People for Peace and Justice

About our featured video:

In a display of patriotic dissent, members of several local activist groups including St. Augustine People for Peace and Justice, Movement for a Democratic Society – Jacksonville and Veterans for Peace joined together to stage a symbolic funeral march through St. Augustine’s historic pedestrian business district and along the Bay Front.

Held in solidarity with Iraq Veterans Against The War’s Winter Soldier Project, which was being conducted in Washington, DC simultaneous with the funeral march, the procession recognized and commemorated the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, Afghani, American and other people killed in George Bush’s illegal wars of aggression, occupation, and corporate imperialism in the Middle East.

Led by two drummers and a wreath-bearer, four pall-bearers carried a “coffin” draped with the American flag that was given to one of the marchers after her husband was killed almost 40 years ago in another illegal and immoral war of aggression in Vietnam. This was a highly personal and emotional event for all participants.

The many shoppers and tourists along the march route parted and stood to the side watching silently as the 20 patriots slowly and solemnly made their way to the dirge-like drum beat.

Two members handed out flyers describing the Winter Soldier Project and listing the statistics of “The Costs Of War” including the horrifying number of veterans who continue to commit suicide each day as a result of the savage brutality and inhumanity they’ve been forced to witness and participate in by the barbarian corporate war machine.

We applaud our courageous Winter Soldiers and the Iraqi civilians who traveled to DC this weekend to testify as to their personal experiences of the horrors of these preventable, immoral acts of war and crimes against humanity.

Despite the fact that neither George Bush nor Dick Cheney has attended a single military funeral of the thousands of dead troops secreted back home under cover of night and a media black-out, actions like the Winter Soldier Project and this highly visible funeral march hope to increase the public’s awareness of the horrors of war and to inspire a more informed citizenry to act to end this senseless, unwinnable war and to prevent such future catastrophes.