[bomp] Fw: A Simple Holiday Peace Action

["Immortal Porpoises" <immortalporpoises@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A Simple Holiday Peace Action


Permission to distribute granted. The more of your friends, blogs, news wires,
bulletin boards and listservers you send this to today, the more good luck you
and all of us will have now and throughout our lives.

From: Steve Greenfield
To: Anti-war activists and all lovers of Peace
Action Alert: The 2005-6 Holiday Refund for Peace

A Direct Action for Peace in Celebration of the True Spirit of the Season

What if there were a vast pool of untapped monetary wealth that could be
directly applied to bringing American troops home from Iraq, an amount as
large as the annual military budget of the United States; and what if, like
the military budget, it were available to be renewed annually? What if this
entire pool of wealth were not only available but completely under the control
of each of us, as individual citizens, to claim our portion and direct it
towards delivering the universal message of the year-end holiday season, Peace
on Earth?

It exists, and you are in charge. This is the year each of us as individuals
and we as a nation can make good on the promise of Christmas. This year we
must declare that the month beginning December 26th will be known, for as long
as is necessary, as Refund for Peace Month. If we all take part, government
forecasts tell us we will have $440 BILLION dollars immediately at our
disposal this year and annually.

The concept is simple. Starting December 26th, take every single gift you
received that is of a non-essential nature, and return it to your local
retailer for a refund. Then take that refund and mail it to your candidate(s)
of choice who is running expressly on an anti-war platform in the 2006
elections for House and Senate. If your local retailer only permits exchanges,
exchange your gifts for food or household goods you have use for and would
have purchased anyway, and donate the cash equivalent to anti-war candidates.

The makers of war and the profiteers who keep them empowered are never at a
loss for funds. The overwhelming majority of that funding is appropriated
directly from the citizenry under penalty of law in the form of taxes, or
borrowed at interest, and then redistributed to the profiteers, who in turn
redistribute portions of it back to the decision makers who supplied it to
continue their authority to insure the permanence of the appropriated
largesse. The citizens of America who love peace, derive no benefit from war,
and are most frequently directly and indirectly harmed through its waging feel
helpless in the face of this vast wealth and the power it buys. But it is
within our power to match Mammon dollar for dollar, and with the added power
of our numbers, we can stop the cycle of death. All we need to do is get
organized.

Towards this end I ask all of us striving in pursuit of peace to declare this
post-holiday season to be the First Annual Refund For Peace Month by using our
combined Christmas purchasing power to continue the mission of Christ's birth
and ministry, and make real the hopes of all cultures and religions in the
holiday season, by working together to bankrupt Mammon, send his minions to
the unemployment line, and invest in a present and lasting peace. Return all
non-essential gifts for refunds and use the proceeds to empower Peace.

Why send the money to anti-war candidates for federal office? Because for all
our worthy efforts, only the 535 Americans who vote in Congress can begin or
end this and any other war. Therefore, ultimately it is the seating of
candidates on the basis of their known position on ending this war and
preventing new ones that decides how soon peace will reign.

And we'll get the money back. So far the war has cost the taxpayers over $250
billion, and is running over a billion more per week. The sooner the war ends,
the sooner that rate of funding becomes available for deficit reduction,
domestic infrastructure, renewable energy conversion, education, health care,
poverty eradication, and retirement security.

Plus we'll be helping the economy. There will be no net loss from the
redirection of revenues out of the retail sector. Every penny of that donated
money will be spent domestically by its recipients on printing, mailing,
transportation, lodging, advertising, public events, catering,
get-out-the-vote phone banks, employees, and the numerous other campaign
necessities that are purchased overwhelmingly from local sources.

All 435 members of the House of Representatives are up for reelection in 2006,
and so are 33 Senators. Imagine 235 anti-war candidates armed with campaign
budgets the size of the Pentagon's without a single donor having to reach into
his or her own pocket to do it. Imagine if we can make Wal-Mart pick up part
of the tab. Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a
dreamer, but -- war is over, if you want it. And we want it, we deserve it,
and we need it, so let's get together and do it.

Now if we can just get this message circulated throughout cyberspace at half
the pace of those earlier "Don't Buy Gas On Tuesday" letters, we can have this
program up and running on a mass scale in time for December 26th. The national
campaign for the Holiday Refund for Peace is officially underway.

Steve Greenfield
New Paltz, NY

(Steve Greenfield is a citizen-activist, family man, musician and volunteer
firefighter who is currently running on an anti-war platform against Hillary
Clinton in the 2006 Democratic Party Senate primary race in New York. His
website is www.greenfieldforsenate.org and he can be reached at
greenfieldforsenate@earthlink.net)

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