December Vigil and New Flyer

Remember, this Saturday we will be standing vigil from 12-1 in front of the GPO, on the corner of Burke and Elizabeth Streets. Hellen has drafted a new flyer for us:

Women in Black say, unequivocally, that we have had enough of wars and the in-securities that war and weapons create. Insecurities for the militaries themselves, for the environments that poison and disrupt, for women and children where militaries operate, and in the families and communities when military members return home.

Women in Black note that governments spend major national resources on armed security, every moment, year and decade. As a result, the planet itself becomes less secure for each of us, for everyone’s future children, every moment, year, decade.

Women in Black sees no evidence that security is produced by such wars which cause the world to be awash in weapons and unresolved grievances, awash with toxic remnants over a century of weapons and unresolved conflicts.

Women in Black advocate security by disarmament and non-violent ways of resolving conflict in human societies, and with vigils and protests refuse to be silenced or to respond to violence with violence.

Women in Black believe that Palestine and Israel, as well as countries in all other regions of the world, need to be weapons free, making armed conflict not an option. The Palestinian catastrophe since 1948 has included forced expulsions from homes and lands, continual dispossession and confiscations, denial of freedom of movement and the forced inability to build flourishing Palestinian communities. A system of reciprocal terrorism exists in defiance of the law for human rights that the world agreed to expressively to avoid a repeat of the Jewish Holocaust. We now have the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homeland.

Women in Black believe where that where injustices flourish, there can never be peace.
Women in Black witness that governments know what is needed to achieve a just peace, for they establish islands of peace around themselves for their pleasure and comfort, but these islands are surrounded by wars and areas of unjust military occupations.

Women in Black stands to reflect to governments that the methods of war and unjust peace can never be praised, excused, erased or reasoned away.

Women in Black, an international women’s peace action, has been standing for peace since 1987. We stand to protest the violence that endangers and degrades the lives of the people of the world.
(December, 2009) The image that begins this posting is a drawing by a Palestinian child who survived the invasion of Gaza.