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Veterans for Peace and Citizens for Peace will be hostinga special BUSH PROTEST in honor of his visit to Mobile, Alabama, on Thursday, June 21. It will be at Spanish Plaza Park, in front of the Mobile Civic Center at 401 Government Street, from 1-5 p.m..
"While Bush is in town, we're calling for his impeachment and an end to war," says Ernie Seewer of Veterans For Peace.
Signs will be available by but protestors are allowed to bring their own.
For more information, check these Websites. "We are all over the internet!," Seewer said.
UnitedForPeaceandJustice.Org
WorldCantWait.Org
VeteransForPeace.Org
The Birmingham Peace Project presents "Music for Peace and Justice" May 17, 2007 featuring blues man Willie King, Stuart McNair, Carlos Pino and Shariff Simmons with the theme: Alone against the Corporation: Labor and Workers Rights.
Doors open 6:30 PM, music from 7 - 9 PM at The Church of the Reconciler, 112 14th Street N. Birmingham, Ala.
For more info call Thomas: 205 323-5966 or e-mail him at: tbdiasio1@yahoo.com.
Thousands of Christians prayed for peace at an anti-war service Friday night at the Washington National Cathedral, kicking off a weekend of protests around the country to mark the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq. Afterward, participants marched with battery-operated faux candles through snow and wind toward the White House, where police began arresting protesters shortly before midnight. Protest guidelines require demonstrators to continue moving while on the White House sidewalk, according to the Associated Press.
Christians Gather in D.C. to Protest War
Meanwhile back in Alabama, the Alabama Peace and Justice Coalition, made up of eight peace organizations from around the state, plans a number of local protests over the next few days to "demand that the U.S. act now to end the war."
They are being held in solidarity with the huge peace actions being held in Washington, D.C. and more than 1,000 other cities across the U.S. For more information about those events, go to UnitedForPeace.Org.
Auburn
Monday, March 19 at 5:30 p.m., the Alliance for Peace and Justice will hold a vigil commemorating 4th anniversary of the Iraq invasion at Toomer's Corner (Magnolia and N. College). Contact Michael Mulvaney, mulvamj@auburn.edu or 203-948-8803. More info at PeaceEagle.org.
Birmingham
Monday, March 19 from 5:30 to 7 p.m., Birmingham Speaks Out says Stop The Escalation, Support Our Troops, at the Five Points Fountain, 20th St and Magnolia Ave. There will be vigil speakers, singing and citizens time to call for peace. Sponsors include: MoveOn.org, Birmingham One Corps, Pax Christi and Birmingham Peace Project, Endorsed by Progressive Democrats of America/Democracy for America. Contact Sharron Williams at sawart@bellsouth.net.
Huntsville
Saturday, March 17 from 11 a.m. to noon, the North Alabama Peace Network will hold a peace rally in solidarity with the March On The Pentagon taking place in Washington, D.C.., at the corner of Whitesburg Ave. and Airport Rd.
Monday, March 19 from 4 to 5 p.m., the North Alabama Committee for Nonviolent Action Occupation Project will hold a peace rally in front of Rep. Bud Cramer's office at 200 Pratt Ave. (corner of Pratt and Meridian).
Monday, March 19 from 5 to 7 p.m., the North Alabama Peace Network will hold an End the War Rally at Wellman Park, in Five Points (corner of Pratt and Andrew Jackson Way).
Contact: Tom Moss, 256-468-5314 cell, NAPN@knology.net or Linda Haynes, 256-429-8639 cell, lahaynes@knology.net.
Mobile
Saturday, March 17 from noon to 3 p.m., the Mobile Citizens for Peace and Mobile Chapter of Veterans for Peace
will rally at Midtown Mobile Park (intersection of Government St. and Airport Blvd.).
Sunday, March 25, the Mobile Citizens for Peace and Mobile Chapter of Veterans for Peace and National Veterans for Peace will caravan to a peace rally in Midtown Mobile Park (intersection of Government St. and Airport Blvd.).
The National Veterans for Peace Caravan is starting from North Carolina headed for a hurricane Katrina rebuilding project in coastal Mississippi. They will stop at the gates of several military bases across the southeast. On this day, March 25, they will stop in Mobile.
After the rally at the park, the groups will go to the local office of congressman Jo Bonner in Mobile. Since last July Citizens for Peace has been requesting a meeting with him, but he never finds the time. So people he claims to represent but won't speak with are going to his office anyway - without an appointment.
Contact: Fairlie Schreiber, president, Mobile Citizens for Peace, 251-450-5970 (w) 251-645-8539 (h), drunderhill@yahoo.com.
Mobile Resist, composed mostly of students and recent graduates of the University of South Alabama in Mobile, has a vanload of members driving to Washington, D.C., for the demonstration and march on Saturday, March 17. Contact Patrick Aubrey, 251-709-8507, numutke324@yahoo.com.
Montgomery
Monday, March 19 at 6 p.m., MoveOn Members in Montgomery will hold a candlelight vigil to “Stop the Escalation, Bring the Troops Home Safely and End the War," at 1000 E. Fairview Ave. (at Woodley Rd in Old Cloverdale)/ The vigil will honor American soldiers who were wounded or killed in Iraq through a reading of personal accounts written by family members of those who have died. Details and signup at http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=34827.
Saturday, March 24 at 4:30 p.m., the Montgomery Peace Project will show films and have a discussion at the Civil Rights Memorial Center, 400 Washington Avenue. The Montgomery Peace Project is hosting the National Veterans for Peace convoy which is traveling through the south to promote Appeal for Redress. Contact Valerie Downes, 334-462-9522, valerie.downes@splcenter.org.
Oneonta
Monday, March 19 from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., the Blount County Committee for Peace and Justice will hold a vigil to Observe 4th Anniversary of Iraq War at the Blount County Courthouse. Wear black and bring candles. They have permission to use the parking spaces in front of the courthouse to place our sandwich boards, which will have each year's total of the dead (Iraqi, American: active military, contractors, reporters) and they will read names of Alabamainans who have been killed, including one Blount Countian. Contact Sara Rose at 205-429-3088, or Morris Gardner 205-681-4928, or e-mail bpeace@urisp.net.
Tuscaloosa
Monday, March 19 at 4:30 p.m., the Tuscaloosa Peace Project and MoveOn will hold a vigil commemorating the 4th anniversary of the Iraq war at Denny Chimes on the University of Alabama campus. Contact David Lowe, (205) 246-6126 (cell), caple66wood@gmail.com.
Tuesday, March 20 at noon, the Students for a Democratic Society will hold a peace rally at Denny Chimes on the University of Alabama campus. Contact Chapin Gray, 251-605-7780, chapinrose@gmail.com.
The Birmingham Peace Project's next event in the Music for Peace and Justice series will be held March 15 from 7-9 p.m. at the Church of the Reconciler in downtown Birmingham, according to organizer Tom Diasio
"Come join musicians, progressive people and activists for a night of music and community centered on Immigrant Rights," Diasio says in a press release.
The focust of this event will be Immigrant Rights, he said, and the featured performers will be Raymond Calhoun,
The Wall Street Traitors and the Politically Incorrect Cabaret
The Church of the Reconciler is located at 112 14th Street North. The event is free and open to the public, although donations will be accepted at the door
For more information, go to the group's Website or contact Diasio at 205 323-5966 or tbdiasio1@yahoo.com.
Blues singer Willie King will perform in Birmingham Thursday, Jan. 18, at the Church of the Reconciler, 14th Street and 2nd Avenue North, beginning at at 7 p.m. The free concert is sponsored by the Birmingham Peace Project as part of a series of events held every third Thursday to support the mission of the Peace Project - to bring peace to all in a time of war.
For more information on Willie King, check out his Web page at AlabamaBlues.Org.
For more on the Birmingham Peace Project, go here.
The Birmingham Chapter of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression is having its Annual Banquet Friday Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. at the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church, 1133 Tuscaloosa Ave. Southwest.
The cost is $20.00 per person, and the funds are used to support the victims of our society (none are used for staff or expenses). Contact the Rev. Jack Zylman if you can attend at (205) 933-7678.
First in it's new series, "Music for Peace and Justice," the Birmingham Peace Project presents a new concept in popular musical entertainment: Birmingham bands and singer songwriters are invited to perform compositions centered around Peace and issues of Social Justice. Peace is this month's performance topic and will feature bands, including Looney Mill, Wall Street Traitors, Rickie Castrillo and Tommie Joe White, Carlito of the Deep End
Reconciler Praise.
The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available. Donations will be accepted.
The series will continue on third Thursdays. Next month's topic will be "Economic Justice." Concept of the series is developed by Birmingham attorney Thomas Diasio in collaboration with the Birmingham Peace Project and the Church of the Reconciler.
Links:
bhampeace.atspace.org
churchofthereconciler.org
The Birmingham Press Project is planning a press conference Saturday, July 12 to respond to Alabama Gov. Bob Riley's comments supporting President George W. Bush on the Iraq war.
The press conference will begin at about 4:15 at the Birmingham Festival Theatre, at 1901-1/2 11th Avenue South. From there, a peace vigil will proceed to the Five Points South fountain.
At a news conference last Tuesday, Gov. Bob Riley said: "I've never talked to a person in the military yet who didn't say we ought to stay and we ought to win the war."
According to the peace group's press release, the Birmingham Peace Project is "unable to remain silent before this blatantly ill-informed assertion."
In cooperation with Pax Christi, the group has invited Gov. Riley to meet Iraq veteran and creator of the one-man show "The Eyes of Babylon," former U.S. Marine Jeff Key, along with former Navy recruiter Susan Mims, Veteran for Peace leader David Waters and others who will afford him the opportunity to meet military personnel who, for many reasons, condemn the Iraq War.
Also, the group condemns the ongoing war in Lebanon.
"Israel rains terror upon those least able to defend themselves, the helpless civilian populations who are unable to flee, cutting off humanitarian aid channels with funds and arms supplied by the U.S.," the group says. "The Birmingham Peace Project stands in solidarity with International ANSWER in demanding that the people of the United States reject the quest for wider wars and the 'reorganization' of the oil-rich Middle East to serve the interests of the already bloated energy companies, and instead spend these public funds on those things the people of this country need, including education, jobs and rebuilding of the Gulf Coast."
We do not pander or pull punches here at the Locust Fork. We call it like we see it and try to publish the empirical truth. We do our best to connect the dots for readers. So let's be clear about the situation in the Middle East that continues to dominate the headlines.
We wish there were an isolated ring somewhere on the planet where all the Christians, Jews and Muslims could fight it out and kill themselves off. That would leave the planet to smarter human beings who realize that heaven and hell are right here on earth and it is our job to protect the planet, conserve natural resources, and try every day of our lives to live in harmony with each other and the Earth.
Alas, religious zealots are all over the planet. And like greedy cockroaches, they breed in great numbers and sneak into our houses in the middle of the night and distrupt our existence. At least wi th the cockroaches, we can poison them or stomp on them. With the religious zealot, there is no alternative it seems but to pay attention to his plight, try diplomacy where we can, and where that fails, drop bombs.
Notice this statement, for example, which came unsolicited into my e-mail inbox today.
"We love atheists in the bible belt," says Luke Browning in something called the Evangelical Spectator, a publication out of Tennessee apparently. "We hunt them for their fur. Keeps us warm in the winter. Grandma Reynolds needs just six more pelts before you can get a full-length coat. If you see a big hairy beast, please point him out."
Well, my reply was, but it is only a line: "Someone must have sent you my e-mail address by mistake. Around here, we feed dumbass Christians like you to the lions."
Earlier today, I printed out and read this story, which appeared in the Washington Post Sunday magazine. It documents the historical rise of the Isreali lobby's influence on American politics. It's is worth reading, for anyone who wants to gather the facts on why our politics and news are so dominated by wars in the Middle East.
Israel Lobby's Influence on Washington
Then, the Birmingham Peace Project agreed at its most recent meeting to issue a statement concerning the situation in the Middle East. Since the statement will most likely not see the light of day in the mainstream press and media in Alabama, here is the text of that statement.
Recently, an interfaith meeting was hosted at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama which developed "Ten Principles For Living in Community." The principles included: use of religion as an agent of healing, reconciliation and peace; everyone enjoying the same rights; understanding, cooperation and respect being encouraged; and no one using religion to gain advantage over others.
Recent weeks have demonstrated that the State of Israel has no interest in upholding them these principles. Sadly, for Israel, more and more "Never Again" means never again will Jewish people be victims. If it were to have any meaning, "Never Again" would mean never again will the world community tolerate massive violations of human rights by the Israeli government, protected by the United States, eagerly violates Palestinian rights under that banner.
The Birmingham Peace Project cannot be silent in the face of the assault on the people of Gaza (and now Lebanon). Indeed, those actions must be condemned by all who value peace, justice and human rights. Yet much of the media in this country, as well as government officials, call only for Palestinian concessions to end the suffering raining down upon them by US-supplied weapons.
The facts are not really open to debate. A free and fair election in the Occupied Territories resulted in a Hamas victory. Israel and the United States then refused to send to Palestine money that belonged to it because they opposed the democratically elected government there.
Israel, despite its claims, continues to occupy Palestinian land beyond the 1967 borders. A military target, a member of the Israeli Defense Forces, was captured, following severe provocation. In addition to the withholding of funds, Israeli troops stormed a Palestinian prison and seized a number of inmates after US and British troops who were supposed to protect the prison suspiciously abandoned their posts when the Israeli forces approached. Some thirty Palestinians were killed in the weeks before the capture. The captors sought a prisoner exchange and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert flatly refused, claiming that he would not negotiate over what he - and the US media - refer to as the "kidnapping" of an occupying soldier.
Then, Israel launched an assault on Gaza that is truly unimaginable. Due to Israel's bombing, the main electrical generating plant has been destroyed. What little water Israel allows people in Gaza is unavailable. Sonic booms are constant. Artillery fire does not let up. People there live in constant terror and fear for their lives. What little infrastructure Israel has left to Gaza is fast being destroyed. It is evident that Israel's only interest, whatever its rhetoric, is in denying the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
Israel has committed numerous violations of international law. It is imposing collective punishment on the Palestinian and Lebanese people and has targeted the civilian populations in violation of the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions. Its response, resulting in countless deaths in the civilian population, is entirely disproportionate to the capture of a total of three soldiers. Every United Nations agency on the ground in Gaza is reporting a growing humanitarian crisis in a population that was already suffering an 80% poverty rate and a 40% unemployment rate.
Terrorism is not perpetrated only by rogue individuals. It can be imposed by governments. There is no term more descriptive of the Israeli assault than state-sponsored terrorism. And there is no better way to describe the US in this regard than Israel's sponsor, so Americans have a special responsibility to demand the siege end immediately.
The Birmingham Peace Project therefore demands:
1. That Israeli aggression in Gaza (and now Lebanon) cease immediately and that Israel withdraw behind the 1967 borders and that it cease the economic embargo and release all Palestinian funds to the legitimate government.
2. That Israel immediately and unconditionally release all Palestinian parliamentary and government officials it has kidnapped.
3. That Israel respect and act to implement the right of the Palestinian people to national self-determination.
4. That Israel comply with its obligations under the findings by the International Court of Justice that the wall it has constructed on Palestinian territory violates international law.
The BPP recognizes that some will accuse it of ignoring Palestinian acts of terror. In response, we can only quote Rabbi Michael Lerner, long a critic of both sides to the conflict: "But this week it's impossible as a Jew and as an American to not notice that a new human rights violation by Israel has taken place which manages to surpass many of its previous violations in cruelty and in the outrage it has generated."
It appears that Israel seeks to learn not the lessons of Nazism, but its techniques. Support of Israeli aggression is a betrayal of all that is good and noble in both Jewish and American traditions. We cannot be party to this and we cannot allow the United States to continue to facilitate it.
We support peace and security for all states in the Middle East but we condemn aggression and terror and all the more so when sponsored by a government in power.
We tend to agree, although we would urge all politicians and media outlets to do more to promote peace and solutions to problems based on science - and to downplay religion. Emotional, religious opinions only get us into more trouble, and it seems to us, do nothing to solve problems and in fact make most situations worse.
To re-paraphrase an almost forgotten scholar: Bright people of the world unite! Can we stop the jihad madness - and the crusades - please?
We would rather be canoing down a pristine river somewhere. Alas, the mounting problems on the planet just cannot be ignored. The fate of the human species and the planet depend on the educated minority taking a stand. Where do you stand?
The Birmingham Islamic Society and The Birmingham Peace Project Present "A Progressive Film Fest" Saturday, June 24, 3-6 p.m., at the Birmingham Islamic Society in Homewood. It's free and open to the public and dessert and coffee will be provided.
The fest will feature a half-dozen extraordinary mid-length and short original, progressive films including Flash films by Ava Lowery, an Alabama high school student achieving national recognition for peace efforts, "Massey" - an X-Marine becomes a C. O. and publishes his memoir "Kill, Kill, Kill" in France and "Voices of Dissent," along with "Activism and the American Democracy."
The Birmingham Islamic Society is located at 1810 25th Ct. So. Homewood, Alabama. For more info, contact Farook Chandiwalla at farookc@bellsouth.net or 205.823.7078.
Click here for directions.
Thousands of people are expected to converge on Atlanta on Saturday, April 1, for the Southern regional "march for peace in Iraq and justice at home," according to organizers.
About 75 Alabamians will meet in Birmingham to take the "Peace Bus" to this event, including riders from Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, Anniston and smaller towns around the state, accirdubg to Diane McNaron.
The bus going to Atlanta will leave Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m. from the Ullman parking lot at UAB between 12th Street and 13th Street South on University Blvd. The bus will stop in Oxford/Anniston to pick up riders as well.
In Atlanta, marchers will gather at the King Center at noon and march to Piedmont Park for a rally. Headlining the list of almost two dozen speakers will be Representative John Conyers of Michigan; Dr. Joseph Lowery, convenor of the Coalition for the People’s Agenda; U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney; Ann Wright, former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat who resigned in opposition to the Iraq war; and Damu Smith, cofounder of Black Voices for Peace.
Organizers promise a "vibrant, colorful" march with giant puppets, hundreds of signs and banners and drumming groups of different cultures. Exhibits at the rally will include “Eyes Wide Open,” created by the American Friends Service Committee, hundreds of combat boots and civilian shoes commemorating the 300 plus US National Guard and 100,000 plus Iraqi civilian war deaths; the Iraq Memorial Wall with the names of 2200 plus U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq; and a 500-foot Peace Ribbon honoring slain U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
The April 1 date was chosen because it falls between two anniversaries: The U.S. attack on Iraq on March 19, 2003, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.
“Dr. King knew that poverty, hunger, homelessness and lack of health care in America would never be solved as long as thousands of lives were being wasted on war,” said Rev. Timothy McDonald of First Iconium Baptist Church of Atlanta. “He knew that cities and levees could not be rebuilt while billions of dollars were being spent on destruction.”
Over 125 peace, civil rights, faith, student, labor, veterans and other groups from six Southern states (including the Alabama Peace and Justice Coalition) have endorsed the march, including Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Concerned Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta; Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council; United Auto Workers Region 8; Military Families Speak Out; Iraq Veterans Against the War; the Democratic Party of Cherokee, Gwinnett and Harris Counties (GA); People's Hurricane Relief Fund; and student groups at Decatur, Grady and Paideia high schools and at Georgia State University, University of West Georgia, Oxford College and University of Tennessee.
Many groups will be represented at the march, including the National Lawyers Guild, the North Alabama Peace Network, the Alabama Peace and Justice Coalition, the Birmingham Peace Project, NOW Central Alabama Chapter, Alliance for Democracy, The Politically Incorrect Cabaret, The Campaign to End the Occupation, The Birmingham Freethought Society and the Progressive Democrats of America, Alabama Chapter.
More information about this event is available online at Georgia Peace.Org
Dr. Entisar Mohammad Ariabi will speak in Montgomery, Alabama on Saturday, March 11, at 3 p.m. at a rally at the state Capitol about daily life in Iraq and the possibility of an impending civil war. The rally is sponsored by the Alabama chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) as part of the International Women’s Day activities.
Ariabi will offer a first-hand look at the situation in Iraq, especially the escalation of violence that’s occurred since the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. Ariabi arrived in the United States on March 5 with a delegation of Iraqi women who want to tell their stories to the American public and urge U.S. and UN officials to create a peace plan to end the escalating cycle of violence.
Dr. Ariabi is a pharmacist at the Yarmook Teaching Hospital in Baghdad, where she lives with her husband and five children. A member of the Pharmacist Union, she is involved in providing medical and food emergency relief to families in villages and towns devastated by the war. She is especially concerned by the deteriorating health care system in Iraq, including the lack of medicines and medical supplies and destruction of hospitals.
The Iraqi women’s delegation that Dr. Ariabi is part of is promoting a Women’s Call for Peace that’s been signed by 50,000 women around the globe. The call urges a shift in strategy in Iraq, from a military model to a conflict resolution model. It requests the withdrawal of all foreign troops and foreign fighters from Iraq, negotiations to reincorporate disenfranchised Iraqis, full representation of women in the peacemaking process, and a commitment to women's equality in the post-war Iraq.
More information is available at WomenSayNoToWar.Org.
March 19 marks the third anniversary of President Bush’s unprovoked attack on Iraq and the beginning of the brutal occupation of that country which continues today. As that milestone arrives, millions of people around the world will again mount massive protests against the war, according to a press release from GeorgiaPeace.Org.
Also, on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Dr. King clearly saw the toll that aggression abroad took on social programs at home.
“I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube,” he said in his famous speech April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church, New York City.
The April 1 date of the Southern Regional March in Dr. King’s home city was chosen because it falls between these two anniversaries, to once again highlight the incompatibility between imperialist war abroad and Dr. King’s vision of social justice at home.
Marchers will gather at the King Center at 12 noon and step off at 1 p.m. for a 2-mile walk to Piedmont Park via Jackson Street, Boulevard, Ponce de Leon Avenue and Charles Allen Drive. Organizers are planning a colorful, vibrant march with puppets, street theatre and drummers in the march and along the route. It is even rumored that clones of Bush and Cheney will join the festivities. Banners and signs will demand “Bring the Troops Home Now,” “Civil and Human Rights for All,” “People Before Profits” and other messages consistent with peace in Iraq and justice at home.
Speakers at a rally in Piedmont Park will include U.S. Representative John Conyers of Michigan; Dr. Joseph Lowery, former president of SCLC and convenor of the Coalition for the People’s Agenda; U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney; Ann Wright, former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat who resigned in opposition to the Iraq war; Damu Smith, cofounder of Black Voices for Peace; Dr. Barbara L. King, pastor of Hillside Chapel and Truth Center; and Patricia Roberts, Gold Star Families for Peace, mother of the first Georgian killed in Iraq.
Other speakers will include veterans, military family members, religious leaders, college and high school students, New Orleans residents, and a former Navy recruiter who is now a counter-recruitment activist. Musicians and poets will round out the program.
Exhibits at the rally will include “Eyes Wide Open,” put together by the American Friends Service Committee, hundreds of combat boots and civilian shoes commemorating the 300 plus US National Guard members and 100,000 plus Iraqi civilians who have died in the war; and a 500-foot Peace Ribbon honoring slain U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
The march has been endorsed by 93 organizations from six southern states, including Peace and Justice Coalitions from Alabama, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Coalition for the People's Agenda, Concerned Black Clergy of Metro Atlanta, Atlanta North Georgia-Labor Council, United Auto Workers Region 8, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and numerous faith, peace and student groups. Individuals endorsers include Cindy Sheehan of Gold Star Families for Peace; Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general; Charlie Flemming, president of the Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council, AFL-CIO; and Rev. James Orange of the Africa African-American Renaissance, and others.
Several thousand marchers are expected.
“By coming out on April 1, Georgia citizens will speak out for democracy and will help stop the Iraq war, the move toward war with Iran, and our country’s drive toward Empire,” said Dr. C. T. Vivian, cofounder of the Center for Democratic Renewal, who will also speak.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on its military than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” Dr. King added in 1967 at Riverside Church. “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now.”
For more information, see Georgia Peace.Org.
All I have to say tonight is, in an ode to Hunter S. Thompson, the situation is bleak.
In other words, we are doomed.
Alito is destined for the Supreme Court. Bush is winning the PR war on his formerly secret domestic spying program. The right-wing media machine marches onward like Christian soldiers, feeding off its 20 percent return on investment.
And the leftists in the East Village and on the Southside of Birmingham sip lattès and New Castle and watch movies about the dangers of God and Government, outnumbered by the high school students and college freshmen impatient for the band to start.
Oh, well, for all the news that fits on a Simpletext Web page, you can always read it and weep on the Locust Fork News page.
For a teaser, it is truly sad when the best news in the world is that the lackluster economic news adds to Bush's woes.
Good morning Alabama, can you hear the Lynyrd Skynyrd song yet? Do you smell the smell of death?
We don't negotiate with "terrorists," so watch for Osama's minions to strike "the heart" of America any day now.
If I was advising the lone 80-year-old security guard asleep in the golf cart at the Montgomery Country Club in the Old Cloverdale neighborhood, I would say you might want to be on the look out.
On the other hand, if I was a liberal reporter living in Silver Spring, Maryland, who rides the red line to and from DC for work, I would also be watching out furtively. You just never know if that long, symbiotic relationship between the Bush family and the bin-Ladens, dating back to Bush's days as a young businessman, will come back to haunt us.
by Glynn Wilson
 | | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | Malik Rahim of New Orleans, co-founder of Common Ground Relief for Hurricane Katrina victims, came to downtown Birmingham Saturday night in the lead up to the Martin Luther King holiday. |
The pain in his face and his voice are palpable.
Malik Rahim of New Orleans, co-founder of Common Ground Relief for Hurricane Katrina victims, speaks slowly as he tells a story of chaos and fear to about 100 peace advocates Saturday night in downtown Birmingham.
He refused to evacuate and leave behind his Algiers neighborhood August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina swirled up the Mississippi River and veered East of Lake Pontchartrain, sparing the city a direct hit from the Category 4 furry.
Across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter, Algiers was saved from the massive flooding that overtook much of the city the next morning, even though an ocean liner ran aground against the levees there - while reportedly, a barge crashed into the levees along the Lower Ninth Ward and contributed to the breach that turned much of the city back into a swamp.
For five and a half days, the scene in New Orleans was "complete madness and fear," which took hold not at first, he says, but "after people realized the city had no plan to help them, no plan to provide food or water or unpolluted clothes."
African-Americans who tried to escape across the bridge to Jefferson Parish, he pointed out, "were turned back at gunpoint."
In the depths of the horror that no one would be coming to save them, he and a group of friends and neighbors started rescuing people and providing basic health care. It was in a largely flooded city with no lights or phone service that they formed a new group called Common Ground Relief, in part because they realized the differences in race, class and party affiliation had played pivitol roles in dividing people and laying the disastrous groundwork for the problems they faced.
He says even the governor of Louisiana - a woman, a Cajun and a Democrat - issued a secret "shoot-to-kill" order in the dawn-to-dusk curfew. In a city patrolled by six law enforcement agencies and the National Guard, he says, it was an order that "applied only to blacks."
In that five and a half days, 19 people in Algeirs were killed, he insists, either by the police or vigilantes. "They laid where they died, some for 14 days. And our neighborhood was not flooded."
He urges people to get involved "in the cause of peace and justice" whether they are Jews or Muslims, black or white, or belong to the Green Party or the Republican Party.
If everyone doesn't come together on common ground as human beings, he says, "what happened in New Orleans will happen again. There are Katrinas waiting to happen all over this land."
The event was sponsored by the Birmingham Peace Project. Anne Braden was unable to make the event due to the flu. Malika Sanders of Selma was also a guest speaker at the event, dedicated to the memory of Joe Farmer, a homeless Vietnam veteran - of the Green Beret Special Forces - who was recently found dead outside the Church of the Reconciler, a multicultural, multiracial United Methodist congregation with a unique ministry for downtown Birmingham.
The National Security Agency uses local law enforcement agencies to track members of anti-war groups as they prepare for protests, internal NSA documents show, according to the Baltimore Sun.
This practice is not an entirely new thing. The Nixon administration used law enforcement in the 1960s and early 1970s to spy on groups opposing the war in Vietnam and civil rights groups. In response, Congress passed the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, making the practice illegal.
What is new is that the Bush administration has now admitted using the NSA to spy on American citizens, in clear violation of the law, according to most legal experts. A fierce debate is now going on in Washington about the practice in the context of the so-called "war on terror," with Republican lawyers scrambling to cobble together a legal justification for stomping all over the Constitution.
Samuel Alito, Bush's latest nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, if confirmed, could help the administration pass a legal justification. As we have reported here a number of times already, Alito has authored memos in the past putting forward a novel legal theory called "unitary executive authority," which would allow the president to circumvent the law in a "time of war."
But according to the Constitution, only Congress can declare war, and the "war on terror" is not a declared war against another state. So the debate will hinge, in part, on whether the attacks on 9/11 were an act of war or a crime.
If the Democrats were in power, it would be handled as a crime and chances are we would not be involved in this illegal war in Iraq. It serves the Republican Party to call it "war," so that's where we are. The American people have a say in this, but the Bush administration is good at keeping people so afraid that they will not speak out against it. Thus our present dilemma.
If the American people would stand up against this - especially those who like to call themselves conservatives who are at heart civil libertarians who do not want the federal government to become like the Big Brother depicted in George Orwell's book 1984 - there is a chance to turn the situation around and restore trust in the American government at home and abroad.
If the American people remain silent, like the German people did in the run up to war in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, then American democracy is on the brink of being doomed to the dustbin of history.
On the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Birmingham Peace Project will host two living legends in a program called "War and Poverty Through the Eye of Katrina" on Saturday, January 14, at 7 p.m. at the Church of the Reconciler, 112 14th St. North.
Civil Rights activist Anne Braden and New Orleans organizer Malik Rahim will confront "the triplets of injustice: racism, poverty and war, as exemplified by the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina," according to an e-mail press release.
The program will include music by local artists and a reception. For more information, consult these two Web sites:
www.geocities.com/bhampeace
www.commongroundrelief.org
Anne Braden, one of the white heroes of the Civil Rights Movement and the over-all movement for human rights in America, will speak to the Martin Luther King, Jr. commemoration of the Birmingham Peace Project at 7 p.m. Saturday, January 14.
She will be joined by Malik Rahim of New Orleans and Common Cause.
Anne is originally an Alabamian and worked as a reporter for the Anniston Star, according to the Rev. Jack Zylman of Birmingham. In 1956, she and her husband, Carl Braden, sold a home they had bought in Louisville, Kentucky, to a black man, and they were charged with sedition. Carl actually went to prison for 7 months for this act of integration.
In 1961, Carl went to prison for 9 months with Frank Wilkinson for defending the First Amendment against the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee. Wilkinson died this week at age 91, still fighting for the First Amendment freedoms for which he suffered.
"I was present in 1962 in Chicago at his first address upon his release," Zylman said. "Anne Braden is still fighting for freedom, for blacks and for all. She is especially fighting the new McCarthyism that is sweeping the nation today, under the Presidency of George W. Bush."
He said the event will be a renewal of what her husband, Wilkinson and many others suffered in an earlier age.
It is especially appropriate, Zylman said, because Dr. King held a reception for Carl Braden and Wilkinson at Morehouse College in Atlanta the night before they went to prison in 1961. They were united in the struggle for freedom for all.
"This is an opportunity to connect the dots in our history of repression, and to join in common cause across the ages," Zylman said. "Those who forget history are doomed to relive it."
 | | staff photo | | Laura Parenteau, Daryl Berquist, Morris Gardner and Judith Shelton hold a candlelight vigil to mark 2,000 dead in Iraq on the Blount County courthouse steps. |
 | | Photo by Glynn Wilson, October 22, 2005 | | Birmingham peace activists will hold a candlelight vigil Wednesday night beginning at 6:30 p.m. in Five Points South to protest the 2,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq. According to the Rev. Jack Zylman, the number does not include those who have died of their wounds later or of non-combat deaths in Iraq. Nor does it include the possible 100,000 Iraqi dead. As part of the vigil by the fountain, the names of the Alabama victims of the war will be read. |
Reliable sources tell us there will be an anti-war vigil on the Blount County courthouse steps Wednesday night at 6 p.m. to mark the benchmark of 2,000 U.S. deaths in Iraq. If you can come, bring a candle in a jar.
AP: U.S. Military Deaths Reach 2,000 in Iraq
Cindy Sheehan Says Not One More
 | | by Glynn Wilson | | War protestors march with a flag-draped coffin down Birmingham's 5th Avenue. In Iraq, 1,900 American troops have died, along with countless innocent civilians, while the Bush administration censors the press from covering the real coffins coming home every day. |
 | | by Glynn Wilson | | Morris Gardner of Locust Fork, Alabama, lost both legs to a land mine in Vietnam. He now opposes the war in Iraq. |
by Glynn Wilson
Editor and Publisher
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Sept. 24 - Morris "Mo" Gardner of Locust Fork wheeled up to the microphone on the stage in historic Kellly Ingram Park on Saturday and pleaded with his government to end the war and bring the troops home.
"During the 20th century, 100 million people died as a direct result of war," he said. "When will we ever learn that war is not the answer?"
Mr. Gardner, 55, a medic in Vietnam when he was only 19 in 1969, set off a land mine. It blew off both his legs, one above the knee.
In an interview, he said he totally opposed the war in Iraq.
"It is based on a lie," he said, "just like Vietnam."
In his speech to a couple of hundred peace activists in the park where the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King changed the country in the 1960s, Mr. Gardner pointed out that 30 percent of those who serve in war zones, injured or not, develop severe psychological problems.
"This is caused by getting so scared, or seeing such horrendous acts of death and destruction that one cannot get the horrors of war out of their heads," he said. "Flashbacks and nightmares won't let you forget."
He talked about the health effects of war on the local populations in countries America has attacked and occupied.
"In Vietnam today, babies are still being born with terrible deformities by Agent Orange and other toxins we left there," he said. "Now they use depleted uranium in bombs. Are we all just cannon fodder?"
He insisted that there should never be a draft.
"If there isn't enough volunteers then there isn't enough public support and we shouldn't be there," he said. "No one should ever be forced to fight a war he doesn't believe in."
The government owes the American people the truth, Mr. Gardner said. "We have not been told the truth about Iraq."
In spite of his debilitating injuries, Mr. Gardner does not regret serving.
"I do not regret my service to my country," he said. "I do regret that my country did not use my service and my sacrifice more wisely."
 | | by Glynn Wilson | | Vietnam veteran Morris Gardner speaks out against the Iraq war to a crowd of peace activists in Birmingham. |
 | | by Glynn Wilson | | About 150 peace activists protested the Iraq war in Birmingham, Alabama, Saturday from the historic Kelly Ingram Park, with the famous 16th Street Baptist Church in the background. |
It might surprise the corporate media in Birmingham, Alabama, to know that Amy Goodman of Democracy Now radio came to town this weekend and drew a crowd of about 350 mostly educated, progressive white folks to hear President George W. Bush and the mainstream media take a tongue-lashing like nothing that has been heard in these parts since George C. Wallace bashed the "pointy-headed liberals" in New York and Washington in the 1960s.
 | | by Glynn Wilson | | Amy Goodman speaks the unvarnished truth in Birmingham... |
Ms. Goodman, 48, who lives in New York and graduated from Harvard, might be surprised at the comparison. But if you have been around journalism and southern politics as long as I have, it works.
The difference is, the Birmingham News actually covered Wallace's speeches in the 1960s, laced as they were with racial epithets.
It is a bit hard to know what the people in the crowd were thinking as some of them later debated over coffee or beer on Birmingham's fashionable Highland Avenue whether or not to pay the New York Times $49.95 a year for online access to their premium content.
Did Ms. Goodman talk so fast that they did not get the point?
Goodman is an independent journalist like nothing anyone in Alabama or the American South has ever seen or heard in person (present company excluded of course).
As the historian C. Vann Woodward said about Alabama when he called it the closest thing to a totalitarian state in the nation during Wallace's time, there is no bona fide tradition of democracy or an independent press here. It's sort of like Iraq in that sense, a third-world country where it will be hard for any kind of workable democracy to ever take hold.
I caught up with Ms. Goodman at the Bare Hands Gallery reception before her presentation at UAB's Alumni Auditorium. I asked her just a few of the questions on my mind since she was busy selling and signing books.
Having practiced all kinds of journalism myself for years and studied the advocacy verses objectivity debate as a research academic as well, I wanted to know how she handles the inevitable questions that must come up from those who find her point of view so different and maybe even refreshing compared to some of the claptrap on conservative talk radio and TV news.
She has a way of turning the question that works in person as well as it does on the radio and TV.
"I think it's important to be fair and accurate. I think it is very important that we hear all sides on issues," she said. "The corporate media advocates overwhelmingly for the state. So when the state goes to war, the media beats the drums for war. That has to be challenged."
I asked her what she thought about the Bill Keller New York Times, which backs up star reporters such as Judith Miller even as she sits in jail for not revealing a source on a story she never wrote. The same Judith Miller who got away with using one bad anonymous source, who we now know as the discredited Ahmad Chalabi, to write story after story in the run up to war in Iraq claiming that Saddam Hussein's regime had active weapons of mass destruction programs and constituted a "clear and present danger" to U.S. security.
While at the same time, the Times does not back up non-union non-staff reporters who right here in Birmingham tried to stand up to the Bush Justice Department as they botched the prosecution of Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth.
Earlier in the day, I did a survey on the street asking people reading the print edition of the New York Times in Southside bars what they thought of the paper these days.
One long-time reader outside Highlands Bar and Grill had a one-word answer: "Timid."
But Ms. Goodman disagreed.
"If they were timid we would be in better shape," she said. "They led the drumbeat for war and really set the agenda for the rest of the press in paving the way for the invasion of Iraq."
In her new book, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media that Love Them, she includes two chapters on this issue. (If you have had a chance to read the book, feel free to post a review or a comment about this).
Her one-hour daily show, Democracy Now!, is produced by Pacifica Radio, what the mainstream press calls "a politically progressive public radio network that describes itself as 'an independent community voice for peace and justice'."
Ms. Goodman works according to a style and definition of objectivity I have come to call "scientifically objective journalism," which basically means get the facts and tell the truth regardless of economic moitives and political sacred cows. That is not an easy thing to do in a country where scholars such as Noam Chomsky have talked for years about the limited range of debate allowed here, not totally unlike the state-owned media in the old Soviet Union.
Rather than falling into the trap of trying to defend advocacy journalism, a label used by the political right to keep the corporate media telling their lies on a daily basis without question, Ms. Goodman turns around and questions their objectivity.
For starters, does it surprise Americans to know that even CNN refuses to show the horrors of war in Iraq and allow the Bush administration and Pentagon to censor in this country the images of the dead and dying in Iraq that are seen on CNN International all the time?
Do the people of Birmingham realize that the same Pentagon is now harrassing reporters for trying to take pictures of dead bodies floatng in the New Orleans flood?
It seemed to come as news to the liberal crowd. They applauded her several times and even gave Ms. Goodman a standing ovation, then lined up to buy her book.
Editor's Note: We are experiencing some technical difficulty with the conversion of the digital recording of Ms. Goodman's speech and it may be Monday afternoon before our full coverage of this event will be posted.
But for a rush transcript of Ms. Goodman's comments, a link to the movie shown at the event, and more information about the radio show and her books, here's a link to the Democracy Now Web site.
It is Sunday, after all, and we need a break.
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