Out of Afghanistan, NOW:
Join Grandmothers Against the War in a "Reach Out" at Union Square
in San Francisco,
every Thursday from
12:00-1:00 pm. We talk to - and leaflet - passers-by, Bay Area
residents on lunch breaks and tourists who are in town en masse, about
the need to leave Afghanistan.
We meet at the corner of Powell and Geary at Noon and afterwards have
lunch, either in the Westfield Centre or another local site. We'll
have the leaflets and banners and Grandmothers
Against the War signs;
all we need is YOU!
Please
read Bob Herbert's NY Times June 11, 2010 column, "The
Courage to Leave Afghanistan"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/opinion/12herbert.html
For more information contact us at info@gawba.org or phone (510) 845-3815
Sample Leaflet:
CALL President
Obama, Your Congressional Representative,
and Senators
THE
MESSAGE IS SIMPLE:
OUT OF AFGHANISTAN
NOW
California taxpayers have spent $37.9 billion on the Afghanistan
conflict since 2001. The same amount of money would have provided for
491,969 elementary school teachers or 405,844 police/sheriff’s
patrol officers or 4,534,351 scholarships for university students for one
year. ( http://www.nationalpriorities.org/tradeoffs has statistics for all states)
Your
representatives need to hear that this situation is unacceptable.
Phone: President Obama
1-202-456-1111 (between 9 am-5 pm EST)
Congressional
Switchboard (toll-free) 1-877-851-6437 or 1-877-210-5351
(Ask to speak to either of your senators or your congressional
representative)
Photo
Flyer
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Recruitment of New Members
Join
us! If one of our on-going projects
interests you or if you have an idea for another endeavor that fits into
the goals of our group, please contact us. One of the joys in working with GAW is that folks can devise their own actions and GAW will attempt to recruit volunteers to implement
those actions. If you just want to
sit at home and write letters or make phone calls or even create
leaflets, we want to hear from you!
Contact us at info@gawba.org or phone (510) 845-3815.
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Truth in Recruiting - The Full Picture
Military
recruiters have a very significant presence on many high school
campuses. We have taken on the job
of countering their presence with that of grandmothers who want our youth
to understand the "full picture". What are the recruiters
telling students that may be untrue?
What are the recruiters conveniently neglecting to tell them about
military service?
To
that end, we work in local high schools. It has been difficult to gain
access to some schools, although the law requires that we be permitted to
have such access. So -
we meet with principals, counselors, teachers, school superintendents,
explain to them what we are doing, and eventually we are able to go into
the schools with literature, set up tables at Career Fairs, and, if
teachers invite us, speak to students in their classrooms.
We invite you to join us. The
work can be as time-consuming as you wish, from delivering leaflets to
school libraries and counseling centers, to tabling, to speaking in
classrooms.
Contact us at Truth@GAWBA.org
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Landmine Clearance
Grandmothers
Against the War is working with HALO USA to promote the clearance of landmines
and other explosive remnants of war in Afghanistan. These devices kill or maim an average of
80 people every month and hinder agricultural production, trade, and
access to schools and water.
GAW will reach out to religious, business and
other organizations and arrange for a HALO representative, who has served
as a director of mine clearance, to talk about HALO’s
work. GAW
representatives will then lead a discussion.
GAW aims to raise awareness of
issues and problems especially important to explore as the United States sends
additional troops
to Afghanistan.
Discussing landmine clearance and the history of the wars that brought
them into existence is an excellent way to begin a more wide-ranging
exploration of the situation in Afghanistan today. Any funds collected will go directly to
HALO for its work in Afghanistan.
If you are interested in
working on this project or have suggestions of groups that might be
receptive to this talk, please contact Grandmothers Against the War at landmines@gawba.org or phone
510-845-3815.
There are many tasks to perform;
you need not be conversant with the situation in Afghanistan. Indeed, you need not even lead a
discussion, if you prefer not to do so.
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Letter to the Editor
In order to promote "Letters to the
Editor" about Afghanistan
and Iraq
in communities outside of the usual liberal bastions, GAW
has developed a sample letter. We
encourage you to send this letter or an edited version of it to your
contacts outside the Bay Area and thereby make it easier for them to write
to their local newspapers. Following is the letter that we have
written. You or your
contacts should change it in any way that you or they
think will make it more effective.
Please ask your friends to send it to a local newspaper over their
signatures. If any do get printed, please let us know at info@gawba.org.
Sample Letter:
Recent polls
show that a majority of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan; the Obama
administration is now sending
additional troops to the area.
Do you remember the reason given for
attacking Afghanistan? President Bush demanded that the Afghan
government extradite Osama Bin Laden; the Afghans agreed to do so if the U.S.
produced evidence of his guilt. Instead of providing the evidence, the U.S.
invaded in violation of international law that allows a country to wage
war only under an immediate military threat.
The U.S. didn't give its real reasons for
invading Afghanistan:
the U.S. strategy to
dominate militarily that part of Asia; to put pressure on Iran, China
and Russia;
and probably to secure a safe route for natural gas pipelines.
As the time of
the invasion in 2001, the U.S.
stated goals were to 1) destroy al-Qaeda, 2) build democracy in Afghanistan,
and 3) relieve the suffering and oppression of Afghan women.
Eight years
later, President Obama's national security adviser, former Marine General
James Jones, said: "The al-Qaeda presence is very
diminished. The maximum estimate
[in Afghanistan]
is less than 100…" The government of Afghanistan is widely
acknowledged to be inept and corrupt.
Conditions facing women in Afghanistan are deplorable
and the human rights of all people are flagrantly violated.
It is urgent that we immediately withdraw all our
forces; the U.S.
cannot police the world.
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“Love, Grandma” Book
Inspired by one
woman’s urge to “write something to my 10-year-old
granddaughter … to help her to live positively in the world she must grow up in,” GAW launched the “Love, Grandma” Letters
Project. Considering our age
and experience — we’ve
lived through so many wars! — we
decided we were well qualified to pass onto younger generations the
helpful lessons we have learned.
We gathered letters from like-minded individuals for publication
in a book.
Since November 2007, Love, Grandma: Activists
Write is available as a paperback for $ 7.50. You can order the
book here .
By distributing the
book widely we want to persuade people to take action against the
occupation in Iraq,
military intervention in Afghanistan
and Pakistan, and any
proposed military action in Iran. Through readings in
libraries and senior centers we have wanted to encourage readers to write their own letters
to their grandchildren and share them with us.
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CODE PINK: Women say NO to war
Sign Petition to stand in
solidarity with the women of Afghanistan as they speak out
against the surge http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/424/t/8834/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=2125
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