Thousands marched today in New York City and in many hundreds of locations across this land. These are the true patriots of our land - the ones who refuse to be silent in the face of the atrocity that is the brutal occupation of Iraq.
In this historic election year, when the fate of our country and the entire world hangs in the balance, we must not and cannot be silent. Up against a rigidly controlled corporate media that keeps the real and hideously ugly truth of this war from the American people, we must redouble our efforts to raise the issue of the war and its connection to the failing economy. The war and its effects must be the central and overarching question of this election. We must thrust it to the center stage of this election year.
As a people and as a nation we cannot move forward until this war has ended. Questions of health care, education, the environment, loss of homes and jobs cannot be solved as long as trillions of dollars are diverted to Iraq and Afghanistan (and, perhaps, Iran?)and as long as spending for arms and the bloated Pentagon budget are allowed to suffocate expenditures for human needs.
Even though two-thirds of the American people are opposed to the war and 70 percent believe the war has hurt the economy, the opinion of U.S. citizens matters not to King George and the power behind his throne, Dick Cheney. Like two swaggering bullies, they brag that their wars are bringing democracy to the world. But when asked recently, on ABC TV, abut the majority of Americans who are opposed to the war, Cheney snapped back arrogantly: "So?"
"CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
ABC-TV's RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So?
RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?
CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.
With five years of war as the backdrop and under the banner of United For Peace and Justice, New Yorkers lined 14th Street with a human chain, linking arms and holding signs aloft demanding peace and a change in national priorites. The streets echoed with chants of "peace now" and "money for schools, not for war" as the marchers headed inwards from both ends of 14th Street for Union Square where a brief and solemn commemoration of those who have fallen victim to the Bush war and occupaton was held.
Thousands of New Yorkers lined 14th Street demanding an end to the war.
Brooklyn For Peace was well represented.
The two folks flew in from London and joined us on 14th Street.
We reached Union Square along with thousands of others.
This sign said it all.
Not one more death. Not one more dollar.
Speakers urged the assembly to follow up today's demonstration with a pledge to reach out to new people in their communities and broaden the peace movement. A larger peace movement could force Congress to cut the funding and finally end this brual war. To which I say -- Amen!
We've learned how to deal with the weather - ignore it! And that's just what hundreds of Brooklynites did last night as they joined together for a march and vigil to protest the 5-year nightmare of George Bush's war and occupation of Iraq. Beginning at Grand Army Plaza with a press conference attended by CBS, NBC, NY1 and others, speakers, including Brooklyn For Peace's Diane Lent, LIU Student Government President, Ty. Christian Joseph, Deanna Bitetti representing Congressmember Yvette Clarke and Vern Bergelin of MoveOn.org-Brooklyn, took on George Bush's demand that the U.S. must remain in Iraq.
Then the hundreds marched up Flatbush Avenue to the U.S. Army recruiting station. Motorists honked in solidarity and flashed the V-sign as the peace marchers trekked through Brooklyn's rain-soaked streets. They chanted demands for slashing the war budget and transferring those monies to fund urgent human needs instead. A drummer and trumpet led the procession.
Arriving at Flatbush Avenue and Livingston Street, the marchers were greeted by rousing speeches including that of Reverend Clinton Miller of the Brown Memorial Baptist Church who led the crowd in repeated cries of "peace now." Then the marchers broke into small circles of 10 or 12 and, holding candles aloft, they read, one at a time, stories from Iraqi veterans and their families.
The stories told of the hardships endured by soldiers who have been sent back to Iraq again and again; of the stress caused to the families by the return of wounded sons or husbands or even worse, the horror of having lost loved ones to a war based on lies. Mothers and wives demanded a shift in priorities - to end spending for war, death and destruction and to begin funding the urgent needs here at home: for health care, education, jobs training and to take care of an increasingly endangered environment.
Here's a sample of one of the stories -- Mary in Kentucky. Her husband is a Sergeant in the army, currently deployed in Iraq.
"For the second time, my husband is serving a 15 month tour in Iraq. I am now - for all intents and purposes - a single mom to four little kids, ages 7, 5, 4 and 2.
They need their dad in their life. The oldest has been most adversely affected by these repeat deployments. He's big enough now to know that Dad could end up dead.
The emotionall and physical stress of being the spouse of a deployed soldier is more than just "hard work." It's intense and traumatic.
Even if my husband comes out of Iraq physically unscathed, as a medic he has seen things that will leave him emotionally scarred. I worry not only about his physical health but his mental health every waking hour.
Instead of spending billions in Iraq we should invest in education, veteran's benefits and health care."
This was a moving and dramatic outpouring of anger at Congress and the Bush Administration, who prattle on about democracy but then ignore the overwhelming sentiment of the people they were elected to serve. Seventy percent of Americans are opposed to the war but after five years of this disaster there is still no end in sight. Four thousand lives and trillions of dollars later, we're neck deep in the big muddy and the big fool says to push on (as Pete Seeger wrote about another war - Vietnam - many years ago).
Click the PLAY button to hear Pete Seeger sing Wait Deep In The Big Muddy
Saturday is the citywide culmination of the week of protests against five years too many. Please come out with family and friends to show the world that NYC says NO to war! Details at Five Years Too Many. The human chain, along Manhattan's 14th Street from river to river begins at noon on Saturday, March 22nd. Brooklynites will gather at 10th Avenue and 14th Street. See you there. Deanna Bitetti, speaking on behalf of Congressmember Yvette Clarke, decried the expenditures on war and told how it leaves her district without the funds urgently neeeded by her constituents.
Vern Bergelin of MoveOn.org-Brooklyn, speaks to the press. The cooperation of MoveOn and Brooklyn For Peace played a large part in bringing out hundreds of Brooklyn residents and set a good precedent for future work together.
Diane Lent, co-chair of Brooklyn For Peace's Iraq Committee, reads a statement to the press.
Christian Joseph, President of the LIU Student Government, reads his statement.
Brooklyn's El Puente turned out in force and lent a youthful, exuberant spirit to the march and vigil.
Brooklyn For Peace led the march up Flatbush Avenue .
Marching up Flatbush in the rain - motorists honked and flashed the V-sign. Shopkeepers and strollers waved in support.
The rain could not dampen the high spirits of Brooklynites marching for peace.
A vigil was held at march's end, across from the U.S. Army Recruiting Station. Reverend Clinton Miller of the Brown Memorial Baptist Church gave an impassioned speech denouncing the war and the impact it has on Brooklyn's communities.
Listening to speeches at the vigil.
Holding a candle aloft for peace in Iraq.
Reading the stories of Iraqi vets and their families.
Reading the stories.
This march and vigil marks the beginning of a new, revitalized peace movement in Brooklyn. Bringing together a diverse collection of organizations and individuals, Brooklyn For Peace is making a unique contribution in reaching out and helping to build what can be a new coalition for progressive change in the borough.
There are six members of Congress from Brooklyn. Five of six voted against the last Supplemental spending bill for Iraq. The Supplemental is a separate bill that President Bush annually sends to Congress to fund the occupation in Iraq. He then pressures Congress (and too easily do they cave in) to give him the money or else be accused of undermining his war and the soldiers he has sent there to fight it.
The one member of Congress to obediently and blindly follow Bush is the notorious war-hawk and right wing Congressman from Bay Ridge and Staten Island, Vito Fossella. But opposition is growing to Fossella among his constituents. As he ignores their problems while voting for war and tax cuts for the rich, people are demanding to know why.
In 2004, labor champion, former NY State Assemblyman and Supreme Court judge, Frank Barbaro gave Fossella a run for his money, garnering 41% of the vote. Frank's campaign was grossly underfunded compared to the well-heeled Fossella but nevertheless, came close to unseating him in what used to be a district taken for granted as a Republican fiefdom. The next time around, Steve Harrison, another progressive Democrat, challenged Fossella and won 43% of the vote. Harrison's campaign was also underfunded compared to the money lavished on Fossella by his wealthy corporate supporters. Harrison is running again this year and is already attracting wide support throughout Brooklyn, Staten Island and New York.
For Fossella, the handwriting is on the wall. Five years of war and five years of Fossella support for the war may spell the end of his Congressional reign.
It was with this in mind that dozens of anti-war protestors marched outside Fossella's Brooklyn office in Bay Ridge today. Joined by members of El Puente, the community and youth leadership group, Bay Ridge and Staten Island constituents picketed Fossella's office and rocked the neighborhood with chants like -
"Hey Fossela, can't you hear? Health care! Not warfare!"
The demonstration was part of this week's commemoration of Five Years of War...Five Years Too Many! In thousands of communities around the country, citizen patriots are demonstrating their love for this country and their opposition to five more years of war.
Diane and Jane of Brooklyn For Peace protest Vito Fossella's pro-war policies.
The protest was called by Bay Ridge Peace Action.
Young people from El Puente helped fill the picket line. Beautiful!
Hey Vito -- get the message?
Vicki McFadyen of Military Families For Peace, addresses the crowd.
The next protest is tonight at 6pm in Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza. Brooklyn Says No to the War, called by Brooklyn For Peace, will march to the U.S. Army Recruiting Station at Flatbush Avenue and Livinsgston Street. Join them - rain or shine!
Then, this Saturday, a citywide action. Thousands will join hands and form a human chain from river to river along Manhattan's 14th Street. That starts at noon on Saturday, March 22nd. More information at FIVE YEARS TOO MANY. See you there.....Matt
Four thousand American lives taken. Tens of thousands of our soldiers terribly wounded.
A country flattened - utterly destroyed.
A million of that country's citizens ... dead. Four million of them refugees - homeless.
Our democracy and constitutional rights in tatters.
Our standard of living; our economy - poised on the edge of a cliff.
According to the Pew Research firm: in November, 28 percent of news stories were about the war. Today - just 3 percent! It's the war that has disappeared from the front pages of our papers and the screens of our televisions.
The endlessly chattering experts on our op ed pages and TV screens have now pronounced "the economy" as the new problem. It has replaced the war, we are told, as the main concern of Americans. "The surge is working," is repeated over and over and Republican candidate John McBush says "I told you so."
But it's not just the economy, is it? No, it's the WAR economy!
It's not just a recession. It's the WAR recession!
Is that so difficult for the so-called experts to comprehend? Somehow they just can't find a connection between spending a half-trillion dollars for war in Iraq and the huge, gaping hole in our economy that it has produced.
The media and their well-paid talking heads, complicit in selling this war-based-on-lies in the first place will never connect the two: the war and the economy, in the second place. Not now. Not ever. That will be up to us.
A week after Bush rejected the charge that the war has damaged the economy, Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard economist, Linda Bilmes published a new book that exposed the President and his gang for the house-wreckers that they are. Their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, The True Cost of the Iraq War, concludes that the true cost, so far, has been a breathtaking three trillion dollars!
Sixty-seven percent of the American people want the war to end now and feel it was a huge mistake. This, despite the surge and the propagandist spin to make it seem the success that it's not. This, despite the prattle that would have us forget the war or detach it from the very serious problems that are piling up at home: jobs disappearing, homes being lost to shady mortgages, lack of affordable health care for tens of millions of Americans, an environment that is in a state of toxic shock.
There's a big job to be done on this the fifth anniversary of Bush's war and occupation of Iraq. Nobody will raise the question of the war and the need to end it now - nobody except us: the peace movement, the activists, those who can see clearly the source of the problems hovering over our country and the world.
So this week, in thousands of communities across our country, thousands of us have been out in the streets, talking to people, handing out fliers, taking a moral and patriotic stand by sitting in and getting arrested, demonstrating and marching. Our mantra -- Five Years of War...Five Years Too Many!
In one of the most amazing actions of this run-up to the fifth anniversary, veterans of the Iraq war held Winter Soldier hearings in Maryland on the 40th anniversary of the My Lai massacre. In gut wrenching and terrifying testimony, these veterans gave eyewitness indictments of atrocities committed by US troops during the ongoing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers spoke of free-fire zones, the shootings and beatings of innocent civilians, racism at the highest levels of the military, sexual harassment and assault within the military, and the torturing of prisoners. It is something you must watch and share with others.
Here, in Brooklyn, we've been preparing for this week's actions against the war. Last night, at a big beautiful book store/performance space in Brooklyn's DUMBO, dubbed the Powerhouse Arena. activists and others gathered to hear speakers from peace, veterans and military families organizations.
The Brooklyn For Peace table at Powerhouse Arena yesterday. Many other organizations were represented.
An Iraqi veteran addresses the crowd in DUMBO.
Code Pink and the War Resistors League were there.
Leslie Kielson of UFPJ prepares her speech.
A dramatic exhibition on the real cost of war: soldier's boots representing the 175 soldiers from New York state lost to Bush's lies.
After the Speak Out at Powerhouse we walked up the block to St. Anne's Warehouse. This was the scene of a fundraiser for United for Peace and Justice. Musicians and dancers put on a fabulous concert filled with powerful performances against the war. Emceed by author/activist Laura Flanders and TV star Richard Belzer, the performers included Lou Reed, Damien Rice, Nora Jones, Bill T. Jones, David Byrne and Laurie Anderson. Over a thousand New Yorkers packed in to this DUMBO space on Water Street and responded to the artists' pleas to turn up the heat for peace.
Lou Reed and his band crank out a jarring and bitter version of the Star Spangled Banner.
Nora Jones sang sweetly and softly ... about elections.
In perhaps the most stirring performance of the night, Bill T. Jones, sang the old Irish anti-war folk song, Mrs. McGrath, and then interpreted the pain and agony of war through dance.
David Byrne performed, backed up by Nora Jones and Damien Rice (at right)
And finally, performance artist Laurie Anderson sang her devastating composition, "Only An Expert." You can listen to it on You Tube, (click below). In it she brilliantly takes on the spinmeisters and propagandists of government and media who sugar coat the ghastly violence of this nation's war machine.
Laurie Anderson ... she blew me away!
Listen to the song that Laurie Anderson performed: "It Takes An Expert."
Being out on my neighborhood's streets, I see that people are demoralized. After all, the war has continued for five years. This, despite the overwhelming opposition to it - here at home and around the world. "Protest doesn't accomplish anything so why bother?" But, even if it doesn't succeed in ending the war (and I firmly believe that, in the end, it will be the pressure of the American people that will still hand or the war makers) we must not be silent. Martin Luther King uttered these words many years ago:
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
This Saturday, March 22nd at noon, New Yorkers will form a human chain from river to river along Manhattan's 14th Street to protest five years of Bush's horrible war. Thinking of Martin's words, we should all be there. Click here for details of Saturday's action.
Thousands of New Yorkers lined 14th Street demanding an end to the war.
Brooklyn For Peace was well represented.
The two folks flew in from London and joined us on 14th Street.
We reached Union Square along with thousands of others.
This sign said it all.
Not one more death. Not one more dollar.
People want peace!
