[Oz-envirolink] Announcing: March on the Pentagon -- March 17

[Anne Goddard]

On March 17, four years ago, my children and i held a candle lit vigil in a
park in Bundaberg.

A few others gathered with us. There was not much talking.

My children and i kept the candle burning nightly in Bundaberg for a week,
hoping for an end to the madness...
our elected representatives were not listening then, they were too busy with
"Shock and Awe".
My son was 9 years old then. He thought it was boring. He is 13 now. My
daughter was 13 then, she is approaching 18 now. I wonder what the lives of
Iraq's children must have been like in comparison to theirs.

I kept a candle burning in my window for a year... i never stop thinking
about the lives of their children.
and their broken little bodies...

i keep the candle burning in my heart now.
i hope for an expedient end to the madness.
and i hope for justice for those harmed.

Warm regards
Anne Goddard

ps. please ensure that March 17 will never be remembered as the date that we
allowed the candle of care and love for our brothers and sisters go out.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: VoteNoWar.org
To: winter___ at dodo.com.au
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 2:44 PM
Subject: Announcing: March on the Pentagon -- March 17


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**Please circulate widely**
http://www.answercoalition.org/
March on the Pentagon
Saturday, March 17, 2007
~ 40th anniversary of the historic 1967 march on the Pentagon ~
~ 4th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war ~

Download the flyer
On March 17, 2007, the 4th anniversary of the start of the criminal invasion
of Iraq, tens of thousands of people from around the country will descend on
the Pentagon in a mass demonstration to demand: U.S. Out of Iraq Now! 2007
is the 40th anniversary of the historic 1967 anti-war march to the Pentagon
during the Vietnam War. The message of the 1967 march was "From Protest to
Resistance," and marked a turning point in the development of a countrywide
mass movement.
In the coming days and weeks, thousands of organizations and individuals
will begin mobilizing for the upcoming March on the Pentagon. Organizing
committees and transportation centers are being established to bring people
to the March on the Pentagon.
The March 17 demonstration will assemble at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
(Constitution Gardens) at 12 noon in Washington, D.C.and march to the
Pentagon.
Endorse the March on the Pentagon.
Organize transportation
Donate to help make the March on the Pentagon a powerful success.
Sign up for email updates

Initial endorsers include:
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General
Alice Walker, Pulitzer prize winning author
Cynthia McKinney, Congresswoman
Ron Kovic, Vietnam Veteran, author, Born on the 4th of July
Malik Rahim, Founder, Common Ground Collective, New Orleans
Paul Haggis, Director of Crash, 2005 Academy Award for Best Picture
Chaplain James Yee, former Army chaplain, Guantánamo Detention Center
Howard Zinn, Author, A People's History of the United States
Rev. Luis Barrios, Iglesia de San Romero - UCC
Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild
Elias Rashmawi, National Coordinator, National Council of Arab Americans
(NCA)
Mahdi Bray, Executive Director, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Co-founder, Partnership for Civil Justice
Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition
Mounzer Sleiman, TV commentator and Vice Chair, National Council of Arab
Americans
Ben Dupuy, Co-Director, Haiti Progres
Juan Jose Gutierrez, Executive Director, Latino Movement USA
Calvin Gipson, Former President, San Francisco LGBT Pride Committee
Rev. Graylan Hagler, Senior Pastor, Plymouth Congregational Church,
Washington D.C
Kay Lucas, Director, Crawford Peace House, Crawford, TX
Eugene Puryear, Howard University, student leader
Gloria LaRiva, Coordinator, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
Mimi Kennedy, Actor (Dharma & Greg)
Ed Asner, Actor
Shirley Knight, Actor



Statement from the ANSWER Coalition
on the March 17-18 Global Days of Action
Make an end of the year tax-deductible donation
We need to raise $50,000 in the next weeks to launch the March on the
Pentagon. We must pay to reserve buses, print hundreds of thousands of
leaflets, stickers, and posters, pay for stage, sound, and other logistical
expenses.
Time is running out to make an end of the year tax-deductible donation.
Click here to make a donation.
The people of the United States want an end to the war in Iraq. The
elections in November were a clear repudiation of the Bush administration's
war of aggression. The new Congress, however, has no intention of ending the
war. Bush and the Pentagon generals are determined to prolong the war. Tens
of thousands of more troops will be sent to Iraq. We are building a massive
antiwar movement on the national and local level. Only the action of the
people will stop the war.
We are returning to the Pentagon because the Iraq war has resulted in more
than 655,000 Iraqi deaths (Lancet), on top of more than 1 million killed by
sanctions between 1990-2003. This is genocide.
We are returning to the Pentagon because U.S. military deaths will soon
exceed 3,000. But that doesn't begin to tell the story. There have been
21,921 wounded as of Nov. 30 and another 17,835 evacuated due to serious
injury or illness as of Sept. 30, 2005 when the Pentagon stopped releasing
these statistics.
We are returning to the Pentagon because it is U.S. missiles and bombs,
including hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs that have been sent to
Israel to kill and maim the people of Palestine and Lebanon. These weapons
are a war crime. The estimate is that between 2 million and 3 million
cluster bomblets were dropped on Lebanon, and more than a million remain
unexploded -- posing a danger to civilians for years to come. The war in
Iraq is one front in the U.S. plan for domination of the Middle East.
Colonial occupation is a crime whether it be in Iraq or Palestine or
Lebanon.
The Global Military Machine

We are returning to the Pentagon because it maintains 714 military bases in
130 countries to extend the influence of US transnational corporations, oil
giants and banks. The slogan of national security and the war on terror
stands exposed as a pretext for a global empire enforced by military might
and limitless violence.

While the focus of the recent years has been to use military power and
violence against the Arab people, the Pentagon has been targeting peoples
and nations all over the world. U.S. troops occupy South Korea. U.S. nuclear
weapons target North Korea. Interventionist actions are already taking place
in the Philippines, and are planned against Cuba, Venezuela, and throughout
South and Central Asia.

The Warfare State: Spying, Surveillance, Secret Prisons and Torture
Facilities

We are returning to the Pentagon to demand the immediate closure of
Guantánamo and all other torture facilities. The grotesque revelations of
torture and abuse in Abu Ghraib were the tip of the iceberg. Punishing a few
rank and file soldiers and counting on the mass media to tire of the story,
the Pentagon has tried to conceal the reality that it engages in arbitrary
detention and torture of those it identifies as "enemies."
We are returning to the Pentagon to demand an end to the surveillance and
other spy programs conducted against the people of this country by the
Pentagon and other agencies.

Militarism: The Social Costs of the Warfare State

We are returning to the Pentagon because the military budget of this country
is a dagger in the heart of programs that meet peoples' needs. More than 47
million people in the U.S. are without health care coverage and one out of
every four children is born into extreme poverty. Fifty percent of all
bankruptcies in the last year were filed by people who couldn't pay their
hospital and doctor's bills. Factories are closing and whole communities and
neighborhoods are being turned into ghost towns. Skyrocketing tuition is and
will continue to make the dream of a college education harder to realize for
working class youth. In the last year, Bush and Congress cut money for
education, food aid and veterans' benefits while the Senate voted almost
unanimously to rubber stamp the new "war" budget of $590 billion (the
official budget number of $443 billion conceals at least $150 billion in
expenditures.)
We are returning to the Pentagon to challenge the system that is addicted to
war and global domination. The Iraq war is a criminal endeavor based on
lies. It was always about conquering the entire Middle East with its vast
repositories of oil. While the Iraq war has been an absolute catastrophe for
the entire people of Iraq and for tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, it
must be remembered that many U.S. corporations are benefiting. They are the
recipients of new Pentagon orders for weapons, supplies and contracts. The
Iraq war costs approximately $279 million each day. That breaks down to more
than $11 million every hour of every day of the year. The total cost of the
Iraq war will be $2 trillion, according to the Iraq Study Group report.
Unless the people act now, the human and economic costs of the war will only
increase. For more information go to http://www.answercoalition.org/.
Let's unite and stand together at the Pentagon on March 17. Take a moment
and take action now:
Endorse the March on the Pentagon.
Organize transportation
Donate to help make the March on the Pentagon a powerful success.
Sign up for email updates





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