Out of Afghanistan, NOW:
Bring our Troops and War Dollars Home
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 about the need to bring our troops and war dollars home from
Iraq and Afghanistan.
We meet at the corner of Powell and Geary at
Noon. We'll have the leaflets and banners and Grandmothers Against the War signs; all we need is YOU!
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:
BRING OUR TROOPS and WAR DOLLARS HOME
The war in Afghanistan
began in Oct. 2001; in Iraq,
March 2003. With all the deaths, injuries, and destruction, are we any
more secure?
Also, taxpayers in California
will pay $21.5 billion for proposed total Iraq
& Afghanistan
war spending for Fiscal Year 2011. That amount of money could fund:
278,731 elementary school
teachers OR
229,936 police/sheriff’s
patrol officers OR
2.3 million military veterans
receiving VA Medical care for one year
OR
ALMOST THE ENTIRE STATE
DEFICIT OF $25 BILLION
< http://national priotiries.org/tools/tradefoffs/> has statistics
for all states.
Your Representatives need to
hear that this situation is unacceptable.
Phone: President Obama 1-202-456-1111 (between 9am-5pm 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)
Other
grandmothers/concerned humans are welcome to join us in leafleting at
Geary/Powell
in S.F. on Thursdays, Noon-1pm.
Grandmothers
Against the War
P.O. Box 9476, Berkeley,
CA 94709
510-845-3815
www.gawba.org
info@gawba.org
Photos
Flyer
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Grandmothers Against the War urges you to sign
on to the:
SF Bay Area Campaign for New Priorities
A number
of Bay Area political and peace and justice groups have coalesced to support and foster the Campaign for New
Priorities. Grandmothers
Against the War is urging you to sign
on. Information is available here.
The "new priorities" include some of GAW’s old priorities, but in this
campaign we are part of a coalition pushing similar goals. In
short,
The Campaign's New Priorities
•
End the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Major systematic
reductions in the Pentagon budget
•
Immediate and significant increases in domestic investment in jobs, infrastructure,
new technologies, education, health care, environmental protection, an
effective social safety net, defense of Social Security and Medicare
against threatened cuts, and all those efforts that enhance the Common
Good of our society.
Do
sign on at New
Priorities Campaign
Any questions, please e-mail or phone 510-845-3815.
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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
Write with Other Like-Minded Folks
Think
better working with others? Grandmothers Against the War has initiated a
letter-writing group that gets together at Tobey Wiebe’s
home every other Tuesday. The idea
is for those who think and perhaps write better collectively to formulate
letters to editors of newspapers/magazines/blogs or to the President/
Congress/ local officials, etc. The group will even consider writing
editorials. If you are interested,
please contact Tobey Wiebe via tobey@gawba.org.
Write in the Comfort
of Your Own Home or Local Coffee Shop
* You need not leave home to write letters. Code Pink has developed an effective
tool for writing letters to editors.
Please see: Codepinkaction
* GAW has developed a sample letter to promote letters
in communities outside the usual liberal bastions. We encourage you to send this letter,
an edited version of it, or the link to Code Pink’s web page 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.
Check
out the letter to the editor of the San
Francisco Chronicle : “The page hasn’t
turned” from GAW member,
Helen Isaacson, at
SFgate.
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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