PROMOTING PEACE WALK AT COUNTRY FAIR

I spent the weekend at Maine's historic Common Ground Fair working at the Veterans for Peace booth where we promoted the upcoming November 2-11 peace walk through our state. I read this morning that 27,000 people were at the fair on Saturday - an all-time high.

We were particularly pleased that many young activists showed interest in the walk. One of the goals of this walk has been to get more students involved in participation as we pass near their communities.

The walk will be talking about the costs of war - the cost in terms of $$ (we are spending $8 billion a month on Afghanistan); the cost to veterans in terms of PTSD and suicides; and the cost to the environment as the Pentagon is the world's biggest polluter since war is the ultimate environmental disaster.

We will have the full walk schedule posted on the Maine Veterans for Peace web site in the next few days.

The walk will be led by the Buddhist monks/nuns from the Nipponzan Myohoji order which does peace walks all over the world.

The fact that we are starting on November 2 (election night) is an important symbolic statement that no matter which party takes control of Congress the peace movement in Maine will be public, out in the streets, taking these important issues to the people.

We feel it is vital that as the clamp comes down on the peace movement from the feds (see FBI raid story below) that we increase our efforts to stand up and be counted.