Take Action: These Peace Leaders Are Attending The United National Peace Conference - Will YOU Be There?

The conference will be held July 23-25, 2010 in Albany, New York. Among those who will be attending:

€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because our duty to resist complicity in mass murder doesn't change with the season or the political party of the president. This war is illegal, immoral, economically catastrophic, and hopeless on its own terms. It is endangering and impoverishing us all. In the face of endless revelations that, just as we would, the people of Afghanistan hate being occupied, war proponents have resorted to advertising Afghanistan's mineral wealth. But seizing that wealth would be, like the rest of this operation, illegal and counterproductive. And unless bin Laden is hiding underneath the Lithium, this just takes us further from the equally illegal and counterproductive original casus belli of revenge. A smart and strategic fraction of the majority of Americans who oppose this madness can end it if we take heart, stay organized, and seize opportunities -- of which there are now many. Albany will be remembered as the beginning of the end of a crime against humanity. Who wouldn't want to be able to say they were there?€

David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org

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"I will be attending the National Peace Conference because the future of humanity requires a strong and determined domestic opposition to U.S. imperial wars. The Obama regime, like its predecessors, intends to take not one step backward in its drive to contain or kill all opposition to American global hegemony. The U.S. maintains close to 800 military bases in nearly 60 foreign countries, and will not withdraw from a single one of them unless forced to by the American people, or by military and political defeat. President Obama has taken up the imperial baton from where George Bush dropped it when the Iraqi resistance halted the U.S. Middle East offensive of 2003. Obama has widened the theaters of war in Asia and increased American military penetration of Africa. African Americans must reclaim our place in the front ranks of peace, especially now that the face of U.S. aggression is Black."

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report

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€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because every day, 850 Afghan children die. One fourth of Afghanistan's children don't live beyond their fifth year. As the U.S. wages war against one of the poorest countries in the world, U.S. people will be asked to spend one million dollars to keep one soldier in Afghanistan, for one year. Elites in Washington, D.C. and London discuss what they want to see happen in Afghanistan. The question should be: What do people of Afghanistan want to see happen? When we gather in Albany, we'll have an opportunity to better understand why many in Afghanistan insist that they don't want invaders of their country, in collusion with warlords, to dictate their future. I want to gather with war resisters who are determined to create a timetable that will help us coordinate actions to end the U.S. warfare in Afghanistan.€

Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence

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€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because in the labor movement we understand that our power and success depends on our unity and solidarity. No part of the antiwar or social justice movements has sufficient power to make the kinds of changes we need to put our country on the path to meeting the needs of our people while acting as a responsible member of the international community. We can only achieve that by cooperating to combine our individual efforts. The conference is another step down that road. OUR DIVERSITY + UNITY + SOLIDARITY = POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLD.€

Michael Eisenscher, National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War

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€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because our nation has become a non-stop killing machine. For over fifty years we have repeated endless attacks on defenseless civilians. Each and every one of these aggressive wars has led to the moral and physical deterioration of the United States as well as the massacre of countless non-combatants. We affirm the position of Johan Galtung, the founder of the field of peace and conflict studies in his new book, THE FALL OF THE US EMPIRE. Speaking of the Afghanistan War and how to get out, Galtung says, ‘I love the US Republic, and I hate the US Empire.€

Blase Bonpane, Ph.D
Director, OFFICE OF THE AMERICAS

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€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because I've been protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the streets since 2003, and I am desperate to find a way to finally bring our troops home. I have five grandchildren, and I don't want them to live in a country, the United States, where we are universally despised for our immoral attacks and oppression of other countries, where the needs of our citizens are more and more neglected because of the abominable amounts of our tax money spent on these conflicts, and where our young people are needlessly dying and suffering grievous mental and physical wounds fighting for no discernible reason. My hope is that together in Albany we will find a solution and finally bring an end to these unconscionable, destructive wars of our making.

Joan Wile, Founder-Director, Grandmothers Against the War

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€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because the U.S.'s resource wars for profit are still raging and the anti-war €˜movement€™ is asleep at the wheel. The wars for profit continue to kill countless numbers of people and it is obvious that our €˜leaders€™ don't want them to end. The people of this country need to be educated that the Democrats don't want to help us.€

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of SPC. Casey Sheehan who was killed in Iraq on 04 April 2004. She is the national director of Peace of the Action and the author of five books and host of her own radio show: Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox.

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€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because this is a critical time for progressive movement building in general and for the peace/ anti-war movements in particular. Across the nation people are hurting. Millions have lost their jobs, homes and dignity. Adding to the unemployment numbers; state and local governments are cutting budgets to the bone, laying off workers who provide important services. Searching for answers, many people are beginning to connect bloated war funding with the lack of resources to address domestic concerns. Recent polls show a majority of people oppose continuation of the Afghan war and do not think it worth the resources we are expending. Some powerful members of Congress want to address domestic concerns before considering more war funding and city mayors across the country as members of Mayors for Peace are calling for redirection of nuclear weapons spending to meet the needs of cities. Gathering in Albany is a perfect time to strategize, energize and create our vision of a better tomorrow. The struggle has been hard and long. We are still here, we are not going away and together we will bring about the change we seek.€

Michael T. McPhearson, Co-Chair, United for Peace and Justice; Former Executive Director, Veterans for Peace

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€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because I ardently believe that the antiwar movement must overcome its divisions and move forward in a united way. The conference can help promote this. Think about it: hundreds of movement activists from around the country gathered under one roof and getting to know one another in the 30 workshops, panels, and plenary sessions; discussing and debating issues with the kind of passion that has characterized past conferences; enjoying the musical interludes that the conference will provide; and coming out of a packed weekend with the program of action that the conference will have adopted based on one person, one vote. And when it'€™s over and we head for home, I am certain it will be with renewed confidence in our movement'€™s ability to re-energize and revitalize itself. That will augur well as we get to work organizing the united mobilizations called for by the conference that are so urgently needed and which the world awaits, coming as they will from the belly of the beast.

Jerry Gordon, Secretary, United National Antiwar Conference (UNAC); Co-Coordinator, National Assembly to End U.S. Wars and Occupations

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I will be attending the National Peace Conference because now, more than ever, to defeat U.S. wars and occupations, we must be non-partisan, united, and prepared to mobilize massive mobilizations in the streets of this country. The Vietnam War ended under two Republican presidents, and it ended when it did only because of the victories of the Vietnamese liberation forces on the battlefield, together with the unyielding pressure from a massive anti-war movement at home. We proved then, and must remember now, that what is more important than who is sitting in the White House or in the Congress, is who is marching in the streets of this nation!

Jim Lafferty, Executive Director
National Lawyers Guild/L.A.

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€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because I believe it is the elementary duty of progressive Americans to oppose US wars of aggression and its occupation of other countries. As U.S. corporations and investment banks intensify their push for obscene levels of profit throughout the world, war will be an ever-present part of US politics from now on. It is therefore essential that we build a strong antiwar movement in the US. This conference is our best chance to accomplish this.€

Joe Lombardo, Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace

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€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because I still believe in an American Dream, one of peace and the restoration of a quality of life that gives hope to all working people of the world. As leaders, young and old, it is not enough to possess knowledge or feel passionately in regards to the deplorable conditions of our country and the impact the United States has imposed on others around the world. It is our great responsibility to move forward as leaders with a plan that will give millions of people around our country the confidence to understand that they have a voice to be heard and a vote to be cast. The Albany Conference affords us the unique opportunity to respectfully listen, communicate, organize and unite our efforts. It embodies the experience of our nation’s history and the dynasty of our future. I’ll look forward to seeing you there.

Donna S. Dewitt, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO

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€œI will be attending the National Peace Conference because it is critical for all the antiwar forces to unite to become a more effective coalition that will stop endless wars and occupations. The Albany conference offers an opportunity for participation in democratic decision-making around strategies that will unify all the groups working to mobilize against wars.

Pat O'€™Brien, Executive Board, Women'€™s International League for Peace and Freedom