Can’t get enough Peace Activism? Here’s a nice list of some upcoming events happening around the Bay Area.
Also, stay tuned for everything that Peace Club is doing in the month of May! We have a lot planned…

• The House and Senate are expected to pass a bill by the end of the week that will set an October 1 date to begin a troop withdrawal from Iraq. President Bush has vowed to veto the bill. There will be a demonstration to protest Bush’s action the day after Bush issues his veto. If that day falls on a weekday, the protest will be held at 5:00 pm. If the day-after falls on a weekend, the protest will be held at 3:00 pm. In either case, the protest will be held at the corner of El Camino Real and Embarcadero Road in Palo Alto. The protest will be sponsered by the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center.

  This local action will be part of a massive series of similar demonstrations around the country. National groups such as United for Peace and Justice, MoveOn, True Majority and Working Assets are all calling for local after-veto demonstrations.

  Note: While Peninsula Peace and Justice Center does not support the legislation that Congress will pass, we do believe it is important to draw attention to Bush’s veto, as his action will be a clear signal that he is ignoring the will of the majority of Americans and remains committed to maintaining his failed direction in Iraq. Protesting the expected veto will serve as a reminder that a majority of Americans want the occupation ended and the troops brought home.

  The biggest flaw with the legislation is that it continues to fund the war. Congress should pass spending legislation that authorizes funds only for the safe and rapid withdrawal of the troops. The after-veto demonstration should be seen as an effort to keep up the pressure on Congress as well as to protest Bush’s actions.

  In the meantime, call the White House, your representative, and your senators to tell them to end the war and bring the troops home now. Find their contact info.

• Wave upon wave of Homland Security raids continue to assail immigrant workers across the United States as the Senate prepares to introduce its “overhaul” of federal immigration policy.

  The federal government has unleashed a counter-insurgency-type campaign against immigrant workers to prevent a repeat of the May Day 2006 upsurge. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, part of Homeland Security) claims to have arrested more than 18,000 immigrants in “Operation Return to Sender,” its nationwide crackdown that began in June 2006.

  The Senate had to rescue its earlier reform from the flames of May Day 2006, when millions of immigrant workers stepped into the streets–and into the political debate–in a national work stoppage that was the largest day of protest in U.S. history. Why the raids now? And what does the future hold for millinos of hard-working immigrants?

  Peninsula Peace and Justice Center presents “RAIDED: The national wave of immigration raids and the renewed immigration debate in Washington. This is part of the group’s award-winning FREE televised Monthly Forum, Other Voices. The program starts at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, May 1st at the Palo Alto Community Media Center on 900 San Antonio Rd.

• Peninsula Peace and Justice Center presents EYEWITNESS IRAN: US and Iran: The Real Story, a first-hand report by foreign correspondent Reese Erlich. Reese Erlich’s history in journalism goes back thirty-nine years. He reports regularly for CBC, ABC (Australia), Radio Deutche Welle, and National Public Radio. In June 2005, he traveled to Iran with Norman Solomon and Sean Penn. Erlich’s photos accompanied Penn’s five-part series about the trip that appeared in the SF Chronicle and in an A&E documentary of Penn. He made another trip to Iran last year. He will be showing photos and sharing his observations from both trips. Erlich’s latest book, The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of US Policy and the Middle East Crisis, will be published in October.

  The event is on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007. There will be a potluck dinner at 6:30 PM (bring a dish to share!), and the program will begin at 7:30 PM. It will take place in the Fellowship Hall of the First Baptist Church of Palo Alto at 305 N. California (at Bryant). There is a $5-$10 suggested donation at the door.

• Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia became the new face of the antiwar movement in early 2004 when he applied for a discharge from the Army as a conscientious objector. After serving in the Army for nearly nine years, he was the first known Iraq veteran to refuse to fight, citing moral concerns about the war and occupation. His principle stand helped to rally the growing opposition and embolden his fellow soldiers.

  Despite widespread public support and an all-star legal team, Mejia was eventually convicted of desertion by a military court and sentenced to a year in prison, prompting Amnesty International to declare him a prisoner of conscience.

  Now released after serving almost nine months, the celebrated soldier-turned-pacifist tells his own story, from his upbringing in Central America and his experience as a working-class immigrant in the United States to his service in Iraq–where he witnessed prisoner abuse and was deployed in the Sunni triangle–and time in prison. Far from being an accidental activist, Mejia was raised by prominent Sandinista revolutionaries and draws inspiration from Jesuit teachings. In his stirring book, he argues passionately for human rights and the end to an unjust war.

  Peninsula Peace and Justice Center presents The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia. The program is on Tuesday, May 15th at 7:30 PM, in the Fellowship Hall of the First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto at 1140 Cowper St. There will be a book signing after Camilo’s talk. $7-$15 sliding scale admission at the door. All proceeds will benefit PPJC and Camilo Mejia.

• Eduardo Cohen hosted and produced “The Other Americas Radio Journal” for fifteen years, providing analysis of US foreign policy and its coverage in US news media with a focus on the distorting effects of racism, propaganda and corporate nationalism. The program aired on several radio stations including KPFA. He served in a combat unit and in an Army press information office in Vietnam. It was there where he first observed the gaps between the realities of US foreign and military policy and how they are reported in the United States. He witnessed the impact of US policy during seven years living and traveling in Latin America and while investigating human rights violations in the Middle East during the Gulf War. He has been documenting anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism in the news for more than twenety years.

  Eduardo Cohen will be presenting Through the Lens Darkly: News Media Complicity and the Selling of Never-Ending War, a critical analysis of what he calls “monumental journalistic failure” in coverage f US Middle East policy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the manufactured threat of Iran, and the War on Terror. He will describe how anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism, propaganda, nationalism, ethnocentrism and militarism combine with news media complicity to distort and even reverse reality in Middle East coverage. He will also connect the Cold War with globalization and the War on Terror and discuss the importance of critical news consumption and support of alternative media

  This presentation will be on Saturday, May 19th at 7:00 PM, held at the Unitarian Universalist church of Redwood City on 2124 Brewster Ave. (corner of Lowell) There is $5-$10 sliding scale donation requested, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

• Peninsula Peace and Justice Center will be presenting three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly and poet David Smith-Ferri will report from their visit with Iraqi refugees in Amman, Jordan, including video shot recently in Iraq. Their presentation will bring the Iraqi people they’ve encountered into our midst. Kathy will discuss the consequences of war–for Iraqis, for Americans, for the environment–and call is into a campaign of sustained resistance. David will read from his newly released volume of poetry, Battlefield Without Borders.

  All proceeds from the sale of the book will go directly to needy Iraqi families and to a school for Iraqi refugee children.

  Kathy Kelly helped found Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the UN/U.S. sanctions against Iraq. In 1996, Voices brought medicine and toys to Iraq in open violation of the sanctions and has continued to work in solidarity with the people of that country throughout the current occupation. Kelly has served time in prison for actions against nuclear weapons and the School of the Americas and has participated in nonviolent direct action teams in Haiti, Bosnia, Palestine, and Lebanon as well as twenty-four visits to Iraq.

  David Smith-Ferri first visited Iraq as part of a Voices in the Wilderness humanitarian and fact-finding delegation in 1999. He returned to Iraq in 2002, where he became inspired to give voice and form to his experiences through poetry. Many of the poems that make up Battlefield Without Borders were written in Iraq.

  The program will be on Sunday, May 20th, at 7:00 PM, in the Fellowship Hall of the First Baptist Church of Palo Alto at 305 N. California (at Bryant). There is a $7-$15 suggested donation.