From Dennis O’Neil / April 27, 2008
Dear Friends,
Reports from Moratorium Day #8, just over a week ago, are still coming in and being posted on the Iraq Moratorium website, IraqMoratorium.org., and a few got me thinking. One report, our first ever from Point Arena, CA said:
Three of us came out to honor Iraq Moratorium on Friday, April 18, 2008 in front of the local post office.
We carried a sign and displayed it prominently, and we handed out flyers to interested people.
The weather was very cold and exceptionally windy; I think that kept people away. However, we felt really good about joining people all over the U.S. to stand against the Iraq war.
Looked at in a vacuum, three people doesn’t sound too impressive, does it? Well, I googled Point Arena. It’s a tiny rural town with a population of 486. Not an easy place to build an anti-war presence. And for me, their conclusion gets to the essence of the Moratorium: “We felt really good about joining people all over the U.S. to stand against the Iraq war.”
And they did. They joined Raging Grannies in San Mateo. Fifth graders in Milwaukee who call themselves Kids Against the War and have started their own website, http://k-a-w.org. Women in Black in Baltimore. Students for a Democratic Society in NYC. Very, very slow pedestrians in the main crosswalk in Greenfield, MA. And thousands of others who came to vigils, speeches, letter-writing sessions and other organized activities.
And they joined who-knows-how-many other people who did something on their own on Moratorium Day #8. We have reports from a guy (that’s me) who puts the number of US dead in his apartment windows on the Third Friday of every month, a veteran who made bio-diesel to fuel the tractor he uses to do clean-up in New Orleans, and a Tulsa resident immobilized by diabetes who distributed a Move-On alert to 160 friends via email. We all broke our daily routine and took some action to end the war.
What did you do?
Please, file a report from the link in the Moratorium Day #8 section on the home page of the Iraq Moratorium website, a couple of sentences is fine, and let others draw strength, and maybe even new ideas, from your actions. While you’re on the site, please check to see that planned
activities for Moratorium Day #9, on May 16, that you know about are listed, too.
In closing, the handful of overworked volunteers who make up the Iraq Moratorium Committee will be meeting face-to-face for the first time ever very soon. If you have any thoughts concerning the Moratorium you’d like to share with us or anything you wish we would do to make the Moratorium more useful to you, holler at us. Just send an email to iraqmoratorium@copatriot.com and let us know what you’re thinking.
Peace out,
Dennis O’Neil
for the Iraq Moratorium
IraqMoratorium.org.
iraqmoratorium@copatriot.com
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