Deep Blade Journal

Bangor Daily News leads today with a stellar anti-war editorial!

15 cm of snow followed by 5 cm of rain with ice in between postpones Saturday protests

Today was going to be a day of over 100 anti-war demonstrations throughout the state of Maine, some large some small. The big storm pushed events in most places to Sunday. The Bangor event (one of the large ones) now will occur Sunday at 1pm next to the Paul Bunyan statue on Main Street. Full details at the Every Village Green website HERE.

Some places did hold their events today. Reports HERE.

Meanwhile, the Bangor Daily News has a positively smashing lead editorial today!

Bring the peace
By BDN Staff
Saturday, March 17, 2007 - Bangor Daily News

If all goes well today [and now Sunday], thousands of Mainers will gather on village greens to protest the war in Iraq, just as protesters are gathering in Washington to recreate the 1967 march on the Pentagon that marked the turning of public opinion on Vietnam. We hope their voices are strong and their message is heard. But “Stop the war” can’t be the only message. “Bring the peace” deserves even more support because with it comes the victory of lives saved in Iraq.

Four years into the Iraq war, the Bush administration’s original justifications for fighting have drifted away, with the falsity of the weapons of mass destruction claim exposed and the reality of Saddam Hussein dead, and been replaced with a grinding fight it didn’t properly anticipate. The public frustration and anger are understandable…

[READ THE REST HERE.]

The editorial concludes that Congress “must make peace as vigorously as it was willing to let the president make war.” Bravo, BDN!

This editorial follows excellent news coverage the last few days. THIS STORY on the Every Village Green project was great:

[Ron] Greenberg was drawn to active protest of the Iraq war by what he said was the lack of responsiveness from Maine’s two U.S. senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Letters expressing his concerns about the war drew no response from the two legislators, he said.

“I got no response at all. I was just ignored. That’s what got me so upset,” he said. “I got the sense that they were just rolling their eyes. I felt insulted as a citizen.”

Frustration led him to Snowe’s office in Bangor last summer where he and 10 others were arrested, which, in turn, led to a Bangor protest that drew several thousand people from all over Maine.

“They were frustrated and angry, and happy to have an outlet,” he said.

It was during that protest that Greenberg thought about people unable to make the trip to Bangor.

He came up with the Every Village Green concept.

Momentum. Let’s hope this hopeful thrust to stop this war continues to grow.