Please forward..
I'll be in New Orleans with the Gulf/Vet marchers
Peace, KH
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U.S. OUT OF IRAQ NOW!
Sunday, March 19th, 12 to 5PM--FT. LAUDERDALE
Third Anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation
Come and be a voice among many in this day of Global actions against the Iraq war, torture, indefinite detentions, illegal domestic spying, media complicity, cowardly politicians, theft of speech, thought, and the right to disagree.
Stand together with millions of people from every corner of the planet who will be protesting in solidarity with us here in South Florida, New York City, Boston, DC, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle, Portland and hundreds more cities across the Nation to speak out against the madness of the most criminal American Presidents of our time.
If we don't stand up to the Bush Administration and say NO MORE then MORE will come. It is our duty as Americans and citizens of this planet to do so. NO MORE IN OUR NAME!!
Noon-1PM: gather at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Union Hall, 201 State Rd. 84 (aka 24th Street ) 33315 . 1PM, March west on State Rd. 84 to National Guard Armory for street theater presentation, then east to Welcome Park (SE corner of State Rd. 84 and US-1) for 3PM RALLY.
Speakers include Father Jean-Juste of Haiti, Andrew Lewis (Democratic Black Caucus of Florida), Dr. Entisar Mohammad Ariabi of Iraq, Crazy Fingers band, the Raging Grannies, and many others.
Actions and events sponsored by the South Florida Peace & Justice Network, an association of diverse groups working in the tri-county area to end the Iraq war and promote peace and justice in areas such as workers' rights, civil and democratic liberties and environmental protections.
For more information, visit
South Florida Peace & Justice Network site at http://www.sfpj.org (under construction) or call Ray at 754-423-0051
Also http://www.antiwarbroward.org/upcomingevents.html
Sites for more on actions locally and around the globe.
http://miami.indymedia.org/
http://answercoalition.org/
http://www.ivaw.net/
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Marchers protest Iraq war, Katrina response; draw hecklers
Thursday, March 16, 2006
By NATALIE CHAMBERSPASCAGOULA -- More than 100 protesters against the war in Iraq and critical of the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, marched Wednesday through Jackson County. The caravan of activists and psychedelic vehicles inched toward New Orleans, where a rally is scheduled next week. Participants were members and supporters of Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Gold Star Families for Peace and Military Families Speak Out.
A front line of Iraq war veterans carried a huge banner bearing their name. A smaller vehicle in the caravan featured a large sign perched atop its roof that read: "Abandon Iraq: Not Our Gulf Coast." Organizer Michael McPhearson, executive director of Veterans for Peace located in St. Louis, Mo., said the march had been in the works for eight weeks. McPhearson said the protest combined the war and the Aug. 29 hurricane because similarities between the events. "We are showing the people the connections that are there," he said. McPhearson said the reasons for marching are threefold. Long before Hurricane Katrina, he said, the federal government was forewarned of a possible levee breach in New Orleans, but no action was taken. "Right before Katrina, as we now know because of videotape, President Bush was told once again that this was going to be the worst storm in American history. Bush ... I don't know what he was thinking ... but he said we were ready. We weren't," he said. "Iraq, the same thing. Intelligence told the administration if we go in there we would have an insurgency. However, there was no intelligence that definitely said there were weapons of mass destruction. But, but for some reason the Administration saw it differently. None of the reasons we invaded ended up being the reasons we are there," McPhearson said. More than 1,300 people across the Gulf Coast were killed by the hurricane, which is considered the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Vets and storm victims, McPhearson said, have re-ceived poor response from the government and as a result, are experiencing a high rate of suicide and alcoholism. Protester Annie O'Brien of Maine said marchers hail from across the United States. "I'm here because my son was a veteran. He was in Afghanistan as a medic and he is a conscientious objector. I am particularly excited that we are making the connection between what is happening to the Coast -- a lack of reconstruction -- and money that's going toward the war," she said. Perfect weather and close police escorts through Pas-cagoula, Gautier and Ocean Springs made the trek easier for walkers. But it didn't prevent some hecklers from expressing their outrage at marchers. A young woman, traveling along U.S. 90 in Pascagoula, leaned out of her passenger window and yelled at the group "You should be supporting the president. You ought to be ashamed." Those type responses, said McPhearson, are not the norm. McPhearson said sometimes he gets annoyed by unsolicited comments, but he believes some people don't understand their rights as citizens. McPhearson is a veteran. His adult son, whom he would not identify, is active with the 101st Airborne, he said. "When they say we are not supporting the troops, it's ridiculous," he said. It's the president's actions that are in question, he said. "The tradition of this country is when you see a government doing something that's wrong, you stand up to it. We're just doing an American tradition and there's no shame in that," he said. Jim Treadway of Pascagoula sees things differently. He was also holding a sign: "God bless W'. "It bothers me they are not supporting the president of the United States. The president is actually doing a good job. He is a good guy. He is the right guy at the right time. I am so proud he is our president," Treadway said. Carolina Fowlkes, formerly of Gautier, now living in Minnesota, is a protester. "The Vietnam War took my generation, and now we're doing it again, and this is the second go around in that part of the world. For me, this is even clearer than Vietnam War was, what this war is about. It just so happens that I grew up in Mobile and Gautier, and I've been wanting to come back home. When I saw this and I needed to go back home, I said, I'm with you,'" she said. "We're over in Iraq fighting for another country's freedom when here in America in the state of Mississippi, we have people getting beaten to death in a controlled environment where you are supposed to be safe. We have soldiers dying in a foreign country for those same things and we can't even get it here in America, said Damion King of Virginia. King has temporarily relocated to Mississippi to assist with storm recovery effort. The protest marchers did not receive sanction or support of Mississippi Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee, even though they used the Vietnam Veterans monument in Ocean Springs as a rally site. Vietnam veteran Larry Lucas, chairman of the memorial's names and pictures committee, said as far as he was concerned, the march was a non-event. "We are a non-political organization. These people have a political agenda and they are using our memorial as a stage to present their agenda. We don't care for that. We can't stop them, but we can express the fact that we have nothing to do with them whatsoever, even though they are using the memorial," Lucas said. ****************************************************************
PEACE OUT
Vets struggle to liberate Southie on St. Pat’s
PAUL MCMORROW
It’s one of Boston’s greatest traditions: On St. Patrick’s weekend, politicians file into a South Boston hall, eat stale corned beef and cabbage, tell jokes, sing Irish songs and slap each other’s backs. Then everybody files out onto Broadway, where hordes of drunken citizens urinate freely, hail a military parade and get local firefighters laid.
But a few years ago, things started turning ugly. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the Southie parade’s organizer, John “Wacko” Hurley (see this week’s Good Bostonian), denied local Veterans for Peace permission to protest the imminent war in the annual stumble down Broadway and Dot Ave. After Boston police allowed the vets to march behind the parade, Hurley sued and won, and the Veterans for Peace haven’t marched in Southie since.
Three years ago, the juxtaposition of the looming Iraq invasion with drunken debauchery and military fanfare may have seemed in bad taste; now, with the boozy confab falling the day before the increasingly disastrous war’s third anniversary, it’s just grotesque. Over 2,300 Americans are dead, Iraq is burning, and war’s most legitimate critics—combat veterans—are still being silenced.
“We were carefully nurtured as to the glory of war,” says Tony Flaherty, a lifelong Southie resident who served 25 years in the Navy and fought in Vietnam. “From cradle to grave, we were groomed for it. If you weren’t a cop or a priest, you were a Marine. But they never show you the shrapnel in the body parts.”
Flaherty saw that shrapnel for himself. He’s now one of the leaders of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace—an organization that sprang from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and is committed to ending war “as an instrument of national policy.”
The Vets for Peace do this by speaking to war’s real costs. “When you get shot at, it’s not fun; most of the time, you defecate and holler ‘mama,’” Flaherty says. “Have you ever seen a kid with his head blown off? Not one of our leaders has experienced that, and we need to acknowledge that. Picture yourself without an arm or a leg: After all the heraldry, after the TV cameras stop visiting, how do you think you fucking feel?”
Flaherty’s is a powerful sentiment, and one that isn’t easily dismissed by the support-the-troops crowd. It’s tough to tell a group of vets—who’ve seen combat, earned medals and watched friends die—that their dissent is un-American. The pro-war set can’t pull that line on the Vets for Peace, so they’ve done the next best thing—they’ve denied the VFP broad outlets for their message.
Hurley, who was Flaherty’s best man at his wedding, has barred the VFP from Southie’s St. Pat’s parade since 2003. He once said that their presence “was the equivalent of pinning a ‘kick me’ sign on the backs of the [non-VFP] veterans.” And last November, the American Legion canceled their annual Veterans Day parade; the VFP claimed that the Legion didn’t want to give the group a protest venue.
“The last time we marched in a parade, 75 percent of the people were applauding,” Flaherty says. ”They’re denying the rights, in an alleged democracy, of certified combat veterans to speak out. It’s ludicrous.”
And so, shut out of his hometown parade by his own best man, Flaherty and the Vets for Peace are turning to the last protest venue available to them: the Southie convention center hosting the annual politicians’ breakfast.
“The governor, congressmen and city councilors are marshalling young men to die,” Flaherty argues. “We’re going to have an army of dismembered innocents. Congressman Lynch is getting awards, and amputees are getting prosthetic limbs. I resent that my service made the likes of him possible.”
And Lynch may resent him right back: At press time, there was a possibility that, come Sunday, the Vets for Peace—along with the Iraq Veterans Against the War and Military Families Speak Out—won’t be allowed to protest outside the actual breakfast; instead, they’ll be across the street.
Asked how he expects to be received on Sunday, Flaherty replies, “Peace is a dirty word to them. They wave and smile, and say, ‘Thanks for your service.’ They don’t know what service is. The leaders of our community are waving flags they’ll never hold.”
He adds, “We try as best we can to get into the public’s consciousness. Most people are decent but cowed. In their heart of hearts, they know they live in a land of hypocrisy and mendacity.”
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