GrassrootsPeace.org Blog

Friend of Peace, RIP

“We are not the first group to call for impeachment. We have decided to add our voice to the call. All the reasons given for the invasion have shown themselves to be half-truths or misleading. The conflict continues to drag on taking the lives of our soldiers and innocent Iraqis. It is clear that George Bush does not intend to change course in an effort to right this great wrong. He has had enough time in his second term to begin a shift and he has not. It is time to remove him from office.” David Cline, then President of the VFP, March ‘05

I met Dave Cline on August 4th, 2005, just two days before myself and about 40 members of the Veterans for Peace (and about 2 dozen others ranging from Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Vets Against the War, Vietnam Vets Against the War, and my group, Gold Star Families for Peace and Texas peace activists) made our historic walk down Prairie Chapel Road on August 6th. (more…)

Open Letter to Progressive Opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejadfrom the Columbia Coalition Against the War

As Columbia only very recently announced, Iranian President Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad will be speaking in Roone Arledge auditorium this Monday.

A number of students and student organizations have already announced

plans for a protest rally the same day. We are not among them. We do

not endorse Ahmadinejad or his views, many of which are inexcusable.

However, as opponents of a US military strike against Iran, we have

serious concerns with the content of some of the hostility that has

been expressed to his presence, and specifically with the planned

protest.

(more…)

From Socialist Worker

ALAN MAASS reports on the successful struggle to save Kenneth Foster.

IN AN inspiring victory for the anti-death penalty struggle, Kenneth Foster Jr. won clemency August 30, hours before he was scheduled to be executed in Texas’ death chamber.

For more than 10 years, politicians, prosecutors and judges at every level failed Kenneth. They all agreed that he should be put to death, even though everyone acknowledges he never killed anyone.

The only reason Kenneth is alive today is because he and his supporters refused to stop fighting. They exposed the injustices surrounding his case and forced the political and media establishment to pay attention. As Kenneth’s lawyer Keith Hampton put it, “Extra-legal means work.” (more…)

RANGEL SHUTS THE DOOR ON KENNETH FOSTER

by Ben Davis

August 28, 2008

Barring a miracle – and miracles are in short order on Texas’ death row – Kenneth Foster is likely to die Thursday. The battle around his case has been a heroic one. Kenneth’s horrifying story of being condemned to death on a misapplication of an already draconian legal monstrosity – Texas’ “Law of Parties,” which enshrines guilt by association – as well as his own clear-eyed and articulate work telling his story and speaking out for others, have won him a host of supporters.

Foremost, of course, there is his family, including his heartbreakingly articulate daughter Nydesha – who has never touched her father, and now may never do so. There is the Coalition to Save Kenneth Foster, a group of activists who have rallied to his defense. There is also the New York hip-hop collective the Welfare Poets, and Kenneth’s wife, the Dutch hip-hop artist Jav’lin, who dedicated the moving song Walk With Me on the Poets’ Cruel and Unusual Punishment CD to her husband’s struggle to live. Mumia Abu-Jamal, from his own death row confinement, wrote in solidarity, while Amnesty International called the case “a new low for Texas” – and that is low indeed. (more…)

We Shouldn’t Be Causing This
by Kathy Kelly
Amman, Jordan
August 22, 2007

Here in Amman, Jordan, a British teenager, Sonia, age 12, recently spent four days interviewing and befriending Iraqi youngsters close to her in age. She wanted to learn, firsthand, about the experiences of Iraqi youngsters who have fled war and violence in their home country.

A versatile and talented child, Sonia loves to play the trumpet and perform classical Indian dances, the latter being somewhat unusual for a Muslim girl. When she was eight years old, shortly before the U.S. and the U.K. attacked Iraq, she wrote a poem urging respect for the rights of Iraqi children whose lives and hopes would be destroyed by war. The poem reached many people, intensifying efforts of peace activists to stop the war before it started. Sonia continued her efforts on behalf of Iraqi children, even founding an organization called “Children Against War.” (www.j-n-v.org/Action/Appeal_Children_Against_War_delegation_July_2007.htm - 36k)

In the spring of 2007, she asked her mother if she could raise money through music and dance performances, to pay for a trip to Amman, so that she could film Iraqi children speaking for themselves. After talking it over with other peace activists, her mother agreed to accompany Sonia, and so, last week, they arrived here for a four day trip. (more…)

GET TO WORK!
By Kathy Kelly
Amman, Jordan
August 12, 2007

“GET A JOB!” These three words are very familiar to activists bearing signs calling for an end to war, whether standing on street corners, walking along highways, holding vigils, or nonviolently occupying the offices of elected representatives. Listen to the activists, and you’ll often hear, “We’re doing our job. We’re trying.”

I’m convinced that our work must always have one foot placed in nonviolent resistance to the forces that design and wage wars, with the other foot standing among people who bear the physical and mental affliction caused by these forces. Today, I’m thinking especially about two young women who found themselves in nightmare circumstances because, in their view, they simply wanted to have a job. (more…)

She Stands At Every Door
By Kathy Kelly
Amman, Jordan
August 6, 2007

At a small, informal school in the basement of a church in Amman, many strings of colorful paper cranes bedeck walls and windows. The school serves children whose families have fled Iraq. Older children who come to the school understand the significance of the crane birds. Claudia Lefko, of Northampton, MA, who helped initiate the school, told them Sadako’s story. The Japanese child survived the bombing of Hiroshima, but suffered from radiation sickness. In a Japanese hospital, she wanted to fold 1,000 origami crane birds, believing that by doing so she could be granted a special wish: hers was that no other child would ever suffer as she did. Sadako died before completing the task she’d set for herself, but Japanese children then folded many thousands more cranes, and the story has been told for decades in innumerable places, making the delicate paper cranes a symbol for peace throughout the world. (more…)

The Slide
Cindy Sheehan

Day 11 of our Journey for Humanity and Accountability
found our caravan group at the Charlottesville, VA
home of David Swanson who is director of
AfterDowningStreet.org. I got to know David after my
group Gold Star Families for Peace became one of the
first organizations to sign on to ADS when the memos
were exposed on May 1, 2005. That collaboration led to
what I thought was going to be the downfall of BushCo:
the fact that on July 23, 2001, there was a secret
meeting at 10 Downing Street that pretty much said
that the invasion of Iraq was a foregone conclusion
and the intelligence was going to have to be “fixed”
around the policy of pre-emptive invasion. (more…)

Torture is a War Crime
Journey for Humanity and Accountability
Day 5
Cindy Sheehan

Today our Journey took us to Ft. Benning, Ga, where
the cancer of the School of Americas (WINSEC) is
housed. I have written on torture before and I believe
that BushCo’s policy of imprisoning people without
their basic due process and torturing them is one of
the grossest breeches of international and American
law and one of the overriding reasons that they should
be impeached.

The School of Torture has graduated many egregious
violators of human rights like Panamanian drug lord,
U.S. CIA employee, and Bush family friend (until he
became an enemy), Manuel Noriega. If there is one
issue that should unite Americans it should be against
torture. Incredibly, we still have neighbors in our
communities who believe that torture is correct,
humane and valuable. However to say torture is “wrong”
is like saying the sky is blue. Torture is inherently
wrong. Torture is pure evil. Torture is an
abomination. Torture is disordered and demented.
Torture is sick, sick, sick! (more…)

Summer of Love ‘07
On a Journey for Humanity
Cindy Sheehan

The other day I came out of my short retirement due to
yet another Bush flagrant abuse of power. We decided
that we would walk from Atlanta to DC to gather a
people’s movement for humanity. The longer BushCo are
in office the less chance we have of recovering the
heart and soul of our nation, saving our soldiers and
the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and saving the
planet from corporate and individual waste and
pollution. Impeachment, removal from office, and in a
perfect world: incarceration for the criminals against
humanity, are urgent and necessary steps that need to
be taken today. (more…)