April 2003 | Hightower Lowdown
Flowers in the Dark Winter of War
by Jim Hightower
The politicians don’t want to think about it, the media establishment has turned a blind eye to it, and the Bushites are trying to shout it down but it’s rising anyway, getting bigger and bigger all across the country.
The "it" is a burgeoning American peace movement, flowering beautifully in the toxic climate of Bush’s increasingly strident irrational and petulant warmongering. Every week, there are tens of thousands of American marching in the streets, attending prayer vigils, protesting Bush and Cheney events, holding teach-ins, and otherwise doing the hard work of democracy, confronting the powerful as best they can.
Yet, you don’t hear about it. All you hear is the White House pounding the war drums, the political yak-show hosts frothing for war, and the Democratic leaders in congress meekly mouthing their support.
The people, however, mostly are not swallowing it. When I say "the people," I don’t just mean just the campus groups and peace organizations. Now they’ve been joined by the president of the AFL-CIO and several hundred thousand union members who are stoutly patriotic...and just as stoutly opposed to Bush’s war.
They are joined by the Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, evangelical Christians, Catholic Bishops, and other church groups that are agressively organizing againsts George’s Iraq Attack. They are joined by Mothers Against War, a mushrooming grassroots group that began in a living room in Massachussets. They are joined by a veterans group led by vets who were in the last war against Saddam, when George the Elder was president. They are joined by corporate leaders who oppose the madness. They are joined by Black Voices for Peace, which has launched a poor people’s peace movement, just as Martin Luther King, Jr. did back in‘68.
If you are somewhere between doubtful and dismayed by the current rush to war, you are hardly alone. Join the rebellion. Call 415-255-7296, ext. 311 or visit www.unitedforpeace.org.
Jim Hightower is a columnist and author. To subscribe to The Hightower Lowdown, send $15, and your name, and address to: Lowdown, P.O. Box 20596, New York, NY 10011. Visit his web site for more info.
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