walk in peace

Peace North walked through Hayward earlier this week mourning the 3000 American soldiers killed  in the Iraq War.  The group also remembered the thousands and thousands of Iraqis killed in the war. Besides the death count, we spend about seven billion dollars a month in Iraq. They weren’t many marchers at the Hayward event, but their message was emphatic.  Get out of Iraq now, change United States energy policy, and work towards peace.  Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network reports.    click here for live stream broadcast

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Joe Gonzalez grew up on the east side of Chicago. Close to the Black Panthers.  He learned the history of the Mexican revolution from his father. That revolution in the early century favored land reform for the peasants. 

Gonzalez points towards the latest resistance to corporate power in Mexico which isn’t getting much media coverage in the United States.

“How many of you saw the Mexicans when they rebelled?  By the millions just like that.

Now why can’t we do the same thing?  By the millions stop everything.  Stop the traffic.

Everything comes to a standstill. We should do the same thing.  Shut everything down.

Because once you control the pocketbooks they are going to listen.  You know.  But the Mexicans brought everything to a standstill. And we can do the same thing. Which means  we just have to keep push and  talking and talking and telling people the truth.  Maybe someday they’ll get it. (Voice chimes in)  According to Jefferson we’re long overdue for a revolution.”

 

In the face of the anti-war November vote, Gonzalez is angry President Bush is attempting to escalate the war in Iraq.

“I believe that we shouldn’t send any more troops at all.  I think that the troops should boycott. I’m sure some will not do that.  But you remember Vietnam some deserted and went to Canada.  So I think if some of the soldiers put down their weapons and went AWOL.  If some of the people rebelled.  Because they’re not listening to the people again. They voted against the war and Bush is doing whatever he wants to do because of the big corporations.”

On an NPR interview last week at Fort Brag, North Carolina, a soldier’s wife said “after 9-11 the Army went to war, but Americans went to the Mall.”  Joe Gonzalez agrees. He says most Americans aren’t prepared to make themselves uncomfortable for Peace.

“Their ideal is to go shopping.  And anything else is unimportant as long as they do their shopping.

Gonzalez thinks the American education system mostly whitewashes United States aggression around the world.

“And I think it’s up to the families not to believe everything they tell in schools.  You should do your own research.  You should teach your children things they don’t learn in schools. Like my father taught me about the Mexican revolution.  About the movements.  My father taught me.”

Ernie Martinson from Hayward was also on the walk down to Shue’s Pond. Martinson also doesn’t believe more shopping and industrial growth is the answer.

 “We’ve got to change our economic system.  It’s got to be more than shopping.  It’s got to be producing and doing things we want to do.  That’s going to involve the decentralization of our economic system.  And not having all this concentration in all our corporation.  We’ve got to start depending on ourselves and not the government.  We’ve got to decentralize.  That’s what the energy crisis is going to force us to do anyway.”

The group ended up praying and exchanging views near a cedar tree by Shue’s Pond which empties into the Namekagon River.  Mohawk spiritual leader Jake Swamp planted this  tree in the early nineteen nineties at a ceremony. 

The Tree of Peace symbolizes burying the hatchets of destruction in the Earth. (to learn more about Jake Swamp and the Tree of Peace Society, click here)

 I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network. 

 

 To learn more about the local organization called Peace North, click here

 To download an MP3 of this story click here