MN protests new wars on Iraq and Syria
Minneapolis, MN – Twin Cities peace and anti-war groups held a rally in the West Bank neighborhood, near the University of Minnesota and Augsburg College on Sept. 27. The rally was organized to be a part of a coordinated anti-war campaign in cities across the U.S. Sept. 23-29 to protest the U.S. bombing of Syria and Iraq called by the ANSWER Coalition.
The Minneapolis protest was organized by the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition (MPAC). This was the third protest in two weeks organized by MPAC against the Obama administration’s recent push to bomb Iraq and Syria.
Meredith Aby-Keirstead, an organizer with the MN Anti-War Committee, spoke to the crowd of over 50 protesters, “This week the U.S. Congress approved $500 million in funding for the allegedly ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels and Secretary of Defense Hagel said airstrikes were costing the U.S. between $7 million and $10 million a day. Is that what you want to support? No. We need money for human needs not for war.”
Aby-Keirstead concluded her speech by stating, “Every day the U.S. is in Syria longer is another day that makes it more likely that the U.S. will play a bigger role in the conflict. But that is what the 1% really want. They don’t care that airstrikes will cause more harm than good. They don’t care that U.S. efforts are doomed to backfire and escalate the war regionally. Their real agenda is quite simple: keeping the Middle East under U.S. control by any means necessary.
“But we care. We don’t want more people killed for empire. We don’t want more money spent on war. We don’t want another generation of Americans and Iraqis to see each other as enemies. We have a big task a head of us. We need to challenge the president’s message. We need to build our capacity as an anti-war movement. Whose with me?”
The protest got a positive reception from people in the neighborhood, which includes a large Somali community.
At the end of the protest, Women Against Military Madness announced that their Wednesday vigils over the Mississippi River on the Marshall Avenue/Lake Street bridge from 5-6:00 p.m. will focus on protesting against the attacks on Iraq and Syria for the month of October.