March 19 marks the third anniversary of President Bush’s unprovoked attack on Iraq and the beginning of the brutal occupation of that country which continues today. As that milestone arrives, millions of people around the world will again mount massive protests against the war, according to a press release from GeorgiaPeace.Org.

Also, on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Dr. King clearly saw the toll that aggression abroad took on social programs at home.

“I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube,” he said in his famous speech April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church, New York City.

The April 1 date of the Southern Regional March in Dr. King’s home city was chosen because it falls between these two anniversaries, to once again highlight the incompatibility between imperialist war abroad and Dr. King’s vision of social justice at home.

Marchers will gather at the King Center at 12 noon and step off at 1 p.m. for a 2-mile walk to Piedmont Park via Jackson Street, Boulevard, Ponce de Leon Avenue and Charles Allen Drive. Organizers are planning a colorful, vibrant march with puppets, street theatre and drummers in the march and along the route. It is even rumored that clones of Bush and Cheney will join the festivities. Banners and signs will demand “Bring the Troops Home Now,” “Civil and Human Rights for All,” “People Before Profits” and other messages consistent with peace in Iraq and justice at home.

Speakers at a rally in Piedmont Park will include U.S. Representative John Conyers of Michigan; Dr. Joseph Lowery, former president of SCLC and convenor of the Coalition for the People’s Agenda; U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney; Ann Wright, former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat who resigned in opposition to the Iraq war; Damu Smith, cofounder of Black Voices for Peace; Dr. Barbara L. King, pastor of Hillside Chapel and Truth Center; and Patricia Roberts, Gold Star Families for Peace, mother of the first Georgian killed in Iraq.

Other speakers will include veterans, military family members, religious leaders, college and high school students, New Orleans residents, and a former Navy recruiter who is now a counter-recruitment activist. Musicians and poets will round out the program.

Exhibits at the rally will include “Eyes Wide Open,” put together by the American Friends Service Committee, hundreds of combat boots and civilian shoes commemorating the 300 plus US National Guard members and 100,000 plus Iraqi civilians who have died in the war; and a 500-foot Peace Ribbon honoring slain U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

The march has been endorsed by 93 organizations from six southern states, including Peace and Justice Coalitions from Alabama, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Coalition for the People’s Agenda, Concerned Black Clergy of Metro Atlanta, Atlanta North Georgia-Labor Council, United Auto Workers Region 8, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and numerous faith, peace and student groups. Individuals endorsers include Cindy Sheehan of Gold Star Families for Peace; Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general; Charlie Flemming, president of the Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council, AFL-CIO; and Rev. James Orange of the Africa African-American Renaissance, and others.

Several thousand marchers are expected.

“By coming out on April 1, Georgia citizens will speak out for democracy and will help stop the Iraq war, the move toward war with Iran, and our country’s drive toward Empire,” said Dr. C. T. Vivian, cofounder of the Center for Democratic Renewal, who will also speak.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on its military than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” Dr. King added in 1967 at Riverside Church. “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now.”

For more information, see Georgia Peace.Org.

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Tags: Birmingham Peace Movement

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