Stand Up for Peace

In cities and small towns across the country, on the East Coast and in the West, Americans are standing up to the War Party and standing up for peace. Around the world, January 18 is the big day, with rallies scheduled for Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and dozens of locations in between. (Check the United for Peace website for listings of events across the country.)

	United for Peace (excellent listing of antiwar actions nationwide)

People of all sorts are coalescing this Saturday in what promises to be one of the biggest outpourings of antiwar sentiment since the Vietnam war. Middle-class folks as well as college students, Republican businessmen as well as labor unionists who usually vote Democratic, libertarian techno-geeks who sometimes vote Libertarian but usually don’t bother – they’re all coming together tomorrow in the same general vicinity.

Opposition to this senseless war of conquest in Iraq is burgeoning, here and internationally, in spite of some rather clumsy efforts to tamp it down. The shrike-like cries of our war-birds are being drowned out by a chorus of voices that cry out: Not in Our Name!

Antiwar.com has made some criticisms of the left-wing leadership of the antiwar movement, especially the ANSWER coalition, and we stand by every word of it. But January 18 is a day to put polemics on the shelf, and unite behind a common goal: stopping this rotten war before it starts. If you don’t like the placards they’re handing out at the rally site, then bring your own banners, put out your own message, stock up on plenty of bottled water and maybe a box lunch – and let your voice be heard.

War is not "inevitable." We are not the helpless pawns of our rulers. This Saturday, let’s show them that they can’t manipulate us with simplistic slogans and relentless fear-mongering.

All out on January 18!