peace walk

As plans are underway for an international conference in New York City on Nuclear disarmament, peace walks are planned (and in many cases are underway).  Various Buddhist communities have organized walks and invited others to join them either in the walk or by providing hospitality.   Walkers include Buddhist monks and nuns.  All are welcome.  One sponsoring community writes: "Please join us by walking for an hour, a day, or for the entirety. You can support us by organizing a community potluck, a sharing circle, a visit to your mayor, a place for our walkers to sleep, or coverage by the local media. Also please keep this walk in your thought and prayer."

Information on four walks has been shared with the Fellowship of Reconciliation.  All four walks culminate in New York City for the Rally and March on Sunday, May 2nd. The May 2nd Rally is an international call for an end to nuclear weapons in the US and around the world. 

Even though we might be made blind to the evil afoot, we will not be silent. This is the lesson of modern history. We will sing a new song as strangers in a strange land: Let My People Go. While the Egyptians, Israelis, and Americans conspire to keep us from seeing the conditions of life in the world’s largest prison (sorry, no visiting hours this month), there is a chorus, a voice, 43 nations rich, which is lifted in greater harmony and crescendo than ever before to call for raising the siege of Gaza and thereby increasing the security of Israel.

Fellowship of Reconciliation USA Position on Gaza Freedom March December 31, 2009, includes encouragement to understand the UN Fact Finding Mission now known as the Goldstone Report linked below.

The key to peace in the Middle East is restoration of international law and the recognition of the right of both Palestinians and Israeli Jews to live in peace and security side by side.

It's a special opportunity to meet two different anti-war world travelers on the same day, and I had such an opportunity at the Nyack headquarters of the Fellowship of Reconciliation last week when I was introduced to a young U.S. Army veteran who left Iraq as a conscientious objector as well as a British peace activist who has entered military bases on Ploughshares-like actions. They had come from -- and were heading in -- different directions, but we found a lot of common cause during our brief time together.

200 miles down; 10 to go.

I just spoke with Tayza Yeelin, a young Burmese man who is walking more than 200 miles from upstate New York to the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan. Tayza and several other Burmese exiles -- all of whom fled their native land in the 1980s and 1990s due to the repressive military regime -- are part of the International Campaign for Freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma.