[ "There is no military solution short of economic ruin, global
famine, climate catastrophe–or worse, nuclear Armageddon."]
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PEACE ACTIVISTS HIT THE STREETS FROM DC TO SAN FRANCISCO URGING
CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE  
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Marcy Winograd
September 20, 2022
Common Dreams
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_ "There is no military solution short of economic ruin, global
famine, climate catastrophe–or worse, nuclear Armageddon." _

In the nation's capital CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie
Evans, together with Colonel Ann Wright and other activists, kicked
off the Week of Action, going door to door to the offices of the House
Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)., Marcy Winograd

 

ON SUNDAY PRESIDENT BIDEN warned Russian President Valdamir Putin
"Dont. Don't. Don't." use nuclear weapons in retaliation for severe
battlefield losses in Ukraine. While Putin dismissed Biden's worries
as unfounded, the specter of nuclear Armageddon drove US anti-war
activists to the streets days before in a September Week of Action
organized by the Peace in Ukraine Coalition.
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Demanding a "Ceasefire now!" activists hosted anti-war events in DC,
San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Madison, Boston,
Rockville, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, San Pedro, Santa Barbara and Los
Angeles.

The Peace in Ukraine Coalition—CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace,
Democratic Socialists of America, Massachusetts Peace Action, Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom-US and other
organizations—mobilized for negotiations, not escalation in what
CODEPINK describes as a proxy war threatening a direct war between the
two most heavily armed nuclear nations, the United States and Russia.

With President Biden asking Congress for another $13.7 billion
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for Ukraine, $7.2 billion for weapons and military training,
activists delivered letters to their House and US Senate
representatives, some letters simply urging a ceasefire, others
pushing for a no vote on the next weapons request folded into a $47
billion COVID relief bill. That bill, called a continuing resolution,
must be voted on in one form or another by September 30th to avoid a
federal government shutdown.

If the resolution passes with Biden's request, military analysts say
it would bring this year's total for Ukraine to $67 billion
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The amount allotted for weapons, military training and intelligence
could surpass $40 billion
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four times the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency during an
existential climate crisis of wildfires, droughts, storms and rising
sea levels.

In the nation's capital CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie
Evans, together with Colonel Ann Wright and other activists, kicked
off the Week of Action, going door to door to the offices of the House
Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), where the most natural
anti-war allies would, theoretically, be found. While some members of
the caucus call for much-needed diplomacy and raise concerns about the
risk of nuclear war–either through a miscalculation or an
intentional first strike–not one member of the nearly 100-member CPC
will commit to voting against more weapons for Ukraine.

Benjamin told the press, "Further escalation should be unthinkable,
but so should a long war of endless crushing artillery barrages and
brutal urban and trench warfare that slowly and agonizingly destroys
Ukraine, killing hundreds of Ukrainians with each day that passes. The
only realistic alternative to this endless slaughter is a return to
peace talks to bring the fighting to an end."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer do
not make it easy for Democrats to break ranks–as the Republicans are
doing ahead of the midterms–on the question of weapons for Ukraine.
Pelosi and Schumer embed humanitarian aid and military dollars in the
same legislation, making it hard for progressive Democrats to join
with the 57 Republicans
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among them hard-core Trumpers Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), Lauren
Boebert (CO-03), Jim Jordan (OH-04), who voted against previous
Ukraine packages.

Since the Russian invasion on February 24th, thousands of Ukrainian
soldiers and civilians have died, and according to the United
Nations,12 million have been displaced, either internally or
throughout eastern Europe. The Pentagon estimates 80,000 Russian
soldiers have been killed.

Partners in the Peace in Ukraine Coalition condemn the Russian
invasion but argue there is no military solution to a war that was
provoked by the same neo-conservatives responsible for the disastrous
US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Through
successive administrations, the voices for a unipolar world in which
the US dominates led to expansion of NATO, a hostile nuclear-armed
military alliance, from 12 countries after the fall of the Soviet
Union to 30 countries, including some that border Russia:  Latvia,
Estonia, Poland and LIthuania.

In addition to the expansion of NATO, organizations in the Peace in
Ukraine Coalition cite other provocations: US support for a 2014 coup
of Ukraine's democratically elected Russia-friendly President and
years of US arms shipments–from Presidents Obama to Trump to
Biden–to undermine the 2015 MINSK II peace agreement. That accord
signed by Russia and Ukraine was to end the civil war that followed
the 2014 coup and left an estimated 14,000 people dead in Ukraine's
industrial Donbas region. Fighting between the swastika-flag-waving
Azov Battalion and Russian separatists preceded Russia's February
invasion of Ukraine, though corporate media often fails to mention
this.

On Thursday, September 15th, demonstrators in San Francisco's
Financial District marched from the Senate offices of Alex Padilla and
Dianne Feinstein to deliver letters in opposition to funding a
protracted war in Ukraine.

Massachusetts Peace Action activists camped outside the offices of
three Democratic House members–Jake Auchincloss, Katherine Clark and
Stephen Lynch—to implore them to support a ceasefire.

Milwaukee anti-war activists, including a county supervisor, took
their peace flags and "Diplomacy, Not War" signs to the campus of
conservative Marquette University, where they passed out hundreds of
flyers with QR codes for students to email their Congress members for
a ceasefire. Organizer Jim Carpenter, co-chair (with this author) of
the foreign policy team of Progressive Democrats of America, told
skeptics who want a fight to the last Ukrainian, "Are you more
concerned about saving lives or saving territory?"

DSA members in Santa Barbara, CA, distributed a similar half-pager
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a staffer for Democratic Congressman Salud Carbajal, who serves on the
House Armed Services Committee and represents a district crawling with
military contractors and home to Vandenberg Air Force Base, where a
test launch of a nuclear missile was delayed due to Putin's placement
of Russia's nuclear arsenal on high alert.

On the steps outside the Congressman's office, activists talked to a
Ukrainian church member visiting the lawmaker at the same time to
press for more weapons to Ukraine. "You can't negotiate with
Putin–you can never trust him," he insisted, waving a life-size
Ukrainian flag and arguing for a fight to the finish–to regime
change.

"But there is no military solution short of economic ruin, global
famine, climate catastrophe–or worse, nuclear Armageddon," responded
this activist, who pointed out–to nods from the Ukrainian—that
since the start of the war Ukraine and Russia had negotiated grain
exports and nuclear reactor inspections. Why couldn't they negotiate
an end to the war, if only the US and NATO would stop sending weapons
to prolong the crisis?

Veterans for Peace members in the Bay Area wrote to Democratic reps
Mark Desaulinier (CA-11) and Barbara Lee (CA-13), the lone vote
against the US invasion of Afghanistan and sponsor of legislation to
cut the Pentagon budget by $350 billion. "We urge you to forcefully
call for negotiations and speak out against Secretary of Defense
Austin's call for continuing the war to 'weaken Russia.' That is a
recipe for a world war if ever there was one," read the letters.

In Rockville, MD, another Veterans for Peace member Jim Driscoll, who
volunteered for the Marines in Vietnam, published an OpEd
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in the local press, "Why I was arrested to 'Stop the War. Save the
Climate.'" Driscoll was arrested in August during an anti-war protest
outside Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen's office. His
message to Van Hollen, as well as the media? Stop fueling the war in
Ukraine that exacerbates the climate crisis.

Driscoll writes, "As with Vietnam and Iraq, the U.S. government and a
subservient media have painted an ahistorical, one-sided, distorted
narrative to justify the damage we have foisted upon the people of
Ukraine …"

Ukraine's President Zelensky, meanwhile, is slated this week to
virtually address an Austin, Texas, summit of military
contractors–Raytheon, Northrop Grumman—to appeal directly to the
war profiteers for more weapons. The White House–concerned that
Ukrainian battlefield victories will trigger Russian
retaliation—opposes Zelensky's latest request
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missiles with a range of 190 miles that Zelensky could use to strike
Russian-annexed Crimea.

As a plan B, Zelensky's government has launched an "Advantage Ukraine"
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deregulation to attract foreign investors to build made-to-order
weapons systems  in Ukraine. That country, however, may have serious
competition as a forward-deployed threat to Russia, for German
Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently announced
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wants to make his country "the cornerstone of conventional defense of
Europe."

Not everyone in high places campaigns, however, for escalation and
further militarization. Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO)
will call on the United Nations to  create an international committee
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promote dialogue between Biden, Putin and Zelensky with invitations to
Pope Francis, the Prime Minister of India and the UN Secretary General
to act as mediators to end the war in Ukraine. AMLO would like to put
everything on the negotiating table, including nuclear missile tests.

Excited by AMLO's initiative, members of the Peace in Ukraine
Coalition hope to amplify his message in the coming weeks as an
existential question haunts coalition members.

How does the war in Ukraine end? With nuclear annihilation of 60% of
the human race or a decades-long war of attrition or a backdoor deal
for semi-autonomy of the Donbas and partial denuclearization of
Europe?

As the United States approaches the 60th anniversary of the October
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, one is reminded that former President John
F. Kennedy persuaded Soviet Leader Nikita Krushchev to remove nuclear
missiles pointed at Florida from a base in Cuba, not by fast-tracking
weapons to escalate a hot war but by quietly making a deal to remove
the Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

As time passed, US nuclear warheads were reinstalled in Turkey, though
the quiet negotiations between JFK and Kruschev serve as an example of
how diplomacy can avert catastrophe.

To join the Peace in Ukraine Coalition, visit www.peaceinUkraine.org
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[email protected]

 
MARCY WINOGRAD [[link removed]] of
Progressive Democrats of America served as a 2020 DNC Delegate for
Bernie Sanders and co-founded the Progressive Caucus of the California
Democratic Party. Coordinator of CODEPINKCONGRESS, Marcy spearheads
Capitol Hill calling parties to mobilize co-sponsors and votes for
peace and foreign policy legislation.
===
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel
free to republish and share widely.

* War in Ukraine; Peace in Ukraine Coalition; US/Russia Relations/;
UN
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