Peace

SAN FRANCISCO — As the Feb. 5 date for court martial proceedings against military resister 1st Lt. Ehren Watada approaches, antiwar, faith-based and veterans organizations are building support for his right to refuse deployment to Iraq and to speak out against a war he declares is illegal.

“We’re here to mourn the lives lost and we’re here to renew our call for an end to the war and for the safe return of our troops home,” Colin Eager, executive director of the Western New York Peace Center, told a New Years Day candlelight vigil in Buffalo, N.Y. It was one of more than 300 antiwar vigils in 46 states around the country marking the 3,000th U.S. death in Iraq.

WASHINGTON — Barely a week after convening, the 110th Congress moved to enact a bipartisan resolution condemning President George W. Bush’s plan to escalate the Iraq war by sending thousands more troops into the deadly quagmire.

The start of the new Congress brings us opportunities to work together on the critical issues confronting our country. No issue is more important than finding an end to the war in Iraq.

The New Year is our time for high hopes and fresh starts. But 2007 begins with America’s conscience dragging behind us over half a million corpses from the Bush invasion and occupation in Iraq.

LIVERMORE, Calif. — Peace and community activists lined up at the microphone Dec. 12 to charge that the Department of Energy’s new plans for the U.S. nuclear arsenal would boost nuclear weaponry to a level not seen since the Cold War.

A poem

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — “You can get a phone call with a recorded message in a broken Arabic language … ‘Evacuate your house, we are coming to destroy it,’” said Mohammed Omer.

CLEVELAND — “Just look at how far we’ve come in just three years,” remarked Gene Bruskin, co-convener of U.S. Labor Against the War, to hundreds of union representatives at the opening of the group’s annual conference here Dec. 1.

Veterans and military families are planning dramatic actions in the nation’s capital in late January to appeal to ordinary Americans to speak out for an end to the Iraq war.