loved by many, hated by a few, and universally understood to say what she thinks. Cindy lost her son in the war you keep funding, the war that killed more Iraqis and Americans during your first year in power than in any previous year, the war that killed 9 Americans in the past two days. Your arms are dripping in blood up to the shoulders, Nancy.

You think Cindy is no threat to your seat in Congress. But you've only had one year so far to give Congress a record disapproval rating. You've got a whole year ahead of you. You can be smart, Nancy, and let the Cheney impeachment hearings begin. Or you can make the same move that your Party made during Iran Contra: avoid impeachment, avoid responsibility, allow further transfer of power to the White House, and lose the next elections. And. Be. Forgotten.

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