Unfortunately while I was getting this blog post together I found out that the bill discussed here, the war allocation funds bill, has passed the House. It's now going to be an uphill fight for the 32 Democrats who did not vote for it. I applaud their courage, since the bill contained funding for flu vaccine too. But these 32 stayed strong and together and the organizations and people here deserve your support too.
I don't always get political here, because since I've been blogging there hasn't been that much that has caused me to stop everything and protest as in the past. While Bush was president I did protest a great deal to stop the war. I wrote poems and I protested with hundreds of thousands of people. But with Obama as president I thought that I could rest a little after eight long years of constant stress and turmoil for peace.
However, this weekend I received an urgent email reminding me that I needed to do more to help the cause of peace. There is a war supplemental bill in Congress now that many groups are trying to block. This is exactly what it said.
"The following groups and individuals are working very hard to block a war supplemental bill in Congress that would fund the continued war and occupation of Iraq and an escalated war and occupation in Afghanistan: After Downing Street, American Friends Service Committee, Nick Baumann, Brave New Films, Jennifer Brunner, Brendan Calling, Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink, Dday, Declaration of Peace, Democrats.com, Digby, Docudharma, FireDogLake, Bruce Gagnon, Glenn Greenwald, the Hip Hop Caucus, Howie Klein, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Just Foreign Policy, The Nation, Cynthia McKinney, Linda Milazzo, Michael Moore, Military Families Speak Out, Out of Iraq Blogger Caucus, Patriot Daily, Peace Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Jason Rosenbaum, Coleen Rowley, Jonathan Tasini, True Maine Blue, Doug Tudor, United for Peace and Justice, US Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voters for Peace, Joan Wile, Marcy Winograd, World Can't Wait, and the Young Turks."
For people who have been sitting on the sidelines and not calling or writing to their Congress people this might be the time to start calling and writing. We want the war to stop and we need to push our representatives to keep their word. There are no more big bad Republicans stopping them. It is now only the temerity of these people in Congress who need to hear from us NOW!!!! So if you see any group of person you know mentioned in the above people go ahead and support them. If you have a group that needs to start working, this would be a good time to start.
Progressives need to show the rest of the country that there is a better way. Yes, we all want to support the troops, but maybe we need to do that by bringing them home. We can all see by events in Iraq that they don't want us there too much longer anyway. Why not come home and save the money for the domestic problems we have here? Why keep so many troops in Iraq to stabilize the situation? Moving them to Afghanistan is not going to help as much as everyone thinks. There is too much complicated stuff going on there.
I hope you will visit at least one of the links above and will decide to do more to have peace.
Tomorrow I will be giving you more of Betty Butler's thoughts and works. Thank you to all of my followers and any new people who happened upon this blog.
