Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine

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2008 Harvest Supper
Join us in celebrating the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine’s 20th Anniversary at the 19th Annual Harvest Supper, taking place at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Park Street in Bangor, Saturday, October 4th from 6 to 8 PM.

The harvest Supper is a potluck dinner. Please bring a vegetarian dish made from the bounty of this year’s garden harvest to share.

The program includes Harpest Daryne Rockett, a sing-along with Brian Dyer-Stewart, and reflections by Doug Allen.

For more information, call 942-9343.

At the Blue Hill Library, 7 p.m. tonight, Friday August 15, there will be a slide show and presentation BUILDING PEACE WITH IRAN by Helen Lindsay.

A message about this was sent out to our mailing list this morning. The message contained an alarming list of U.S. battleships dispatched recently to the Persian Gulf region. I think this information reflects the seriousness of the situation and incredible penchant for aggression within the U.S. administration. For the lists, see below …

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Join Hands to End the War, Build the Peace and Rebuild Our Economy

 September 13, 1:00 p.m. Paul Bunyan Park, Bangor
2:30 p.m. Walk for Peace to…

3:00 p.m. Talk with Democracy Now!’s AMY GOODMAN
at the Hammond Street Church

Updated!! Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! will appear at the Hammond Street Church in conjunction with our peace event and the 20th Anniversary of WERU Community Radio!!

Many people are focusing on the next election with the hope that a new administration will end the occupation of Iraq and use diplomacy to negotiate with Iran. We look forward to that possibility, but also want to make sure we continue to build a multi-faceted peace movement that can support and/or challenge the next administration to promote cooperation and diplomacy, reparations for the people of Iraq, support for Veterans of this war and federal budget priorities that serve the needs of people and not primarily military contractors and large corporations.

According to the National Priorities Project, taxpayers in Maine will pay $364.5 million for the President’s request for additional Iraq war spending in FY2008 and FY2009. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:

• 114,740 People with Health Care for One Year OR
• 559,655 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year OR
• 9,290 Public Safety Officers for One year OR
• 6,874 Elementary School Teachers for One Year

Without a strong peace movement the military industrial complex with its well-funded lobbyists will continue to exert strong pressure to maintain the status quo on whichever candidates are elected. We don’t believe this rally will, by itself, exert such a pressure, but we hope it will affirm our unified power, demonstrate to the candidates there is a peace movement to which they will be held accountable, and help fuel on-going local organizing.

We hope the rally will bring together peace & justice activists from Eastern and Northern Maine who have been doing the most important work of sustaining weekly vigils and building grassroots organizations in their own communities.

Join us to show how you and the people you serve are being impacted by current budget priorities and policies that support the war in Iraq and neglect our communities. Here are some ways you can help.

• Have your group listed as a co-sponsor of the event
• Promote the event to your members through announcements, newsletters, etc. (We will provide posters and postcards to help you do this)
• Write letters to the editor expressing your concerns
• Bring members to the event with signs expressing their concerns
• Sign on to a signature ad to appear on September 11th in the Bangor Daily News and encourage your members to sign on

Because the Center did not plan a special event for 2008, I am posting an audio player for the WERU Voices program I assembled from our August 6, 2007 Hiroshima/Nagasaki Commemorations at Pierce Park and the Hammond Street Church in Bangor:

You may visit peacecast.us HERE to download the podcast.

Today, August 6, 2008, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba asked for the new U.S. president to support a proposed ban on nuclear weapons. Mayor Akiba is quoted extensively in our 2007 program.

Subject: Diego Garcia

To: Chagos Support Group

Hello Friends of the Chagos people,

A long overdue note of thanks and a status report:

As you may recall and have read, though the coverage in the states has been sparse, the case of the injustice dealt the Chagossians, the people of Diego Garcia, before the House of Lords in London recently.  The British government was filing its final appeal of the court decisions that have three times given these displaced people the right to return to the outer islands of the Chagos Archipelago.

Twenty-eight Chagossians, including several of the survivors of the actual displacement in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s were able to make the trip from Mauritius, where they presently reside, to London.  One of those survivors traveled thanks to the generosity of concerned Maine citizens as we raised a little over $2000.

You may not know that about two weeks before the trial began on June 30th I learned that the Department of Peace Studies at UMO would sponsor my own trip to London to meet with the Chagos and to witness the trial.  To say it was a remarkable experience does not begin to state my gratitude for the opportunity to come to better know the issue and the privilege I felt to stand with the Chagossians.

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On Tuesday June 3, 2008 at the annual Bar Harbor Town Meeting, a resolution was passed which put Bar Harbor on record as opposing a war with Iran unless expressly authorized by Congress.

Concerned by the research of Seymour Hersh and other investigative journalists that the Bush administration was preparing to launch an invasion of Iran, MDI Peace and Justice, led and inspired by citizen activist Susan Murphy, sought a special meeting of the town at which to vote on a resolution condemning such action.

We were advised to gather 234 signatures — ten per cent of the number of voters in the last election — on a petition asking the Council to call a special meeting. We did gather those signatures and attempted to present them to the Town Council as instructed. The Council refused to accept the petition or to hear the resolution, incorrectly invoking the town charter and dismissing our legally prescribed attempt. The headline, by the way, in one of the local papers, was “Peaceniks Plea Quashed.”

MDI Peace and Justice decided to persist and planned to address the annual town meeting, our intent being to challenge the ruling of the Council chair, based on a lawyer colleague’s research into both the Town Charter and the state statute.

We had heard, in the meantime, that the town of Harpswell, Maine had passed a similar resolution. We were also contacted by “Cities For Peace” an organization which assists towns and cities in passing such resolutions and chronicles those which have succeeded. In addition, Ron Greenberg contacted the National Priorities Project, which calculates not only the cost of the Iraq war
borne by each town, but also illustrates what could have been achieved with that amount of money if it had not been squandered on the war. Realizing the enormous impact of these facts (shown below) we decided to make that the basis of our request to the town that our resolution be heard.

Lacking the legal and strategic knowledge and experience that we realized might be crucial to our success, we turned to attorney Art Grief, a citizen of Bar harbor experienced in dealing with town government and, indeed in litigating petition cases. Art shortened our motion, negotiated with the meeting moderator and forcefully, concisely and brilliantly made our case before the assembled citizens of the town. In the discussion that followed his making the motion, we detailed the costs of the war and what could have been accomplished the wasted money, and in the voting that followed, the resolution passed by about fifty votes. The resolution reads as follows:

Resolved that the Town of Bar harbor, through its annual town meeting, opposes any military action by the United States against the Islamic Republic of Iran without express Congressional authorization in accordance with the War Powers Act.

For those of us who labored long on this mission, for true warriors for peace like Suzanne Fitzgerald, for the 247 signatories to our petition, for attorney Lynne Willams who graciously gave of her time to research the charter and the statutes, for Art Grief whose expertise helped bring our dream to fruition, for Susan Murphy who conceived and guided the entire effort, this was a dramatic, emotional and historic moment. Our hope now is that our experience will motivate, inspire and instruct other towns to pass similar resolutions.

Dan Lourie
MDI Peace and Justice

Bar Harbor taxpayers will pay $1.4 million for the cost of the Iraq War in Fiscal Year 2007. That amount of money could have provided:

• 444 People with Health Care for One Year OR
• 2,164 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year OR
• 36 Public Safety Officers for One year OR
• 24 Music and Arts Teachers for One Year OR
• 189 Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR
• 11 Affordable Housing Units OR
• 426 Children with Health Care for One Year OR
• 202 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR
• 27 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR
• 18 Port Container Inspectors for One year

Special film showing

We have decided to add a film to our spring series on Tuesday June 24, at the Center, 170 Park Street, Bangor, 7:00 6:30 pm. (Note earlier time.)

From the Bullfrog films description: “STEALING A NATION is an extraordinary film about the plight of people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean - secretly and brutally expelled from their homeland by British governments in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to make way for an American military base. The base, on the main island of Diego Garcia, was a launch pad for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

A remarkable dossier of evidence has been put together by Pilger and producer Chris Martin, all from official files, charting one of the most shocking conspiracies of modern times, which continues today.

Diego Garcia is America’s largest military base in the world, outside the US. There are more than 4,000 troops, two bomber runways, thirty warships and a satellite spy station. The Pentagon calls it an “indispensable platform” for policing the world.

Before the Americans came, more than 2,000 people lived on the islands, many with roots back to the late 18th century. There were thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a railway and an undisturbed way of life. The islands were, and still are, a British crown colony. In the 1960s, the government of Harold Wilson struck a secret deal with the United States to hand over Diego Garcia. The Americans demanded that the islands be “swept” and “sanitized”. Unknown to Parliament and to the US Congress, the British government plotted with Washington to expel the entire population - in secrecy and in breach of the United Nations Charter.”

Update, FMI: For more information on the local campaign for the rights of the Chagos islanders, please listen to WERU Voices for May 13, featuring audio excerpts from the film and an interview with our own Dud Hendrick.

June 2008 P & J Newsletter

Off-budget Iraq/Afghan occupation funding sweetened with vet benefits
Little-noticed provision supplies billions for military bases worldwide

Maine Owl has more commentary.

Let’s take a look at what is actually in this bill.

This brief summary, with my comments added on a few of the items, comes from yesterday’s AP release, Highlights of Senate Iraq war funding bill (by Andrew Taylor). Key provisions would:

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UPDATED w/Ch. 7 Coverage:

Original post:

On Wednesday, May 21st we will deliver copies of the signatories to to the petition below to the Bangor offices of Senators Collins and Snowe after a brief press conference at the Center at 11:00 a.m. (not noon as announced earlier). Let us know if you can join us. The copy of the petition is below, in case you missed it the first time

We are heartened by Rep. Michaud and Allen’s votes against continued funding of the Iraq War. This week as the Senate considers funding of the Iraq War, we need to ask our Senators to do the same. To sign the petition below by e-mail, click reply and add your name and town at the end of the message or e-mail to info@peacectr.org to let us know you would like to sign it.

Ilze Petersons

We urge Sen. Collins and Sen. Snow to vote against any further funding of the Occupation of Iraq. Any further Iraq funding should go only toward military withdrawal, reconstruction, and reparations — not continued military presence. We want our tax dollars back in Maine and our country to rebuild our own communities for real security and to care for the veterans physically and psychologically wounded by this war.

Signed:

May 2008 P&J Newsletter

april-2008-pj-newsletter.pdf