[Peace-discuss] 4th of July - AWARE float (or sink?)

[C. G. Estabrook]

I'm not going to be around on the 4th, so I shouldn't promote a demo I won't be in, but I would be sorry to see AWARE lose focus on the war - especially as the Obama administration seems once again to be widening it, which pretending not to.

When Obama works so hard to obfuscate his war-making, for fear of popular opposition, we should be pushing in the other direction, making public his world-wide murder campaign, mendaciously presented as "anti-terrorism." 

There are of course other good causes, and some of them (as Stuart points out) are connected with the war. But whatever AWARE does, it seems to me that making people aware of the vicious war policy should be paramount.  

--CGE

"The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know." —Noam Chomsky


On Jun 15, 2013, at 8:24 AM, Stuart Levy <stuartnlevy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Today, Saturday the 15th, is the postmark deadline for entering AWARE in the 4th of July parade.
> 
> Again, the year's theme is "United We Stand, Proudly We Serve".
> 
> Among the ideas suggested -
> 
> -  honoring our public servants (school teachers, librarians, ...) whose support is being ever further cut to feed our insatiable military/industrial/surveillance war machine, whose importance grows more and more difficult to question - thanks to Merlin
> 
>  - honoring our constitutional rights being dramatically violated, and constitutionally limited powers exceeded, by current government - thanks to Carl (see https://www.facebook.com/groups/305897426305/?fref=ts)
>          (I want a sign, 'where's the 4th amendment on the 4th of July?')
> 
>   - even if we don't construct a float, we should carry a banner, as we did last year (thanks to Theresa and Rohn)
> 
> There's also the prospect of the No More Jails entry from C-U Citizens for Peace and Justice and others, which will be in the parade this year.   If we didn't have an AWARE entry, perhaps some of us would want to march with them.   But even if we do our own thing, there'll be themes in common between protesting mass incarceration and protesting militarism / supporting constitutional rights, as Rohn points out.
> 
> I started out composing this note feeling disheartened.  Now I think we really ought to try again this year.
> If you're game to think further on this or help work on it, please write back.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss