Sick of War!

Each Friday night for the last few weeks, I've stood on the corner of Pine and Broadway in Long Beach and held a little sign that says "NO MORE BLOOD FOR OIL". But already I'm sick. Its not the occasional shout of those who thirst for televised bloodshed that makes me sick - those are few and far between, completely outnumbered by the honks of support, thumbs up, peace signs and individual words of encouragement from passerby. What makes me sick is the steady stream of veterans who have come up to talk to me. Destitute, homeless, sometimes reeking of alcohol, they ramble about the pains of war, and sometimes stay and hold a sign for peace with us. And it makes me want to cry, to think that we can spend $200,000,000,000 to kill the children of Iraq, when those who were called to battle in a previous era live on the street!

I don't understand how the man occupying the White House can sleep at night, scheming of phony wars to line the pockets of his oily friends, while so many suffer. It is easy to send the sons and daughters of America to far away lands to put their lives at risk when you have never risked your life for someone else's ill-conceived war. But how can they wrap themselves in the flag, call their cause patriotic, and ignore the veterans they rely upon to "protect our citizens"? Why is it so many veterans are homeless? What do we have a Department of Veteran Affairs for? Can't the richest nation in the world take care of those who risked everything for this country?

There are a great many injustices in this land of hypocrisy, so many wrongs to right. Our prison guards are paid more than our teachers, while our teachers are becoming prison guards. Working families don't make enough to live on, and a trip to the hospital or unexpected illness can leave even a well-off but uninsured family bankrupt. Our poorest children, especially children of color, are either pushed into the criminal "justice" system where companies are making new profits off their labor, or recruited to the armed services as fodder for our war machine. The billions we spend to build and maintain weapons of mass destruction create more weapons of mass destruction here at home: ignorance, poverty, hate and racism. Imagine how many jobs we could create, how many children we could feed and cloth, educate and empower, with the hundreds of billions of dollars our country has spent on the world's largest nuclear arsenal and the delivery systems associated with them, technology that all of us pray never ever gets used.

Please, lets make a promise to our future that we will take care of all our veterans, that never again will they be begging in the street. Let's make a promise that we will rebuild our social fabric before we buy one more billion-dollar bomber. Please, take a pledge with me that you will work for peace, that our country will wage PEACE all over the world, so that one day there will be no more veterans and the peacemakers will be honored in their stead.