Meteor Blades had a great diary tonight about the Iraq Moratorium, and a lot of the discussion revolved around black armbands. I found a great recipe for making one out of a black sock!
I love it and I hope tomorrow sees sewing goods stores with lines that look like the ones at Northern Rock bank branches in Liverpool.
I just want to point out that there are other plenty of other ways for all of us to break our daily routine and take action, by ourselves or with others, to end this sucking chest wound of a war.
The Iraq Moratorium website has a rapidly expanding listing of local activities you can join in. But there is also a list of actions anyone of us can take by ourselves. Armbands or ribbons certainly. Please give your elected officials in Congress a ring, no matter how many times you've done it before. In case you don't have it memorized, the Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.
There's a whole list of other options linked from the home page too. But my current favorite is one I diaried last week, which I now repeat at the urging of some more experienced Kossacks who missed it themselves because they were en route to DC for the big march.
Have your Congressperson and/or Senators been voting for the "emergency appropriations" or otherwise enabling the Bush/Cheney administration to continue this fiasco? Just follow these three easy steps:
1. Write a check to his or her campaign committee, for a reasonable amount--$20, $40, $110.
2. Write on the front of the check, in large letters, the word VOID.
3. Mail it off with a brief note stating that until he or she steps up and takes concrete and consistent action to stop the war, you will not cough up a single dime! (And feel free to mention the Iraq Moratorium.)
The beauty of this is obvious. For too many in Congress, constituents are essentially an annoyance--people who want passports expedited, their nephews admitted to the Coast Guard Academy, the privacy of their phone calls and emails protected, national health insurance. There's just no end to their demands.
Donors, though...that's another story. Donors are the best humanity has to offer; they provide the very lifeblood of a modern political career--money!
Now imagine Representative X getting the report from the campaign committee. "Well, Congressman, the good news is we took in $13,000 this week. The bad news is that $3,700 of it was in voided checks because of your stupid kowtowing to Bush."
What do you think, Kossacks? Might this be the proverbial 2x4 that gets the attention of these retrograde Donkeys?
And if not, what other ideas do you have to add to the list at the Iraq Moratorium site?