Meeting with UFPJ

Today, United for Peace with Justice had an organizational meeting. I have to admit I went brain-dead after five hours of the meeting, but it was very exciting to see and meet and talk to so many people who are involved in the peace movement here in the USA. There were four people from North Carolina, so that was really cool. One was a women that none of us knew, but the other three women did know each other from prior political/peace work.

There were 34 people present at this meeting, but a few more came in later. Some of the groups represented were PDA, DowningStreetMemo, Tax Resistors, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Code Pink, 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Historians against the War, WNC Peace Coalition, and probably a few more that I missed. There was talk about stopping the funding for the war, the Out of Iraq Caucus, the Abercreombie-Jones bill, the Iraq Policy Working Group (by EPIC, funded by FCNL and others), the Downing Street Memo, and talk about legislative goals. There was also talk on opening an office for UFPJ in the DC area.

Bill Goold came and spoke to the group and also stayed to listen to what we were talking about and what goals and plans we were making. Bill is working with the Progressive Caucus, and I think he is a lobbyist for them, but I'm not totally clear on that.

There was a lot of talk on the upcoming events in September to be held here in DC. This is a huge undertaking, and a lot of logistics work will have to be done by the DC folks to make this happen. There will be a march on Washington on September 24th to end the war on Iraq. There will be an interfaith service and grassroots training on September 25th for all the peace activists. And there will be a day of visiting congress members on September 26th to educate them about war and peace issues. That last one is on a Monday, so this will be a full weekend. There is more information at http://www.unitedforpeace.org/

Some other goals proposed by this group:
*get all eight Downing Street Memos out to legislative aids
*establish a working relationship with the Out Of Iraq Caucus
*identify which congressional districts to target for lobbying and education
*organize legislation alerts network
*develop material for handouts on the congressional visits on Sept 26th.

The above is just a brief summary, but more information will be forthcoming. I hope you will consider going to DC in September to support this effort.