Today I had an interesting email appeal from a group called RootsAction to sign a petition to our congress persons saying “Peace on earth should include Afghanistan”. RootsAction states: “We cannot be satisfied with inner peace while wars are being waged with our money and in our names. The largest of those wars remains Afghanistan. It is larger now than when Barack Obama first became president. There is no strategic, legal, or — above all — moral justification for continuing this war for another year, or for another day, much less until “2024 and beyond” as President Obama hopes.”
I agree with their statement but am not signing the petition to local congress persons. Thinking that petitions will make a difference to politicians and real change is a distraction, I believe. Being an adult in 60’s and 70’s I was taught that only in ‘action’ would there be change. We used nonviolent action or community organizing tactics like confrontation and demands made famous by Saul Alinsky to make change. Now taking ‘action’ or using confrontation tactics like encouraged by Saul Alinksy in his book “Rules for Radicals” seems to be reserved for groups like the ‘Tea Party’.
The campaign to for “Peace on Earth should include Afghanistan” is a good example of the change from nonviolent actions to petitions as a way for change. Some of the same ‘radicals’ or peace activities that were demonstrating before the beginning of the war in Afghanistan to avoid it are now proposing signing petitions to end it. If actions did not prevent it and electing a President for change only increased the war and its bloodshed how do we think a petition will stop it.
Where is the Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela’s when we need them? Where is the “Occupy Movement”? I sincerely believe we can made a difference and change in this county but it will not be by money, guns, voting or petitions, where the “powers that be” are strongest. It will only be, I believe, with our resistance, direct actions including civil disobedience, strikes, occupying and by working together. When we say “Peace on Earth” this Christmas season we need to include Afghanistan, not in “2024 and beyond”, but right now.
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