activism

No doubt you have been hearing about the violence in Zimbabwe which seems designed to thart a democratic electoral threat to dictator Robert Mugabe. FOR-USA has strongly expressed our support and solidarity with FOR-Zimbabwe, but there is more we can do to help.

Click here to sign the AVAAZ petition urgng African leaders to take the initiative to restore peace and justice in Zimbabwe.

Cindy Sheehan, now a candidate for Congress, was in Charlottesville during my recent visit and I was invited to extend a welcome to the community on behalf of FOR at an event where she was speaking. David Swanson, member of Charlottesville’s Center for Peace and Justice had invited Sheehan to join him at last weekend’s “Building a New World Conference” at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Cindy Sheehan for speaking truth to power, calling in to question the commitment of political leadership to their public promises to act to bring the occupation of Iraq to an end and to stop the killing. She has stepped in to the space of citizen leadership herself by running for public office.

On Monday I mentioned the Lag4Peace protest going on in Second Life
tomorrow. The theme of the event is "Don't Iraq Iran." I have been putting some info Second Life about our Iran Program (see photo below) and I also have more details about tomrrow's protest.

There are a number of events going on tomorrow, for those who only want to spend an hour or two in Second Life, I recommend attending the keynote address from Sequoia Pinion of Spiritual Peacemakers at 11:45am EST on Commonwealth Island, immediately followed by kick-off rally at noon, and then a protest at SL Capitol Hill at 1pm.

A detailed schedule of events follows after the jump.

I was just looking for videos about FOR on YouTube, and found this excellent clip of two FOR members talking about how they came to believe that war is wrong and how others can get involved with peacework:

Today I ran into Erin Byrd, a grassroots organizer for economic and social justice in North Carolina. She showed me this video she made about "being a military brat who hates war." It's called "I am a duality." I think it's great and I know she would really like some feedback from others.

There are a lot of ways to observe the tragic anniversary of September 11th.

Through my Facebook network, I recently discovered the 9/11/07 General Strike. I dutifully joined the Facebook group to indicate my intention to joint he strike, but I think that since my day job is working for peace and justice, I think I should keep at it tomorrow. In fact, I think I will try to post a bunch here on the blog as my way of remembering. What will you be doing tomorrow?