Strike For Peace
Petition For Peaceful Priorities
08/19/05 -- This petition will be delivered to the White House and other addresses on September 26, 2005.
President George W. Bush, The White House
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Department of Defense, The Pentagon
President Nils Hasselmo, Association of American Universities
Governor Ted Kulongoski, State of Oregon
President Dave Frohnmayer, University of Oregon
Dear Public Servants,
As University of Oregon’s first graduate student in the field of Peace Studies, it is my responsibility to explore the role of the military in society and those conditions that most promote peace and human welfare. In so doing, I have come to understand the nature of America’s war industry, and how that industry has flourished in the wake of the Cold War. I have come to find that more than 300 of our universities are developing weapons for the Department of Defense, and that these schools are increasingly reliant on the industry of war to sustain their education programs. Indeed, the Association of American Universities appears to be little more than a lobby for such funding.
As a person of good conscience, I have learned too much about the business of war to remain silent about its overwhelming encroachment in our schools, communities, and global life systems. In promoting this encroachment, I do not believe that you serve in the interest of prosperity and security for the common people. By your consistent actions, in fact, it is abundantly clear that you believe America’s top priority is profit from the business of war, not the general welfare of its people.
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Dutifully,
Brian D. Bogart
Multicultural Studies Certificate, US-Japan Relations, Lewis and Clark College, Portland 1995
International Studies Certificate, Waseda University, Tokyo 1996
B.A. Japanese History, University of Oregon 1997
M.A. Candidate, Peace Studies, University of Oregon
Sponsors of this action include:
Noam Chomsky
Medea Benjamin
Code Pink, Global Exchange
and hundreds more. If you are or have been a college-level teacher and would like to sign this petition, please send your name and title as you’d like them to appear (using above examples) to:
bdb92@hotmail.com
This petition will be delivered to the White House and other addresses on September 26, 2005.
If you would like to support the strike effort with financial or organizational resources, please write to bbogart@uoregon.edu
See entire petition and signatories at:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9868.htm