MAKING LISTS
Shifting our spending priorities and getting clean votes in Congress on funding all the things we want also gets us straight, unencumbered (I can't say clean) votes on the war funding. And those votes provide us with two lists: the list of those who did what we told them and the list of those who did not. But these lists cannot remain, as they are today, lists of congress members to thank and lists of congress members to go meekly whining to. They have to become the lists of whom we are going to reelect and whom we are going to send packing. If you won't send a politician packing in a general election because of the party they belong to, then replace them in a primary. But send them packing we must, or they will never heed our demands, not even if we win over 100 percent of the country and reject every lie the day it's uttered.
Pressuring elected officials in between elections is going to be needed as well. Nonviolently shutting down the military industrial congressional complex can communicate our demands very strongly. But we can't sit in elected officials' offices demanding peace while promising to vote for them, no matter what they do -- not if we expect to be heard.
If sitting in congress members' offices and voting them out of office strikes you as exhibiting a na????ve faith in the system, and if you want us to instead march in the street and appeal to the president, our views may not be as far apart as you imagine. We do need to march in the streets. We also need to create democratic media outlets and impact every segment of our culture and population. And we need to march in the suites, too, to disrupt what it happening and grab the attention of those responsible by letting them know that we can end their careers. If that's "working with the system" I certainly hope nobody tries working like that with me. We can neither ignore our government, nor obey it. We have to impose our will on it. That requires, in the absence of millions of dollars to "donate," millions of people dedicated to applying pressure. Those people need to know where to press. One important answer is on the public checkbook.
Appealing to presidents doesn't hurt. Really, that's just another way of saying that we need to reach everyone everywhere. And we do. But we have far less power over presidents than over members of the House of Representatives -- and that's saying something! If we accept the idea that presidents, and only presidents, have the power to begin and end wars, we will guarantee ourselves a lot more wars from a lot more presidents, if the world survives that long.
The power of war must belong to us. If we can find a way to directly control presidents' war making, that will certainly work. If we can do so by controlling and re-empowering Congress, which seems at least slightly more likely, that will also work. As long as you're trying to influence someone away from war or toward peace, whether it's a congress member, a president, a weapons maker, a soldier, a neighbor, or a child, you are doing work worthy of the highest honors on earth.
PEACE IS A TRUTH
In November 1943, six residents of Coventry, England, which had been bombed by Germany, wrote to the New Statesman to condemn the bombing of German cities, asserting that the "general feeling" in Coventry was the "desire that no other people shall suffer as they have done."
In 1997, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica, the president of Germany wrote a letter to the Basque people apologizing for the Nazi-era bombing. The Mayor of Guernica wrote back and accepted the apology. Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights is an international organization, based in the United States, of family members of victims of criminal murder, state execution, extra-judicial assassinations, and "disappearances" who oppose the death penalty in all cases.
Peaceful Tomorrows is an organization founded by family members of those killed on September 11, 2001, who say they have,
"united to turn our grief into action for peace. By developing and advocating nonviolent options and actions in the pursuit of justice, we hope to break the cycles of violence engendered by war and terrorism. Acknowledging our common experience with all people affected by violence throughout the world, we work to create a safer and more peaceful world for everyone."
So must we all.
Please get involved at http://WarIsALie.org
Please ask your representative and senators to curtail funding for war in Libya here http://RootsAction.org
David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie" from which this is excerpted and adapted.
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