ANNALS OF PROTEST Rhode Islanders to join anti-war march in DC BY STEVEN STYCOS

Demanding an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and lambasting the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, three or four busloads of Rhode Islanders will travel later this month to Washington, DC, to join a weekend of demonstrations, religious services, and lobbying.

"This isn’t just an anti-war march," says Gracious Audette of Newport, co-founder of the Rhode Island Progressive League. "It’s a declaration of a dysfunctional government." Pointing to its inadequate hurricane relief efforts and simultaneous cuts in the taxes of wealthy Americans, Audette charges, "The Bush administration has absolutely no concern for the American people." Her group plans to raise money for hurricane victims, she adds, by selling at the protests a CD of songs and poems by Rhode Islanders.

Another protest organizer, John Osmond of Providence, also notes the connection between the hurricane and the war. The federal government should be financing hurricane relief, he argues, not wars. Instead, he says, recent events in New Orleans have "demonstrated the complete ineptitude and racism of the Bush administration."

While in Washington, the Rhode Island Progressive League will place almost 1900 red carnations (one for each American soldier killed in Iraq) at the national memorial to Vietnam War veterans to symbolically connect the two conflicts. "There was no winning the war in Vietnam," Audette asserts, "and there is no winning the war in Iraq."

Following the major demonstrations on Saturday, September 24, the American Friends Service Committee of Southeastern New England, a Quaker peace group, is encouraging people to attend an interfaith religious service at the Washington Monument a day later, and then to lobby Congress or participate in a massive non-violent disobedience protest at the White House on Monday, September 26,

US Senators Jack Reed and John McCain, among others, have said that more US troops are needed to establish security in Iraq, but Noah Merrill, AFSC’s local program coordinator, says a recent tour of Jordan, Israel, and Palestine convinced him that the US should withdraw immediately. US troops, he says, "are aggravating the violence," and "preventing the opportunity for healing in that society." A withdrawal will not end the violence, he concedes, but will improve conditions in the war-torn nation.

The AFSC and other anti-war groups are also preparing for a recently scheduled visit by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who spent part of this summer camped near President Bush’s Texas ranch in hopes of talking with him about the war. Details are still being planned, but Merrill expects Sheehan and the Bring Them Home Now Tour of veterans and military families to stop at Providence’s Memorial Park, across from the Benefit Street courthouse, Sunday, September 18 at noon.

For information on the Washington trip, contact Osmond of the Rhode Island Community Coalition for Peace at 401.301.4545.