|
Iraq Peace
Team (IPT) Since September 2002, seasoned nonviolent activists have been on the
ground in Iraq standing in solidarity with the people of Iraq while at the same
time working to prevent a US attack. In the
event of a US attack, this website will become a multimedia resource site for
news from the team on the ground in Iraq as well as a
clearinghouse for anti-war news and strategies here at home. Please check in
often and get involved in whatever way you can. Your voice is needed to say
“No!” to a US attack on Iraq. http://iraqpeaceteam.org/pages/announcement.html
----- Original
Message -----
From: Find Truth
Sent: Wednesday, December
11, 2002 2:11 AM
Subject: How to stop the
war Dear friend in peace,
I figured that you, and the approximately 2000 other members of peace and human rights organizations around the world that I am emailing tonight, would be the perfect ones to contact about a new movement that I've begun; it takes Gandhi's message and carries it forward into entirely new proportions, something international, something that will actually stop this war and the terrorism we can anticipate to follow or accompany it. Please visit http://www.BecomeTheChange.org. *** Endorsements *** Arun Gandhi, one of Mahatma Gandhi's grandchildren and founder of the Gandhi Institute, endorses us. He says that BecomeTheChange is "an excellent idea." Peacebuilder Hassan Yousufzai, a Fullbright Fellow at the Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisburg, Virginia and major peacemaker in the Pakistani government, endorses us, as well (though let me emphasize that he endorses BecomeTheChange only as himself, of course, not representing the government of Pakistan). Arun Gandhi, Hassan Yousufzai, and Catherine Dishion, head of the Santa Barbara United Nations chapter, are willing to speak on my behalf even with the Iraqi officials who will need to know about the peacework that we've been doing in order to help prepare for our arrival and our visit there - and perhaps to protect us if the need arises (though it seems, from the information I've been receiving, that this protection won't be necessary.) Also, Kazu Furuta of the Santa Barbara, California U.N. chapter is writing an article on BecomeTheChange for the U.N. newsletter to be published this January. We've filmed a general-purpose interview (some of which you can view on our web site) and added great footage of the outstanding local peace demonstrations that we've been having in Santa Barbara. We've also gone in person to the Carter Institute with it to show them what we are about. We're in touch with Voices in the Wilderness, Not In Our Name, Veterans for Peace and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Members of these and many other peace organizations have indicated strong support and interest in the idea. Soon we'll contact salon.com, michaelmoore.com, Donahue, and others. We will be releasing a press release to foreign press probably by late next week. In other words, this is real. We're talking to the right people who can help to make this happen. We're very, very serious. So feel encouraged and consider helping us out by placing a link to our site somewhere on your own web site; making the pledge an action item for your web site's visitors; endorsing us; and, most importantly, by far, printing and distributing the attached leaflets. Although this massive human shield will *absolutely* work if we get enough people to pledge and contribute (money, consulting, interpreters, and other resources), it will require first and foremost a lot of awareness- and fundraising to get all 5,000 (or 6,000, or 8,000 or 10,000 - it is up to us to decide) there and back. The best way to achieve both is to tell everyone to tell everyone to tell everyone (&c.) to go to www.BecomeTheChange.org and sign the pledge. Please spread this message far and wide. The more pledges we receive, the more real this becomes. As long as 5,000 or more will pledge to go, we at BecomeTheChange will, on our end, make it possible and actually very safe. The amount of media coverage, alone, will assure that. The internationality of the movement will be our second greatest protection. And this helps to create the media attention. But to get the media, we've got to make some news for them. This has to be immense. Bush is going to launch an attack very soon. Unless we hurry over there and say, look. It's not going to be done this way. You are not going to get your hands on this turf and you are not going to destroy these lives. We want to prevent what we can of that most terrible of agonies - grief. So, for the love of everything you hold sacred or dear, please... BECOME THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD. Peace, Liev K. Aleo Co-founder & Director BecomeTheChange "We must become the change we want to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi  |
