Click to open or download the Veterans for Peace Winter 2019 newsletter (PDF)
From the Veterans for Peace Winter 2019 newsletter, page 15:
Veterans for Peace #090 Binghamton NY
Members of the Stu Naismith Chapter were in New York City on November 7 and 8 to support Kathy Kelly’s Voices for Creative Nonviolence Blue Backpack demonstration at the Isaiah Wall across the street from the United Nations. Joining other VFP members led by Jules Orkin, we walked with blue backpacks representing 34 Yemeni school children killed by Lockheed-Martin bombs dropped by U.S. partner, Saudi Arabia. Our VFP banner was displayed as we locked arms and blocked three entrances to the UN Mission of Saudi Arabia. We told people the Saudi Mission was a crime scene and we were closing it. After a two-hour standoff, the police refused the Saudis’ request to arrest us.
In Binghamton, our November 11 Armistice Day event was covered by three TV channels as bells rang out over the city at 11 am. A local folksinger led us in a singalong of antiwar songs, from WWI to the present. In the afternoon, disinvited to be part of the Veterans Day parade, we displayed a cemetery on a church lawn along the parade route and amplified our folksinger’s words, “Bring ’em Home, Bring ’em Home,” to marchers, while two members circulated among parade viewers offering red poppies and the VFP handbill on Reclaiming Armistice Day. Our 71 tombstones (white styrofoam) represented the ratio of 70 Vietnamese, Afghans, and Iraqis to every one American military killed in our wars.
The VFP Newsletter is published twice a year by Veterans for Peace. An archive of previous issues is on their website.
