On the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan war, stand for Peace and for Bringing the War Funding Home for Jobs in America ---- 

Friday afternoon, October 7, in Wailuku

As the war in Afghanistan reaches a 10th-year anniversary and America’s already longest war starts its 11th year on Friday, October 7, a coalition of Maui organizations will join with groups demonstrating for economic and political justice and peace nation- and world-wide to say:  End these wars and occupations!   Bring war funding and jobs home to rebuild America, Hawaii and Maui County! 

 Maui Peace Action, the Maui MoveOn Council and the UH Maui College Peace Club invite everyone to come to the corner of Main and High and create a peaceful occupation of the courtyard in front of the State Building between 1pm  and 5pm pm Friday.  From 1pm there will be sign-holding, information tables, the Peace Poem Project and  peace coloring activities for the keiki sponsored by the UH students, and between 4 and 5, live music and speakers. Come for all or part of the time.  Memorial displays or homage, words, drawings and photos are welcome along with signs and placards that people may wish to bring.  More below.

At the end of the program, those who wish to do so will carry our signs along in a peaceful march, on sidewalks, down to Market Street and the First Friday festival which begins at 5:30pm.  Signs will be able to be left at a location to be announced. 

You are also invited to come to a sign-making and planning workshop for this event at the college Wed. afternoon Oct. 5 starting at 4:30 in Ka Lama 206B.

We can’t forget that---

Tens of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilians have been killed, and hundreds of thousands have been wounded and displaced. The total US military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is over six thousand and the total wounded has exceeded 100,000.  The wars are costing U.S. taxpayers more than $118 billion per year, which is $330 million a day, and this is only 10% of the military budget. A recent study estimates the total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will total $4.4 trillion ($4,400,000,000,000). And this at a time when social programs are being slashed, jobs and education continue to be cut, and the trillion-dollar military budget increases. Massive corporations that received bailouts are making record profits and still not creating jobs.

We are gathering on October 7 to demand an end to the wars and occupations by U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and throughout the world, and to demand that the funds diverted to these overseas adventures be redeployed here at home — for jobs, healthcare, the education, clean energy development, and more. Over 130,000 coalition troops are still serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and thousands more bear the visible and invisible scars of battle that will be felt everyday for a lifetime. Suicides are an all too common occurrence among returning troops. It’s time to bring the troops home!

Here are the details:

LOCATION: State building front courtyard “square” and, if enough people, walking between the State Bldg and the County Bldg. past the areas of the Peace pole and the Stone of Hope dedicated to the man of peace Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  (See article below.)

        Participants will be able to take advantage of bathrooms in area public buildings ‘til   closing times. (Library open ‘til 5 Fridays.)  The square has some shade trees.

TIME: 8am to whenever we become too fried, on Friday, October 7.  Shifts okay.  Biggest groups should probably be at start of the work day plus during the lunch hour when there may be more foot traffic in the square.

WHO?  Any members of Maui Peace Action e-network, the members of the UH MC Peace Club and Peace Studies students, and the general public who wish to join us.  If you have received this invitation, please ask others who would be interested in joining us.

WHAT will we do? You can hand out literature at a table and talk with the public, or hold/walk with/ wave a sign, or you can create your own response, from a costumed street theater performance to a silent vigil. Let’s share ideas.

We will have a sign-making, and you are also free of course to bring your own signs.

        Sign-making Wed. Sept. 5, afternoon, site to be announced (UH MC?).

PLEASE: WE ASK THAT YOU refrain from any violence, harrassment or vulgarity and any property damage.  We are not there to drive people away from our cause but to educate and empower others to speak out, too.  See our Pledge of Non-Violence, below.

RIGHTS: We will provide you with the ACLU’s “Your Right to Protest” handout and we will have our ACLU letter with us detailing our legal right to protest without obtaining a permit.

FOR MORE NATIONAL OCTOBER 6-7 INFORMATION, SEE---

-- website for Oct 6 Coalition goals, slogns for signs at  http://october2011.org/frontpage

PLEDGE OF NON-VIOLENCE

1. We will use our strong desire to end injustice as a positive, nonviolent force for change.

2. We will use no violence, verbal or physical, toward any person.

3. We will not carry weapons of any kind.

4. IF participating in a nonviolent direct action, such as civil resistance, we will not run or resist arrest; we will remain accountable for our actions as a means of furthering our witness to injustice.

5. As participants in a nonviolent action, we will respect the directions of the designated coordinators.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    His Impact & Influence by Jim Albertini, Hilo, HI

"When ma­chines and com­put­ers, profit mo­tives and prop­erty rights are con­sid­ered more im­por­tant than peo­ple, the giant triplets of racism, ma­te­ri­al­ism, and mil­i­tarism are in­ca­pable of being con­quered."  MLK --A Tes­ta­ment of Hope (posthu­mously pub­lished essay).

     Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said prophetically in the last years of Martin Luther King's life that "the whole future of America depends on the impact and influence of Dr. King."  This was at a time when King was speaking out forcefully not only against racism, but against the Vietnam war and organizing for a massive poor peoples' march on Washington, D.C. for the summer of 1968.  King's broadening vision was linking the civil rights movement with the growing anti-war movement into a movement for peace and economic justice.  He wanted to create a moral and political crisis on these issues which the country could no longer ignore and he was preparing to shut down the nation's capitol, if necessary, through non-violent civil disobedience.   King was assassinated on April 4, 1968.  He never made it back to D.C. to fulfill his dream.

Stop the Wars Now!

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Please participate with us in these CURRENT ACTIONS:
(REQUESTS FOR LETTERS, SIGNATURES ON PETITIONS, ETC.)

Please fax your letters if at all possible.  Letters mailed to WASHINGTON are now taken to holding areas for bio-terrorism checks,
 we now hear, making them a very slow way to contact Congress. 
If writing to our Hawaii representatives by postal mail, send your letters to the Honolulu address. 

Depleted Uranium is a major issue facing us all!
Click to learn about why we must take action on DU! 
See the video from KITV about a spike in radiation levels on the Big Island

TAKE ACTION

Support a CABINET LEVEL DEPT. OF PEACE  to support Bills HR 3760  and  S. 1756
Support “VOTER OWNED ELECTIONS”  by clicking  http://www.voterownedhawaii.org

Immediate Actions

UARC Action
Your help is needed to stop UARC, a proposal for secret war
weapons research at UH Click here to read more!

 Ongoing Actions

STEERING COMMITTEE MEETINGS:

Our regular Steering Committee meetings are at 6pm on the 2nd Monday at MCC Ka Lama 102 and are open to all
who share our mission (MISSION STATEMENT). We welcome new friends and old members to come to any meeting, and everyone in attendance fully participates in planning.
The Ka Lama Building is next to the Library on the Maui Community College Campus.