'People's Inauguration' Builds on Peace, Human Rights (Maine)

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'People's Inauguration' Builds on Peace, Human Rights
by Ilze Peterson

This coming week we will commemorate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., and a few days later President Bush will be inaugurated. President Bush claims to have a mandate for the war in Iraq, but many in the peace movement recall the prophetic words of Martin Luther King Jr. when speaking of the Vietnam War.

He said, "A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: 'This way of settling difference is not just.' This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

In a recent issue of The Nation (Dec. 20, 2004), Tom Andrews, in one of a series of short pieces on the response to the re-election of President Bush, suggests there is a moral imperative to stop the Bush administration's war on Iraq. Citing the growing malnutrition among Iraqi children and the brutal destruction of Fallujah, Andrews says, "The leadership required to meet this imperative will not come from Democrats in Congress. It will come from a focused, determined and relentless antiwar movement."

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We hope you will join with members of the Maine Peace Action Committee, Veterans for Peace, Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Peace through Interamerican Community Action, the Orono Peace Group, the Maine Coalition for Peace & Justice and others on Jan. 20 at noon for a rally in front of the library at the University of Maine for "A People's Inauguration: Our Agenda for the Next Four Years." The rally will be followed by coffee, cake and information sharing indoors.

We will remember the prophetic words of Martin Luther King Jr. as we rededicate ourselves to act on the values of peace, justice, cooperation, equality, human rights and a sustainable environment.

Ilze Petersons is a member of the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0115-21.htm