[Peace-discuss] More towns are urging peace

[Morton K. Brussel]

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  Seems timely!  --mkb


Published on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 by MinutemanMedia.org
One by One, Towns are Urging Peace
by Karen Dolan

Polls show that the American people are overwhelmingly dissatisfied  
with the war in Iraq and want our beloved troops to come home as soon  
as possible. Nearly 80 communities nationwide have put these  
sentiments in city and town council resolutions that call for  
bringing our sons and daughters home from a war that has become a  
deadly quagmire and an occupation as unpopular in Iraq as in the  
United States.

In September, the cities of Chicago and Philadelphia passed  
resolutions urging the cessation of combat operations in Iraq. They  
cited the lives lost and the monetary cost to their communities. In  
November, the city of Baltimore unanimously passed a resolution  
“urging President Bush and the United States Congress to commence a  
humane, orderly, immediate withdrawal of United States military  
personnel and bases from Iraq.” This resolution also cited the  
deaths of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilian men, women and children.

In December, the smaller town of Wilkinsburg passed a resolution  
supporting neighboring 12th District Pennsylvania Congressman John  
Murtha’s call for U.S. troops to come home from Iraq in six months.  
This resolution urged Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA), to stand with Murtha, a  
fellow Democrat. With its passage, Wilkinsburg supported its  
citizens, soldiers, Murtha and the nation. Local legislators asserted  
their place in a global society by voting for peace.

These cities and towns are leaders in the growing trend of citizens  
recognizing the power of their local communities in participating in  
a global society.

The monetary cost to us as a nation is $252 billion thus far with  
$120 billion more in the works. According to the research institute  
National Priorities Project, our nation could instead have provided  
over 57 million Americans with health care, or 2 million affordable  
housing units. We could have equipped half a million U.S. homes with  
renewable energy. Fifty million students could have received  
university scholarships.

The costs of this war hit us where we live, who we are as families,  
communities and as a nation. As the saying goes: "All politics is  
local." That has never been truer than today in a world virtually  
without borders and in a world where what happens “over there” has  
direct implications for what happens over here.
This hopeful trend of increasing civic participation at the local  
level showed up strongly in the months leading up to the invasion in  
Iraq. From December 2002 until the March 2003 invasion, 170 city  
councils, representing over 50 million Americans, passed city, town  
and county resolutions that decried the administration’s path of  
pursuing “pre-emptive,” unilateral war. These resolutions  
protested the imminent war’s launch, which came without the consent  
of the United Nations Security Council and without allowing the U.N.  
Weapons Inspectors to finish their job as they requested to be  
permitted to do.
With over 2,250 U.S. soldiers killed and estimates of at least  
100,000 innocent Iraqi citizens dead, Americans are again using the  
civic outlet most accessible and most willing to listen—City Hall— 
to make their voices heard and call on the federal government to  
bring the troops home.
Citizens of our towns and cities have sons and daughters, mothers and  
fathers over there. They have sons and daughters, mothers and fathers  
buried in the ground over here. They have schools that need fixing,  
they have health clinics that need funding. They have a conscience  
and they have a voice.
Karen Dolan is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in  
Washington D.C., She also directs the Cities for Progress project  
there. Email to: kdolan at igc.org

Copyright 2006 MinutemanMedia.org


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