8 Years Too Long!

This past Saturday 182(official count) people took to the streets to protest the war in Iraq and the divestment from our communities that has been a direct result of the war on terror.

Eight years ago, before the bombs dropped in Iraq, the global anti-war movement declared that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq posed no threat, that there was zero connection between 9/11 and Iraq, that if invaded Iraq would be an expensive bloody quagmire, that the war could be endless and unwinnable, and that of course the wars motives were profit driven.

I take no pleasure in pointing out that we were right on every point. The talking points of the anti-war movement have almost always been confirmed fact in hindsight. Today we know that the overwhelming percentage of Americans think we should have been out of Iraq years ago, and many hold similar opinions in regards to Afghanistan. Yet our government continues to find excuses to stay. How is this possible?

Saturday's march was about highlighting the obvious links between a bloated military budget(60% of the purposed 2012 federal discretionary budget goes to the military) and our economic crisis. Locally schools are being radically defunded, public transit is being gutted, programs of social uplift are being cut, and houses foreclosed. Saturday was also about getting more Atlanta folks involved.

As dire as the situation is I was happy to see folks come out to mark the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Last year there just didn't seem to be the political will to organize a street action so we ended up doing banner drops and a small rally.

The march felt alive. The Atlanta Sedition Orchestra played during the march and there was a GIANT octopus puppet! The head represented war with each of the eight tentacles representing one of the many costs the war has on our communities.

Saturday I saw folks from all walks of life, young, old, black, white, latino, asian, ladies, fellas, and everyone between come out and participate. I was especially impressed with everyone's willingness to pass out leaflets and start conversations with the general public. We gave out thousands of AFSC's new one minute for peace hands outs that highlight the federal budget and 600 flyers designed to plug folks into issues that their passionate about where passed out as well.

I'm excited to see folks making the connections between military spending and community divestment. Every missile dropped is not only a robbery of human life in the community it's dropped in, it's a robbery of the community that's forced against their will to pay for it.

Thanks to Al Viola for all the great pics! I'll be posting more pics of the march in the next 24 hours!


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

March 19th Approaches!

March 19th marks the 8th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq. Though President Obama has worked hard to re-brand the war as over more and more folks are rejecting this the idea. The simple fact is that we have 50,000 combat trained fully armed troops in Iraq. There are also close to 70,000 corporate mercenaries roaming the streets.

We all know that if there were 120,000 armed foreigners in Georgia it would be considered an occupation, and Georgia residents would likely resist it. Resisters would probably be called freedom fighters, as they would be fighting to free Georgia from the tyranny of foreign occupation.

Well of course we here in Georgia are not literally being occupied by armed foreign combat troops but there the war in Iraq and Afghanistan has had a devastating effect on our communities.
We've spend 1.1 Trillion dollars on these wars and the estimated long term cost of them in close to 4 trillion.

This enormous cost has forced the federal and state budgets to radically defund the public sector and other programs of social uplift. Never has there been a time in American history that we have spent more on systems of violence and oppression then this moment we live in now.

This Saturday American Friends Service Committee call on Georgians to join us in the streets. In Atlanta we'll be rallying at Midtown Marta Station, 41 10th street, at 12pm. There will be a lively march through Piedmont park. There will be Giant puppets, music, street theater and more. Now more then ever we need to make the connections between the military budget and our domestic economic crisis.

Let us build bridges between these issues and make the 19th about coming together; it's really one fight, one struggle. Together, with all our voices joined, and inspired by the actions of Tunisia, Egypt, Wisconsin and Puerto Rico, we'll make a choir loud enough shake this city!

This week folks have been handing out flyers for the event and creating visually stunning art pieces that will be a part of the action. We hope you will do your part, spread the word, and show up.

Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

Georgia Peace & Justice Coalition Host Statewide Meeting

On this past Saturday Members of the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition(GPJC) met in Macon to discuss a strategy to re-energize organizers outside the Atlanta metro area.

Before the Obama campaign took off GPJC had dozens of rural groups that were active. Groups hosted weekly demonstrations against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they participated in several statewide peace and justice tours, and played key roles in legislative work.

Three years after the historic Obama election our country spends more money on the Military industrial complex then every, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, torture is still an excepted practice, Guantanamo prison camp has yet to shut down, and nothing has been done to address the growing cancer of poverty. The cup is looking half empty.

So Saturday we had folks from Macon, Augusta, Aiken, Jonesboro, Eastman, and Atlanta come together to make a plan. Over the next few months GPJC will begin the hard work of rebuilding a statewide base in every community across our great state. When the call come we hope you're there to answer.

Expect to hear plans of our legislative platform next week, a mobilization against against the Iraq war March 19th(no one's fooled by the war's rebranding), a GPJC weekend gathering in the summer, the re-starting a weekly demonstrations in Macon against the war on terror, and a mobilization around the state against the war in Afghanistan on October 7th.


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

Operation Anti-War Visibilty Claimed the Atlanta Skies on the Anniversity of the Iraq Invasion

It's hard to believe that we have been living with war in Iraq for seven years now. With the economic crisis and health care reform taking center stage in our national discourse many people have forgotten that the war In Iraq continues. Paradoxically heath care reform would be an easier sell if we weren't spending unthinkable dollars on a war that an overwhelming percentage of American believe is based on lies, and certainly the argument could(and has) been made that our economic crash is a direct result of these multiple wars(Iraq alone cost 720 million a day!!).

It's time we start to see the Iraq war for what it is, a robbery from out communities. Not only has this war robbed us of people who were loved and needed, it has robbed us of much needed resources.

The draining of social safety nets, the pending increase in College tuition's all over the country, and the Military Industrial Complexes 11 billion dollar recruitment budget,has created a poverty draft into the military. Middle and low income youth often reach out to the military, not to serve their country, but to get a job, a steady pay check. So it's not just an overwhelming majority of our budget that goes to plan for and fight wars, it's also our loved ones.

The Georgia Peace and justice Coalition(GPJC) wanted to do something different this year t mark the 7th year anniversary of the Iraq invasion, something that would perhaps shock Atlanta, remind our city that we still live with this war, we still pay for this war, and Iraqis still die in this war. The idea that was given birth in the GPJC meeting went on to be called, "Operation Anti-War Visibility". Groups and individuals were asked to create banners and signs and that reminded folks that we're still in Iraq. Folks were asked to find ways to make sure mass numbers of people in the city saw these banners, even if it meant risking jail.

AFSC Atlanta answered that call. We hosted a banner making party and resembled several streets teams(members of these teams will remain anonymous). Five huuuge banners were created and three smaller ones. There were also stacks of posters that were made available for wheat pasting projects.

On Friday, March 19th, at 7am,we know that four banners dropped of the 75/85 connector. One very large banner that read, "Iraq War: Seven Year Too Long" was seen on the 5th street bridge, visible to morning commuters going southbound. Another huge banner that gave the casualty numbers for Iraqi civilians and US soldiers was seem dropped right next to the Olympic torch neat the North Ave exit on the connector.

During afternoon rush hour we know at least four more banners were dropped. One was 30x15 ft! One was dropped off the Freedom pkwy Bridge and another huge one was daringly dropped of the overpass on International blvd that read, "Troops out of Iraq Now."

There was also a team of folks that wheatpasted anti-war messages around the city, and there were two lunch hour street demonstrations held, on at 14th and peachtree, and the other on the Marietta Square in front of the courthouse.

We at American Friends Service Committee truly hope that this is the last year we mark this sad day. We can only imagine a world where the resources raised in our communities are invested in social uplift instead of annihilation.

I'll end this post with a quote from Martin Luther King's, "Beyond Vietnam" speech, a speech that has shaped my life in many ways.
"A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

-Martin Luther King, April 4th, 1967


Link to short Creative Loafing story on the banner drops:
http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/freshloaf/2010/03/19/photo-of-the-day-anniversary/


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee