|
|
|
ACTION IDEAS TAKING IT TO THE STREETS BY
JAN ADAMS If you are looking for ideas or inspiration, the distributors of War Times provide a unique window into the anti-war movement. More than 700 organizations and individuals distribute 100,000 copies of War Times to more than 100 cities located in every state plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. The American Friends Service Committe and Peace Action provide infrastructure for War Times and the anti-war movement almost everywhere. Organizations based in communities of color, especially grassroots organizing groups, are another major set of War Times distributors. Teachers whose classes include many immigrants find the paper especially helpful. Assigned to write about War Times, one Asian American Studies student wrote: "Having read War Times, I realized that the war is not just toward Afghanistan but towards my home country in the Philippines as well…My uncle [an airport baggage screener] is fighting hard trying not to lose his job since he just immigrated to the U.S." A student distributor in Connecticut is taking major initiative: "I'm a junior in high school and I'm currently working on starting a town organization for peace and justice." Progressive Black Men, a fraternal organization at Florida State University, is struggling to explain the war on campus, writing that "you guys are doing a great thing for giving out free accessible truth." Many labor activists are using the paper as well, including anti-war labor coalitions in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. Thousands of papers go to a wide variety of churches from Lutheran urban missions to Catholic parishes in Michigan. The War Times flyer on Palestine (click here to download.) has been used in settings as diverse as classes at Atlanta’s Emory University and to guide political debate at the Houston Coalition for Justice Not War. The persistence
of today’s anti-war activists, in the face of unexpected obstacles,
comes across in this recent note: "We (La Raza Unida Party) were
going to an event in San Diego this weekend. Well on the way our van caught
fire and everything was destroyed. I mean burned to a crisp. All of our
materials, personal belongings, books, flyers, shirts, etc. Anyway if
you could send us some more copies that would be great!" |
|
|
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras is a fiscally sponsored project of the |
