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Democracy Now bericht: 'Iraq War Resisters Stage 241-Mile Peace March Across US-Mexico Border A group of anti-war protesters are staging a 241-mile march for peace across the Mexico-US border and through California. We speak with one of the march's key organizers, Pablo Paredes. He is an Iraq war resister who refused orders to board a ship in 2004 heading to Iraq. On Sunday, a group of anti-war protesters set off on what will be a 241-mile march for peace across the Mexico-US border and through California. At 6:30 Sunday morning the marchers set off from Tijuana Mexico. They crossed the Mexico-US border later that day, and plan to end the march with a rally in the California city of La Paz. Yesterday we reached one of the march's key organizers, Pablo Paredes. An Iraq war resister, Paredes was a Navy petty officer who refused orders to board a ship in 2004 heading to Iraq. We reached Pablo by cell phone as the marchers were leaving a Pendleton, California recruiting station. I asked him to talk about the march and one of the other organizers, Fernando Suarez Del Solar who lost his son in Iraq in 2003. Amy Goodman: Late yesterday, we reached one of the march's key organizers, Pablo Paredes. He is an Iraq war resister, a Navy petty officer, who refused orders to board a ship in 2004 heading to Iraq. We reached Pablo by phone as the marchers were leaving a Pendleton, California recruiting station. I asked him to talk about the march and one of his fellow organizers, Fernando Suarez Del Solar, who lost his son Jesus in Iraq in 2003. Pablo Paredes: We have just finished at the recruiting station here in the Vista area, where we confronted some recruiters for the second time in this march, because part of the march - one of the many facets of it is going to be Fernando's solemn asking of the recruiters to be more truthful with our youth, as he is the father of a person who died in Iraq and whose son was lied to about the reality of the military by recruiters. So that's one of the many facets of this effort. It's a counter-fraudulent recruitment sort of work, and unfortunately, we've been met with very rude kind of reactions. Fernando was actually laughed at by military recruiters at the Army Recruiting Station. We began at the Public School 44, which is where Fernando's son Jesus first started his school sort of pipeline in Tijuana. And like many immigrants, he ended up coming to the United States looking for a better life, for an education, and like many immigrants, as well, was targeted by recruiters and ended up in the military. So, part of our march seeks to emulate the plight of the immigrant. We're going to go - we started in Tijuana, we crossed the border and tried to destroy it, in a sense, with our message of peace that doesn't have borders, and we go to Camp Pendleton today, which is the end point today, because that's where a lot of immigrants end up. We end up recruited, and we end up being taught how to kill and die in wars, which is not the best use of our beautiful culture, so we want to redirect it. That's why the march will go from Camp Pendleton on to a place called La Paz, which translates to "peace." Very symbolically, we want to travel from war to peace, and beyond that, that's where César Chávez is buried, and he's also one of the legacies of our culture that we want to resurrect, the legacy of nonviolent civil action in the face of such injustices as this war in Iraq.' Lees verder:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/15/158256 Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031706T.shtml