Million Doors for Peace
Posted by Thomas Nephew on September 6th, 2008
Members of the United States Congress:
The five and a half years of war in Iraq has been an exercise of misplaced priorities:
Draining U.S. taxpayers of at least three trillion dollars which could have gone towards investments that strengthen our economy, such as: health care for our families, ensuring the best education for our children and youth, and addressing the energy crisis. Resulting in hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqi’s dead and wounded. And undermining the United States’ standing as a worldwide symbol for democracy and justice. Because of these reasons, the majority of American and Iraqi people want the United States to begin a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq as soon as possible, with a date certain for completing that process.
On September 20, an alliance of organizations including USAction, MoveOn.org, United for Peace and Justice, Pax Christi USA and others will be circulating this petition in a new kind of demonstration — a demonstration of power. The goal is to have 25,000 volunteers visit or call a million households, asking for people’s agreement with the statement. That will (1) help elevate the issue of Iraq and its economic, human and moral costs, and (2) expand a database of war opponents to pressure whoever gains the White House this November to accelerate their plans for withdrawing American troops from Iraq.
The idea is that you sign up here; Million Doors for Peace will contact you with a list of addresses to visit or call; on September 20th, that’s what you do; then you report back to the web site with the information you’ve gathered. According to the e-mail alert I got, the addresses will be of “new or infrequent voters.”
I’m going to do it. I hope you will too.
After the FISA vote this summer, I vowed I was not going to just be a foot soldier for the Democratic Party this fall. I wish the Obama campaign well, and will work with it in the weeks ahead. But I won’t put all my work there this fall. As Russ Feingold put it earlier this year, “January 21 is as important as January 20,” meaning that it wasn’t enough just to elect the right guy. Even Obama will need to see pressure (and be able to point to it) if we want a timely withdrawal from Iraq rather than endless postponements of one — to say nothing of McCain. This will be one small way for me to help prepare the ground for that.
Category: Post. Tags: activism, election08, iraq, md4p.
Thread RSS,
Comment, Trackback.
Print This
September 7th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Good on ya!
Thanks for the prodding to put up a post expanding on the thoughts brought up by your email on the Million Doors project
September 8th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Very interesting post (”Prepare to dare or prepare to despair“) and linked post (”The curse of self-appointed liberal “leadership”“), via the “but only if it doesn’t cost Democrats” link near the top.
Re the latter — I don’t have your background with USAction and Citizens Action; a second post of yours that that post links to refers to those organizations being dismissive of “issue-heads”. I would simply say that in this case the arguable-counterproof-by-counterexample is in the pudding: rather than go electoral, or 100% electoral, these organizations (including even MoveOn) are supporting what “Obama-Onlys” would say is a diversion of resources. As you say, it’s also encouraging that the petition calls for a faster withdrawal than Obama does.
[NOTE: I'll cross-comment this to your post, and add a couple of items that don't pertain to the Million Doors topic here per se (health care, impeachment). Readers here are strongly encouraged to head over to Nell's and have a look at her post and any comment conversations that develop!]
[UPDATE: Nell has now cross posted her "prepare to dare" post to "A Tiny Revolution" where there are already 31 comments.]
PS: no big deal, but your link to my post is wrong, it should be to
http://newsrackblog.com/2008/09/06/million-doors-for-peace/ .
September 8th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
31 comments, a third of which are troll feeding. But the rest are great! :>
September 9th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
i think it’s a great idea — but please, i hope they fix the typo — it should be “iraqis,” not “iraqi’s”
September 9th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Yeah, I noticed that, too. I’ll see what I can do.
…Have fired off a correction using the “Contact Us” form.
December 4th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
[...] such considerations aside, I’m also satisfied that I did my best to help raise the issues of Iraq, civil liberties, torture, global warming, Iran, and the rule of law during the election season, [...]