Action Item

Weather permitting (it IS winter time) I plan to make the drive over to D.C. to participate. Will you be there? Time get up from your desk and get your own boots on the ground. There are many local demonstrations across the country. Time to stop bitching and typing and get personally involved.

Americans angered by Bush's plans to escalate the Iraq war will flood the streets of Washington on Saturday, January 27, in a massive national peace march organized by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). Marchers will call on Congress to listen to the voters, not Bush, by using its power to end Bush's war and bring the troops home. The last three national marches organized by UFPJ each attracted between 300,000 and 500,000 people.

MoveOn.org has called upon its 3.2 million members to join UFPJ, describing the march as potentially a "turning point for the war" comparable to how "Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington in 1963 was a turning point in the fight for equality and civil rights." The National Organization for Women (NOW) is mobilizing its chapters to participate. Local anti-war groups in cities and towns across the nation are mobilizing.

On Monday, United for Peace and Justice's web site received more than 700,000 hits. District Council 37 in NYC, AFSCME's largest district council, and New York's United Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers union local in the country, are sending busloads of their members to Washington. Car caravans and peace trains are heading to Washington, DC, from all over the East Coast, Midwest and Southeast. Buses and vans are coming from more than 30 states and 111 cities, including from as far away as Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.