2000 dead -- Too much blood shed

Tonight Sunnyside Woodside Peace and other groups co-sponsored a community forum featuring Jeremy Scahill from Democracy Now, Connecting the Dots -- The Gulf Wars: Iraq to the US Gulf Coast. Jeremy spoke about how New Orleans' Katrina debacle is much more than cronyism and "George Bush doesn't like Black people" -- it is about militarism and paramilitarism, with 130 different private security contractors (reminiscent of Germany's brownshirts, one veteran for peace said), and empire. Throw the black people out and takeover. Transport them far from their homes so they can never find the money to make it back to what is left of them. Outrageous! And Jeremy said so much more and so well, reminding me that there is so much to do -- in Iraq, in New Orleans, in Sunnyside NYC.

And tomorrow is the commemoration of the 2000th American serviceperson dead in Iraq [the ones who died off the battlefields later don't count], which happened today. Over 500 such events are listed on the American Friends Service Committee site (linked in the title). And George W. Bush talks about "their" terrorism. He doesn't see his own actions to the Iraqi people, and to the New Orleans (and Baton Rouge, etc.) people, and to those on the hunger strike at Guantanamo, and those 2000+ dead American troops as terrorism. God forgive him, I don't know if I can. "Too much blood shed for NO noble cause." Cindy Sheehan will get arrested again and maybe, if we are lucky, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby will experience Fitzmas and be indicted. It promises to be a day.

Tomorrow, I'll be wearing my pin from Ruth Klein: Lady Liberty weeping and the words, "2000 TOO MANY - TROOPS HOME NOW". And I will be standing up once again with Cindy, and speaking up and making some positive difference. St. Rosa Parks (RIP) will be watching us, and guiding us, along with St. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose words on another of Ruth's pins should be heeded, "There comes a time when Silence is Betrayal". Let's all call our Senators and Congressmembers: 202-224-3121, light a candle, and speak out. Enough. Too many. Troops home NOW!

Peace hugs,
Kate Anne