Swords Into Plowshares

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from The Nation: http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20070321/cm_thenation/20070402mark

37 minutes ago

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To focus attention on the cost rural communities are paying for the war, a new organization, Farms Not Arms, is enlisting farmers in the effort to end it. The founders hope that by encouraging farmers to speak out, they can bridge the divide between the antiwar coasts and the more prowar interior. "I think there's a lot of unhappiness about this war," says George Naylor, an Iowa corn and soy grower and president of the National Family Farm Coalition. "A lot of farmers who might be Republicans, but who aren't right-wing Republicans, have changed their views on the war."

Farms Not Arms has two main goals. The first is to increase the visibility of farmers at peace marches. Farms Not Arms members across the country will carry the group's banner at six marches marking the fourth anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Some 350 farmers have endorsed the group's statement opposing the war, which says, "While we foolishly try to police the whole world, we have lost the ability to feed ourselves." Organizers hope to have 10,000 signatures by the end of the year.

The second goal is to recruit farming families to offer their farms as refuges where returning vets can heal their battle scars through the quiet, steady pace of agricultural work. "All of these guys are coming back trashed," says Will Allen, a Marine veteran from the 1950s who today runs Cedar Circle Farm in Vermont, the state with the highest percentage of battlefield losses. "Farming is healing. We know that, because we've done it. We're in post-traumatic stress too. Because we're in bankruptcy, or we've already lost the fucking farm."

Farmers make up a tiny portion of the population. But Farms Not Arms organizers believe that despite their small numbers, they can have an outsized influence on the debate. They say there are natural cultural links between farmers and soldiers--a shared belief in hard work, discipline and collective effort--and that these similarities can be used to connect with rural soldiers and their families and convince them that it's time to end the war.

"I feel like as farmers we don't have a lot of political baggage," says Michael O'Gorman, a co-founder of Farms Not Arms. O'Gorman says he started thinking about how to oppose the war after his son enlisted. "I think we're expounding pretty American ideals here, Jeffersonian ideals.... Maybe this is a wake-up call for America, that we can't be the country we set out to be and have more soldiers than farmers. Maybe we can bring the country together."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20070321/cm_thenation/20070402mark


like minds?

my take today, March 21:

Beating Bush's Swords Into Plowshares

"All of the 'pork' Bush and his republican enablers are complaining about in the Iraq spending bill is actually a down-payment on a long-overdue shift in priorities; from Bush's waging of his military occupation in Iraq, back to focusing on the needs and concerns of Americans . . .

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_full_070321_beating_bush_s_sword.htm
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=458169&mesg_id=458169

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree