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I hope I'm not offending anyone by sending
this.
Selma
Subject: Rice for Peace! ...with historical precedent
FYI
This amazing idea from the Boulder Mennonite Church:
There
is a grassroots campaign underway to protest war in Iraq in a simple,
but
potentially powerful way.
Place 1/2 cup uncooked rice in a small
plastic bag (a snack-size bag or sandwich
bag work fine).
Squeeze
out excess air and seal the bag. Wrap it in a piece of paper on which
you
have written:
"If your enemies are hungry, feed them. Romans 12:20. Please
send this rice to
the people of Iraq; do not attack them."
Place the
message and bag of rice in an envelope (either a letter-sized or
padded
mailing envelope--both are the same cost to mail) and send them
to:
President George Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
NW
Washington, DC 20500
Attach $1.06 in postage. (Three 37-cent
stamps equal $1.11.)
In order for this protest to be effective, there
must be hundreds of thousands
of such rice deliveries to the White House.
We can do this if you each forward
this message to your friends and
family.
There is a positive history of this protest! In the 1950s,
Fellowship of
Reconciliation began a similar protest, which is credited
with influencing
President Eisenhower against attacking China. Read
on:
"In the mid-1950s, the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation,
learning of famine
in the Chinese mainland, launched a 'Feed Thine Enemy'
campaign. Members and
friends mailed thousands of little bags of rice to
the White House with a tag
quoting the Bible, "If thine enemy hunger, feed
him." As far as anyone knew for
more than ten years, the campaign was an
abject failure. The President did not
acknowledge receipt of the bags
publicly; certainly, no rice was ever sent to
China.
"What
nonviolent activists only learned a decade later was that the
campaign
played a significant, perhaps even determining role in preventing
nuclear war.
Twice while the campaign was on, President Eisenhower met with
the Joint Chiefs
of Staff to consider U.S. options in the conflict with
China over two islands,
Quemoy and Matsu. The generals twice recommended
the use of nuclear weapons.
President Eisenhower each time turned to his
aide and asked how many little bags
of rice had come in. When
told they
numbered in the tens of thousands, Eisenhower told the generals that
as
long as so many Americans were expressing active interest in having the
U.S.
feed the Chinese, he certainly wasn't going to consider using nuclear
weapons
against them."
You can make a difference!
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Your
assumptions are your windows on the world.
Scrub them off every once in a
while, or the light
won't come in.
-- Alan
Alda
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