I was in between classes yesterday when my phone rang. It was Melida Arredondo calling from DC. She was in the thick of the crowd. We weren't able to talk long. She called to asked me to record Carlos on stage that was playing on Cspan at 3am (my recorder didn't work so if anyone has a copy of the speakers on stage yesterday send it to Melida) She told me the people she had just met. All the well known names and faces. I was telling her how much I wish I was there but I had to be here because of work and my kids. She told me I better save up my pennies to attend the big rally in March. I so wish I could but...I have classes already scheduled and I can't take it off as much as I wanted to.
Even though I couldn't be in DC didn't mean I didn't talk to people about it. It always amazes me when you start speaking to people about Iraq they all say the same thing to me. We need to get out of there.
And there "The Decider" Sits in our house. Making phone calls to say he is sending more troops while thousands and thousand surround him to say this IS NOT what we want. He didn't/doesn't care what we think. IMPEACH HIM!
When I picked up my kids yesterday at their Nana's house my mother told me she saw several interviews with Carlos in DC. Melida said they had several interviews in the works not to mention all the one's Carlos had already done.
Melida also told me she ran into one of the kids who was with Alex when he died. She said he had changed his mind last year about the war and was now protesting it. The kids don't want to be there. Bush is sending more when he should be bringing them home.
Did you know Alex ran out of bullets when he was sitting on that roof top for hours trying to fight off a sniper? He ran out of bullets......
May PEACE be inside ALL of us,
Cindy
Protesters urge halt to funding
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | January 28, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Tens of thousands of demonstrators -- Iraq veterans, movie stars, and citizens from all walks of life -- converged on the National Mall yesterday to demand that Congress act to end the Iraq war, in an event organizers hailed as the largest antiwar protest since the US invasion in 2003.
Chanting "peace, salaam, shalom," and carrying placards declaring "Congress Inaction is Immoral" and "The Surge is a Lie," the crowds gathered in the shadow of the US Capitol to hear a broad range of activists from actress Jane Fonda to a 12-year-old Massachusetts girl plead for an end to US military involvement in Iraq.
"Our presence here today is intended to stop the funding for the war," said Norm Mazer , an associate professor at Boston University Medical School, who was among several busloads of Massachusetts residents who traveled to Washington overnight Friday. "I felt it was time to exercise my right as a citizen to say no more to this war."
The rally occurred at a critical time in the four-year-old conflict: President Bush faces a political battle with newly empowered Democrats -- and some Republicans -- over his plan to send 21,500 more troops to quell rising sectarian violence. Meanwhile, public opposition to the war is growing and Bush's popularity is languishing, two factors that helped Democrats gain control of Congress.
This week, lawmakers are expected to vote on a nonbinding resolution opposing Bush's escalation of the war, even though the president said the action is necessary to bring Iraq back from the brink of civil war. Although a few lawmakers want to cut off funds to stop the war, party leaders have said they won't take that step -- even though it helped end the Vietnam War -- for fear of being viewed as abandoning the troops in the field.
"We need to give the Congress the courage to do more than symbolic things," said actor and peace activist Tim Robbins as he waited for his turn on the stage, which featured a flag-draped casket symbolizing the more than 3,000 US troops who have lost their lives.
"Congress has to take control of this government," added actress Rhea Perlman , of the TV series "Cheers." She said voters "spoke in November. We have to settle this conflict some other way."
Yesterday's demonstration -- organized by such liberal and antiwar groups as United for Peace and Justice, MoveOn.org, the National Organization for Women, and labor unions -- took place as a bipartisan congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi returned from a trip to assess the situation in Iraq first hand.
In a statement issued yesterday, the delegation insisted that a political solution is the only way to end the violence and thanked US troops "for the way they are doing their difficult jobs under extremely dangerous conditions. We expressed our unwavering support for them, and for their families, as well as our hope that they will come home safely and soon."
Bush, who is often out of town on big protest days, remained in Washington for the weekend. The White House said the president phoned Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq to reaffirm his commitment to the troop increase.
But on the streets of Washington yesterday, it was a commitment to bringing US troops home that animated the crowds.
"This is what I wanted to see when I was in Iraq," remarked Geoff Millard , 26, an Iraq war veteran, as he surveyed the crowd. "Finally we might have a Congress that will listen."
Melida Arredondo of Roslindale, whose stepson , A.B. "Alex" Arredondo , was killed on his second tour to Iraq in 2004, was also on hand with Gold Star Families for Peace, which includes the loved ones of those who have died in Iraq.
"It's not just a few hundred or a few thousand of us," she said after her husband , Carlos Arredondo, spoke to the crowd. "I get offended when they say if we pull out that Alex died in vain. He died so his friends could come home."
Standing on tiptoe to reach the microphone, 12-year-old Moriah Arnold of Harvard, Mass., was the youngest speaker. Arnold, who organized a petition against the war at her school, told the crowd: "Now we know our leaders either lied to us or hid the truth. Because of our actions, the rest of the world sees us as a bully and a liar."
Sarah Francis , 78, of New York City, came to the rally with fellow members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the city's largest public employees union. "The union supported us [traveling] down for the purpose of trying to right the wrong and to seek peace," she said.
A small group of people, however, came to the Mall to show their support for the war. About 40 people, including those whose loved ones are serving in the military, staged a counter-protest.
One of them, Army Corporal Joshua Sparling , 25, lost his leg in a bomb attack in Iraq in November 2005. He said the anti war protesters, especially those who are veterans or who are on active duty, "need to remember the sacrifice we have made and what our fallen comrades would say if they are alive."
Official estimates of the size the crowd were not available, but police said informally that fewer than 100,000 demonstrators showed up.
Asked to comment on the rally, Melvin Laird , President Richard Nixon's secretary of defense from 1969 to 1973, said he was surprised at the predicted turnout. "We never had one that big during Vietnam," he said.
But Laird did see parallels between the two unpopular conflicts. "There is a comparable problem between President Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush in terms of public support," he said. "And both found themselves [weakened] at the end of their terms."
Still, it remained unclear whether Congress will be willing to do what their predecessors eventually did in Vietnam: deprive the president of the federal funds necessary to wage the war.
Representative Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat who is running for president in 2008, is among the few members of Congress who believes there is no choice.
"Congress must step up to its responsibility," he said as he headed to the rally site with supporters carrying "Kucinich 2008" posters. "We must cut off the funds for the war. There is already the money in the pipeline to bring the troops home."
Susan Sarandon , an actress and peace activist, suggested a novel way that Democrats in Congress could inoculate themselves from charges of not supporting the troops.
"Instead of simply not funding the war, they should take some of that money and fund the vets," she said in an interview. "Have you been to a GI hospital? They have one doctor for 600 patients. They have to wait months for treatment."
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