Next General Meeting December 9th. Use the “Contact” Link above for more information.

7 PM, at the First Unitarian Church, 1011 SW 12th Ave. (corner of 12th & Salmon)

And now the work begins anew.

After eight years of the worst administration in American history, we have the opportunity to take the energy of this historic election and channel it into positive actions. The problems facing us are great and the new President has immense challenges ahead of him. The financial meltdown, heath care, energy, environmental degradation and of course the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan just to name a few. What will be our focus?

Our motto is "Oregon Veterans Working Together for Peace & Justice Through Non-violence".  Our mission statement has these five goals:

(a) Toward increasing public awareness of the costs of war.

(b) To restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations

(c) To end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons

(d) To seek justice for veterans and victims of war

(e) To abolish war as an instrument of national policy.

I believe that in order to start addressing the above-mentioned challenges, our focus should begin with, "Toward increasing public awareness of the costs of war." The occupations and the continued inept prosecution of the "Global war on terror" are draining the nation's resources away from solutions to the many internal struggles we face. With the billions of dollars being sucked into the black hole of war, where can the funding come from for education? Without a highly educated workforce, who is going to develop and build the alternative energy infrastructure and the new methods of creating solar, biofuels, wind and other energy sources of the future? We have a crumbling transportation system. How can the rebuilding of our roads, bridges, rail and waterways be accomplished if billions are being wasted on destruction? The manpower needed to do this rebuilding is estimated to be in the millions of workers, all receiving living wage jobs. Those wages would in turn be rolled back into the economy, creating more jobs, goods and services and revitalizing business.

The societal impacts are just as staggering as the economic ones. Our Reserve and National Guard units continue to be overused, leaving cities and towns with a shortage of Firemen, EMTs, Police, and medical personnel who joined to use their talents at the local level. None can be as devastating as the suffering of the families of the victims of these wars and occupations, and of the veterans returning into a system struggling to provide the services it is mandated to provide but that has been decimated by ineptitude, malfeasance and a lack of funding. It is estimated that over thirty percent of the homeless are veterans. There is an epidemic of suicides among returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. PTSD, mangles bodies, failed marriages, and confusion over the role they were asked to perform in these conflicts, remove these veterans and their families from a normal life. They have been sacrificed while the rest of America was encouraged to go shopping, on credit. The services needed to bring about their healing cannot be instigated until those billions of dollars being wasted on a failed policy are taken out of the hands of the "Masters of war", and returned to the people.

I am sure everyone can come up with more examples of how these military adventures have caused great damage to America and the world. It is self evident that the past eight years have been a colossal failure.

As the nation breathes a collective sigh of relief realizing that on January 20^th George W. Bush will no longer be President, we must ask ourselves; What now? For the last seven years we have seen this malfeasance-ridden administration reduce America to a shadow of its former self. Crushing us with debt, losing our standing in the world, destroying our civil liberties, overseeing the biggest foreign policy disaster in our history, failing to respond to natural disasters (Katrina et al), and generally swaggering around the world with the message; "You're either with us or against us".  It is my hope that the message from the new administration will be; "Let's talk". And that is what we must do; we must talk to our elected representatives, our neighbors and friends, our school children. We must talk to any and all, and educate them to the cost of war. We must also back up that talk with action. We know how to organize. We know how to demonstrate. We know how to get our facts. We know how to network.

By words and actions we must take our message to an audience willing to listen now that the mood of the country has shifted from apathy and despair to hope. It can be easy to retain the attitude of "there's no difference between Republican and Democrats". I think the last 8 years have shown that while Corprotocracy does have a grip on both parties, the Neocons and the Theocrats of the Republican Party have been driving the agenda. They has been discredited and repudiated in this election. The people have said "Enough!"  I am going to check my cynicism at the door for now and use this opportunity to help revitalize the movement.

Here in Oregon we have two new elected officials, Senator elect Jeff Merkley and Kurt Schrader in District 5. I think we should introduce ourselves to these two ASAP. Let them know we are not going to accept business as usual, in a nice way of course. We should also contact the rest of our National and State delegations as well to remind them we are not going away. FDR said once: "I agree with you, now go out and make me do it."

We must come up with a rational, cogent message to our elected officials. We must bring them the facts and figures along with an emotional appeal to end the wars and occupations. We are a credible voice. We must use it. We must make them do it!