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AFSC - Kansas City, Missouri

KC AFSC Peace and Justice Alerts (May 7, 2008)

Educate Yourself. Share your knowledge. Take Action!

Dear Advocates for Peace and Justice,

It seems that Congress is going full speed ahead to pass a new $162.6 billion supplemental appropriation bill which would fund the Iraq occupation through the Spring of next year! It is expected that the House will vote as early as tomorrow, Thursday.

Please read the action alert below and call your Congressperson today!

I also want to encourage you to attend the Mothers’ Day Stand for Peace Vigil this Sunday, May 11, at 3pm. At the Mothers’ Day Vigil AFSC and the KC Iraq Task Force will be performing the “Auction Today: Your Tax Dollars for Sale” street theater.

And we can use your help!

And we can use your help! Join us and:

• hold an “AUCTION: Your Tax Dollars For Sale” sign (see below);
• volunteer to bring your video camera and document the performances;
• help pass out leaflets and information;
• volunteer to take a role and perform – we are still looking for someone with auctioneer experience or who can do the auctioneer thing…

Contact me to help at 916 931-5256 or iharritt@afsc.org.

Our plan is to have an auctioneer (dressed as Uncle Sam) standing on a milk crate flanked by volunteers holding “Auction Today: Your Tax Dollars for Sale” signs and a banner behind saying something like “Don’t Let Washington Sell Us Out.” In front of the auctioneer would be four or five people bidding on lots of 20 or 30 billion tax dollars. Each would represent something for which taxes could be used- Healthcare, Education, Housing, Renewable Energy and War-and each would be dressed to symbolically represent their issue (e.g. healthcare: scrubs and stethoscope; Education mortarboard and academic gown; housing: jeans, hardhat and tool belt, etc.) and holding auction paddle with issue they represent printed on it.

The auctioneer opens the bidding. The people representing each area bid their area, “raised or lowered” by the next bidder until the auctioneer declares “sold to the lowest bidder – War spending.” This would be repeated several times to represent the 100+ billion dollars being requested for the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations. The auctioneer would then briefly make a call to action asking people to contact their elected officials and stop funding of the Iraq war and instead funding for community needs.

We are planning our first performance at the Moms’ Against the War Vigil on Sunday, May 6, 3pm at 95 and Quiveria, OP, KS (See below for more information about the event). War are also planning events outside the Sprint Center at the Police and Elvis Costello and the Imposters concerts on Tuesday, May 13, 6:30pm. Other dates and places are being considered.

We need your help to be actors. We would welcome an experienced auctioneer to come forward and volunteer. Contact me if you can help! Even if you can not help on one of the date above but would like to volunteer some time please contact us.

We are also beginning plans to meet with community, civic and business leaders to discuss with them how they see the war impacting our community and /or their business.

There are lots of ways we together can create a more peaceful world. Please join us!


Peace,
Ira Harritt
KC AFSC
816 931-5256
iharritt@afsc.org

Dear Advocates for Peace,

The House of Representatives will vote as soon as tomorrow (Thursday, May 8)on an additional $162.6 billion for the war and occupation in Iraq.

Sadly, the bill includes $66 billion for fiscal year 2009. This means the funds for the occupation will keep flowing well into the next administration, allowing the new president to continue the war and occupation with little or no accountability to Congress until next spring.

At a time when money is urgently needed in our communities, the new bill would bring the total for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to $859 billion. By including fiscal year 2009 (FY09) funding, the House leadership is effectively taking the war off the congressional agenda for the rest of this year. This might be our last opportunity to stop war funding during this Congress and presidency.

Your call today is crucial.

Call your representative at 202-224-3121. (If you don't know your representative, use our directory.)

Please join the American Friends Service Committee and the entire United for Peace and Justice coalition by calling your Congressperson today.

Background

On Monday evening, the House leadershipcrafted a plan that will keep the war going into the next president's first term. They plan to bring a $162.6 billion war funding bill to the floor for a vote on Thursday, May 8.

In addition to the funding bill, they will vote separately on two other measures. One will provide billions for unemployment benefits and veterans education benefits. The other measure addresses war policy, including a goal for troop withdrawal by December 2009, troop readiness requirements, and bans on permanent bases in Iraq and torture.

Impact of War on the Iraqi People

The U.S. war/occupation in Iraq has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, devastated families and ripped apart the infrastructure of Iraq. One striking fact is that more than 4.7 million Iraqis (in a nation of 27 million people) have been displaced by war and occupation. It is the world's fastest growing refugee crisis, and represents the largest refugee flow in the Middle East since the displacement of Palestinians in 1948. View our website for more information.

Thank You!

My deep thanks for all your support for peace in Iraq. During last month's Tax Day call-in, Congress received more than 700 calls to defund the war and fundvital human needs. We need to keep showing Congress that we're committed to a new path in Iraq, one that starts when we stop a continuing war and occupation.

Peace,

Peter Lems

For AFSC’s Wage Peace Campaign

P.S. For more about war funding and alternative options, see our one-minute web movie, "One Day = $720 Million."

Peace and Justice Teach-ins will be on a break. Click here for up to date information.

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May 11, Sunday, 3pm, Mom’s Against the War - Stand for Peace Mothers Day Vigil at 95th Street between Nieman and Quivera, in Overland Park, KS. Julia's Voice is dedicated to reclaiming Mothers Day as it was intended by originator Julia Ward Howe, a day to promote peace and speak out against war.

May 12, Monday 7:00 P.M. KC Meeting of the Network of Spiritual Progressives at 9000 Mullen Road in Lenexa, KS 66215.

May 19th, Monday, 6:30pm, KC Iraq Task Force Planning Meeting Note we will hold our regular monthly meeting a week early due to Memorial Day falling on our regular meeting day. We will work on strategies to defeat the Iraq Supplemental legislation, utilize the Cost of War, What is the Best Way to Support the Troops and other exhibits and present the new “Auction-Today: Your Tax Dollars for Sale” Street Theater and other activities to promote peace and end the Iraq war. Come to the AFSC office, 4405 Gillham Rd., KCMO for information call 816 931-5256.

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EVERY Sunday: Iraq Peace Vigil, 4pm, JC Nichols Fountain, 47th & Main, Streets, Kansas City, MO http://www.kciraqtaskforce.org/

EVERY Tuesday, JOIN THIS Peace Demonstration Every Tuesday between 5PM - 6 PM in the median strip on the south corner of the intersection at 63rd & Ward Parkway, Kansas City, Mo. For more information email '63rd Street Patriots' at schwartzkatz@sbcglobal.net

Every Wednesday, 5:00pm, Iraq Anti-War Protest, College and Quivira, Overland Park, KS (NW corner). Send a message to Sen. Pat Robert that it’s time to end the war!

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Join the Chalk Project Marking the 4,000 death of American Troops in Iraq with Respect and Messages of Peace

Send photos of chalk outlines to dmellicker@afsc.org

Click Here to see some of the Chalk Project outlines

Help rouse the public’s conscience over the growing deaths in the Iraq occupation and call for a change from war making to making peace in the world –through diplomacy, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, supporting human rights…

Our goal is for area activists to make 4,000 body outlines spread throughout the city.

Join with others in creating an organic memorial to those who have died in the Iraq occupation by creating body chalk outlines on streets, sidewalks or other locations (it works best working with a partner) and then to chalk the message “Too Many Have Died In Iraq” – and add your own message of peace—for example: Education Not War; Healthcare Not Bombing; Butter Not Bullets; Renewable Energy Not Oil warring, Diplomacy Not Ultimatums, etc.(We ask that you keep it positive. Not curse words or name calling.)

We offer this caution-it is possible that creating these outlines may be considered breaking anti-graffiti laws in some places. To help you avoid this make sure you use only chalk and be willing to wash the chalk away if a business or homeowner complains.

We would also like to document the outlines created, messages left, locations and times seen. When you see a Chalk Project body outline we ask that you e-mail your “sighting” to dmellicker@afsc.org.

Please include in your email the location e.g. “SW corner of 48th Street and Oak, KCMO), the messages in the outline, and times you saw it. Please also attach a digital photos in jpeg or pict format if you are able to take one. Sightings will be posted on a website to be determined. For info call 816 931-5256.

Photos from the Chalk Project Memorial

Email us sightings of Chalk Project outlines!

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Are you a Mother? Have you ever had a Mother?

This Mothers Day, be a part of the celebration as it was originally intended,a voice for peace and against war.

On May 11, 2008, we will honor the work of mothers to teach,in the words of Mothers Day founder Julia Ward Howe,patience, charity and mercy.

Stand for Peace Mothers Day 2008

May 11, 2008, 3:00pm

Julia's Voice is dedicated to reclaiming Mothers Day as it was intended by originator Julia Ward Howe, a day to promote peace and speak out against war.

Join us as we peacefully assemble along the public sidewalk on 95th Street between Nieman and Quivera, in Overland Park, rain or shine. Standing shoulder to shoulder, we will line the sidewalk joined by Julia Ward Howe re-enactors, musicians and other special guests.

Mother's Day was first organized 138 years ago by abolitionist,suffragette and poet Julia Ward Howe. In 1870 she organized a Mothers Day for Peace to promote peace and speak out against war.

Julia's Voice is a group of "mothers and others" joined together to return Mothers Day to its original intent. Sponsors include the Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church, True Blue Women of Kansas, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church and American Friends Service Committee of Kansas City.

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Kansas City Meeting of the Network of
Spiritual Progressives

7:00 P.M. on Monday May 12th

You are invited to attend the second monthly meeting of the Kansas City area chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP). We will meet at 7:00 P.M. on Monday May 12th (the second Monday of each month) at our home at 9000 Mullen Road in Lenexa, KS 66215.

The NSP is the originator of the new Global Marshall Plan which was introduced in the US House of Representatives by Emanuel Cleaver and two others just last month as

H. RES. 1078 to create a fundamental shift from a culture of fear and domination to one of love and generosity in our public policies and social practices (see below).

The original Marshall Plan and the Peace Corps were probably the two most successful foreign policy initiatives of the 20th century. We hope to help reinforce this nation wide movement to encourage this shift in public policy in our day especially between now and the election next Fall. Societies are only transformed by clear and compelling visions. Come join us in promoting this vision capable of transforming our society.

Jim & Ginger Kenney

Directions:

• Find Pflumm and 90th Place however works best from wherever you are coming.
• Go one block West to Park and 90th Place.
• Turn left (South).
• Turn right on 91st Terr (see white sign with bold black letters saying "Delivery Entrance).
• Keep going straight till the street (which becomes Salem as the street curves to the right) dead ends.
• Then make two left turns and look at the 2nd house (which is the first 4-plex) on your right on Mullen Road.
• It should say 9000, 9002, 9004 & 9006.
• We are 9000 Mullen Road.

In case of problems call us at 913-362-8362

Global Marshall Plan resolution -H.Res. 1078

introduced in Congress by Congressmen Keith Ellison, Emanuel Cleaver, and Jim Moran

March 10, 2008

  H.Res. 1078 calls for a return of the Marshall Plan. That plan was used by the U.S. in the post World War II years to rebuild Europe. It was celebrated as America's most successful foreign policy program because it convinced Europeans that the U.S. was a reliable ally and friend.

  This time, however, the target is both domestic and global. H. Res. 1078 calls for the U.S. to provide enough funding to eliminate global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health care, and repair of the environment.

  The full text of H.Res. 1078 is available through the website of Congressman Keith Ellison, http://ellison.house.gov, and further comment can be obtained by calling 202-225-4755. or go to www.tikkun.org

UFPJ Action Alert
House Leadership to Give War Funding to Bush Successor

The House of Representatives will vote as soon as tomorrow -- Thursday, May 8 -- on an additional $162.6 billion for the war and occupation in Iraq.

Amazingly, the bill includes $66 billion for fiscal year 2009. This means the funds for the occupation will keep flowing well into the next administration, allowing the new president a free hand to continue the war and occupation with little or no accountability to Congress until next spring. This is an appalling abdication of responsibility.

At a time when money is urgently needed in our communities, the new bill would bring the total for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to an unimaginable $874 billion. By including FY09 funding, the Democratic Party House leadership is effectively taking the war off the congressional agenda for the rest of this year. This might be our last opportunity to fight a war funding bill before the next president takes office and the new Congress is seated.

YOUR CALL TODAY IS CRUCIAL.

Call your representative NOW: 202-224-3121

• Tell themto vote "No!" on this funding bill.
• Tell them it's long past time to bring all the troops home and end the war.
• Tell them to stop playing political games while lives are being lost.
• Please let us know you called by clicking here.

Don't let the House Democratic leadership take us for granted. If this funding bill passes, Congress will have handed Bush $874 billion for the illegal war and occupation of Iraq. With this funding bill, they are laying the groundwork for the next president to continue the occupation. We must send them a message: The voters will remember in November!

Background

House leadership met behind closed doors on Monday evening to concoct a plan that will keep the war going into the next President's first term. They plan to bring a $178 billion war funding bill to the floor for a vote on Thursday, May 8. In addition to the funding bill, they will vote separately on two other measures. One will provide billions for unemployment benefits and veterans’ education benefits; the other measure addresses war policy including a goal for troop withdrawal by December 2009, troop readiness requirements and a ban on permanent bases in Iraq and a ban on torture. It is an open secret that the Senate will drop the measure on war policy -- leaving only the war funding with no strings attached.

Impact of War on the Iraqi People

The U.S. war/occupation in Iraq has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, devastated families and ripped apart the infrastructure of Iraq. One striking fact is that more than 4.7 million Iraqis (in a nation of 27 million people) have been displaced by war and occupation. It is the world's fastest growing refugee crisis, and represents the largest refugee flow in the Middle East since the displacement of Palestinians in 1948. For more information go to http://www.afsc.org/iraq/refugee-crisis.htm

UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE

www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545

PO Box 607; Times Square Station; New York, NY 10108

To subscribe, visit www.unitedforpeace.org/email

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“Mothers’ Day for Peace”

by Julia Ward Howe in 1870.

“Arise, then, women of this day!

   Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears! Say firmly: ‘We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs’

   From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, ‘Disarm, Disarm!’ The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

   Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

   In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

HISTORY

Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day for Peace

Julia Ward Howe became well-known during and after the American Civil War as the author of the words to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," but was horrified by the carnage of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War

• in 1870, she tried to issue a manifesto for peace at international peace conferences in London and Paris (it was much like the later Mother's Day Peace Proclamation)
• in 1872, she began promoting the idea of a "Mother's Day for Peace" to be celebrated on June 2, honoring peace, motherhood and womanhood
• in 1873, women in 18 cities in America held a Mother's Day for Pace gathering
• Boston celebrated the Mother's Day for Peace for at least 10 years

The celebrations died out when Howe was no longer paying most of the cost for them, although some celebrations continued for 30 years. Howe turned her efforts to working for peace and women's rights in other ways. A stamp was issued in honor of Julia Ward Howe in 1988 -- no mention of Mother's Day, though.

Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

In parts of the United States it is customary to plant tomatoes outdoors after mother's day (and not before.)

When Jarvis died, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908, in the Andrews Methodist Episcopal (now United Methodist) Church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Grafton is the home to the International Mother's Day Shrine. The 1912 General Conference of The Methodist Episcopal Church, at the suggestion of delegates from Andrews M.E. Church, recognized Jarvis as the founder and advocated the celebration of the holiday. From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honour of those mothers whose sons had died in war. Nine years after the first official Mother's Day holiday, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. holidays.

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings."

We need your support to keep our life affirming peacemaking work alive. Contribute. Volunteer. Spread the word!

Contact us and mail your tax deductible contribution to:
American Friends Service Committee
4405 Gillham Rd., KCMO 64110
(816) 931-5256

The information and events described in AFSC Peace and Justice Alerts are intended to educate and assist members of our community in becoming active in working for a more just and peaceful world. Inclusion of a listing does not necessarily imply that AFSC KC agrees with all points of view that will be represented at the event.

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