Peace

The people of Detroit are mourning the death of City Council President Maryann Mahaffey, who for 31 years, until illness forced her retirement from office last December, was a selfless fighter for labor’s rights, peace, equality and justice. She died July 27 at the age of 81.

I noticed that recent CPUSA statements on the Middle East put a heavy weight on Israel’s responsibility and much lighter weight on Hezbollah or Hamas. Why doesn’t the CPUSA take a more even-handed approach?

Father Carl Kabat, 72, Greg Boertje-Obed, 51, and Michael Walli, 57, sit in jail in North Dakota awaiting a federal criminal trial because of weapons of mass destruction and because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I visited them last week.

Having experienced the horrors of war firsthand, many veterans have come home to join the antiwar movement. Groups like Veterans for Peace, which holds its convention this week, play a special role in the peace movement.

TEL AVIV, Israel — The biggest Israeli demonstration against the war to date took place here Aug. 5 in the heart of the city’s downtown.

LONDON — On only a week’s notice, over 100,000 people took to the streets here Aug. 5 to demand an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon.

LIVERMORE, Calif. — Demonstrations across the country this week remembered the victims of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945.

CHICAGO — “It’s time, past time, that our soldiers come back home to their families” from Iraq, said Gerald McEntee, international president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union, in his keynote address to nearly 6,000 convention delegates and guests who assembled here Aug. 8.

Carolyn Eisenberg, a history professor in Brooklyn, N.Y., grew up in what she describes as a Zionist family, with “a great deal of affection for Israel.” Last week, as co-chair of Brooklyn Parents for Peace, she was organizing an Aug. 9 “Brooklyn Walk for Peace,” calling for an immediate cease-fire by all sides in the Israel-Lebanon-Gaza crisis. An alert issued by the organization said, “Enough! War is not the answer!”

TEL AVIV, Israel — The biggest Israeli demonstration against the war to date took place here Aug. 5 in the heart of the city’s downtown, an area that is considered especially right-wing.