... to head to Washington in March.
Last year, a few of my pals from Haley House and I trekked south to participate in the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq and the secular March on the Pentagon on the anniversary of the Iraq war. A war of flawed premises, mind you, that is marked by warped ideas of criminal justice, as manifested in the torture at the Abu Ghraib prison and the lack of due process at Guantánamo Bay. Less well known? The one women's prison in Baghdad, where 200 female Iraqis are jailed because their husbands are suspected of terrorism. Sometimes their kids get to stay with them behind bars. As CBS News reports, the women have "no hope of legal advice -- or even a court date."
Of the two Washington protests last year, we got a lot more out of the CPWI interfaith trainings, creative nonviolence workshops, nighttime demonstration, and civil disobedience. It felt cohesive and more well-considered; it contained a great deal of joy and love. While the following day's March on the Pentagon drew a startling and inspiring 30,000 people (including counter-protesters), it seemed to me that its starting point of anger replicated the very structures of division and supposed moral superiority that it professed to challenge.
CPWI transformed its means, making its vision of an alternative end reality much more possible. It was the perfect context for my friend (alongside another friend's mother and her friend) to do his first act of civil disobedience--allowing himself to be arrested for praying before the White House. I was proud to be my friend's contact person on the ground.
This March will mark the fifth anniversary since the United States invaded Iraq. We've long since passed the date when the Iraq war officially lasted longer than our involvement in World War II and the Civil War.
It's time to consider counting yourselves among those who make their consciences public: March 6-March 10, with the major rally on March 7, in our nation's capitol.
Just go. I'll see you there.
Image Credit: Personal Photo from the 2007 March on the Pentagon.
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