Peace

May Day/Cinco de Mayo supplement to print edition: Advertise your book, bumper sticker, CD or DVD or send greetings in this special supplement to the print edition, which will be published in the May 6-12 issue.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Nearly 150 delegates from about 80 organizations, half of them from outside the Chicago metro area, met here April 1 to found the Illinois Coalition for Peace and Justice.

NUEVA YORK — “Yo no espero decenas de miles”, nos dijo Meldoy Drnach, vicepresidenta de Acción de la Organización Nacional para la Mujer (NOW por sus siglas en inglés), hablando de la Marcha por la Paz, Justicia y la Democracia, “Yo espero cientos de miles”.

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Twenty-four of 32 Wisconsin communities approved referendums April 4 calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, while eight others voted against such measures.

The Seder is the traditional feast of the Jewish people, celebrating their liberation from slavery in Egypt. Tradition has it that when the Jews were freed from Egypt, the Red Sea parted and they crossed over out of Egypt. In the desert the Jewish people endured all the hardships of desert life that their Semitic brothers, the Arabs, still endure.

NEW YORK — “I don’t expect tens of thousands,” Melody Drnach, National Organization for Women vice president for action told the World, referring to the upcoming April 29 March for Peace, Justice and Democracy demonstration here. “I expect hundreds of thousands.”

According to its leading U.S. critic, the School of the Americas (SOA) has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers who have been instrumental in the killings, disappearances and massacres that have afflicted the region for decades. Since 1990, the School of the Americas Watch, founded by the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, has led in the struggle to close the SOA, often leading huge marches outside its walls in Fort Benning, Ga. Now SOA Watch is taking its message to South America.

While the House of Representatives passed $92 billion “emergency” funding mostly for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan last week, it also approved California Rep. Barbara Lee’s amendment that bars permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.

SAN FRANCISCO — Led by hunger strikers, some on foot and others in wheelchairs, who had fasted for a week to protest proposed anti-immigrant legislation, thousands of marchers jammed downtown Market Street March 27 on their way to a massive rally in front of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office.

With news from Iraq bleaker than ever, a new poll shows a large bipartisan majority of Americans want to begin pulling out U.S. troops, and strongly oppose permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. The University of Maryland Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) poll was conducted March 1-6.