(Photo: Ed Hedemann / WRL)
“The largest spending bill in history is going to turn out to be the war in Iraq….I don’t understand why…building a road, building a school, helping somebody get health care, that’s wasteful spending, but that war in Iraq… is going to cost us over $1 trillion before we’re through….” — Congressman Barney Frank, This Week, ABC, 2/1/09
NEW YORK — On December 10th, as Obama was receiving his Nobel Peace Prize, the War Resisters League, with support from Veterans for Peace, World Can’t Wait, and CodePink, organized a mournful, slow walk, single file, across Manhattan from 1st Avenue and 47th Street, west on 42nd Street, to the Recruiting Station at Times Square. About 40 people carrying signs that read, “No Peace Prizes to War President” and “War Is Peace” with George Orwell’s name crossed out and Nobel Committee in it’s stead. Four coffins were carried, one draped with an American flag. Some wore photos of wounded Afghan civilians. The Veterans for Peace led with their flags showing a peace dove, flying in the breeze. All the while a drummer slowly beat a drum. Some handed out leaflets explaining why the procession was taking this walk.
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
Motorcycle police accompanied the procession, stopping traffic at each corner. All along the was people in the streets stopped to take photographs.
When the group arrived at Times Square the 4 coffins were placed on the ground in front of the Recruiting Station while everyone stood in silence for a few moments around the coffins.
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
The statement the War Resisters League made regarding this event said that they were in opposition to the war because it is killing Afghan civilians, it is not “working” to end terrorism, it is killing U.S. military personnel, and it is expensive. The Leaflet being handed out said:
“Today we march with coffins and the faces of Afghan victims of war as a reminder of the human costs of war and to protest the giving a ‘peace’ prize to a commander-in-chief who is brazenly escalating war. We stand in solidarity with people around the world who are protesting this award. We march because we believe that war is never the answer, that it is a failure of the imagination, something to be mourned and resisted instead of celebrated and extolled.”
