Topic: Peace Movement

Lugo on the military: No draft, no way!

By Chris Lugo | April 20, 2008 |

My father is a Vietnam Veteran. He was an officer in ROTC in 1968 while he was in college and went to Vietnam as a Lieutenant the year I was born. My father felt an obligation to his country and a duty to serve when called. I was born in a snowstorm in rural Minnesota while my father was halfway around the world in the jungles of Vietnam. I am proud of my father and his service to my country.

When I was a teenager, going to private Catholic school, I was approached by military recruiters. I was encouraged to join the military and to enlist in the ROTC program, much like my father had been. For whatever reason, I declined. I was not yet a peace activist like I became after the first Gulf War, but something in my instincts told me that I could not serve in the military the way my father had served.

In 1990, while I was enrolled at the University of Minnesota, George Bush Sr. began beating the drums of war. I was enrolled in the selective service program at that time in order to get student loans to go to college. I remember clearly the night the bombs began to drop in Iraq for the first time. I was living in the student district of Minneapolis and there had been anti-war activity on campus leading up to the invasion. Students were busy organizing against the campus military center, sometimes called the stockade, holding demonstrations and putting anti-war material in front of the recruiting and training center. «Read the rest of this article»

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Quiet vigil honors 4000 fallen soldiers

By Debbie Boen | March 25, 2008 |

A group of eleven gathered on Monday at Public Square to light candles, view the statistics of war, read poetry, hear a song, sing a song, and acknowledge the 4,000 US military dead in Iraq.

We who gathered this time are all disconnected from the war, in the way that we are not relatives of anyone enlisted. But we know co-workers, students, clients, neighbors and acquaintances who are connected with the military. We are surrounded by military.

David and I read Christine Piesyk’s recently published poem, Songs, written for vigil we held 1,000 soldier fatalities ago. The pain of picking up all the pieces of war from Vietnam to Iraq, is potent angst; something that you never want to have to do again. It is unfair for wars to take our best, chop them up and dump them back on our society, often as shells of their former selves, haunted by the war they waged in the name of duty. We who oppose the war have good reason to do so.

There is no good bomb. There is no good war, said my Grandmother, who survived WWI as a child in Germany. We who gather are in between, in between the “nothing is going on” stance of the media, and the overwhelming way the war rages on. In attendance this time were all middle class white Americans with one veteran. Three of our group were under 18. On this occasion, all of us except the vet, are Unitarian Universalists (UU’s). «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Issues, News, Opinion | 3 Comments

July 4: CyberRally for Peace

By Christine Anne Piesyk | June 26, 2007 |

Peace and justice groups, anti-war websites and thousands of individuals are banding together on my space for a 4th of July “CyberRally for Peace.” FreeThinkers for Peace and Civil Liberties will have the peace candle prominently displayed on their new myspace website for several days before returning to the current image of candles at downtown Clarksville’s Eternal Flame.

The equivalent of major peace march, the rally is a cyberspace version of traditional social action and participation is simple. Organizers from a dozen myspace sites are asking individuals and organizations with my space or other sites that have “default” photos to switch out those photos for peace signs and peace candles for July 4th. «Read the rest of this article»

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