| Local residents joining anti-war demonstration Saturday, January 27, 2007 By HEATHER HADDON HERALD NEWS Heather Palumbo suffered silently when two of her childhood friends from Clifton High School served with the military in Iraq. They recently returned home safely, but she still hasn't shaken her sick feeling about the war. Palumbo plans to board a bus and join other local residents today who feel similarly. Organizers of an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C., are expecting hundreds of thousands of people nationwide to march today against the Bush administration's decision to add manpower to an already unpopular war .click here to read more |
| MFSO in the news - 2007 |
| N.J. voices among anti-war protests Sunday, January 28, 2007 By HERB JACKSON WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT From home-schooled 17-year-old Laura DeLuca to grandmother Connie Gordon, wearing the button she saved from a 1971 anti-Vietnam protest, North Jersey added its voices Saturday to a rally and march on the National Mall against the war in Iraq. "I'm angry," said DeLuca, of Bogota. "I'm hurt the president would purposely deny the American people the right to have peace." "I think we've killed enough people," said Gordon, of Hawthorne, adding that President Bush's policies "have united the terrorists." click here to read more |
| Local peace vigils gaining popularity Sunday, February 4, 2007 By MAYA KREMEN STAFF WRITER With death tolls growing and President Bush vowing to send more troops to Iraq, more North Jersey protesters are appealing to their neighbors at anti-war vigils alongside highways, municipal buildings and churches, activists say. "This has been going on a long time, but recently there's been sort of an upsurge," said Howard Falk of Bloomfield, who compiles an e-mail calendar of weekly peace events. "I only knew about a few vigils at first, and gradually I began getting info about more and more of them." There are more than 10 regular anti-war vigils in Bergen, Passaic and Morris counties. Click here to read more. |
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
| OPINION COLUMNS Aaron: N.J. needs our troops at home The Record Friday, October 26, 2007 By LAWRENCE AARON RECORD COLUMNIST WE'LL BE up the creek here in North Jersey if a flood or other natural disaster strikes and we need help from National Guard troops. New Jersey guard units got word last week that they're being called up. Thousands of men and women will leave their families early next year to augment troop strength in Iraq and Afghanistan. National Guard brigades from eight states are preparing for deployment. Troops in Iraq will be replaced by seven of those fresh units. The other one is headed for Afghanistan. It's bad news on several counts, not the least of which is that troop strength for our domestic needs will shrink considerably, with a total 3,200 of the state's citizen soldiers deployed overseas. For many of them it's the second time since September 2001; for others it's the third. Railing against the latest call-up of New Jersey Guard troops, Governor Corzine criticized the federal government's decision. He accused officials of overusing the state's military manpower. What an ironic twist for Corzine, who as a U.S. senator staunchly opposed the war and in 2002 voted against using military force in Iraq. Now, as New Jersey's chief executive, he's obliged to furnish Guard troops to fulfill Department of Defense demands for manpower to fight the war. Awkward as it may be for Corzine from an ideological standpoint, it's the people of New Jersey who find themselves sitting ducks if guard help is needed in an emergency such as flood rescue. In the eight years between clearing debris from Lodi streets ravaged by floodwaters of Tropical Storm Floyd and last April helping Totowa residents escape flooded neighborhoods, the National Guard has been put on alert or has actively helped other Jersey towns get through disasters countless times. And in view of recent FBI statements about terrorists residing in North Jersey, it doesn't make a lot of sense to render this region more vulnerable by sending half the state's guardsmen abroad. Maj. Gen. Glenn Rieth, the state's adjutant general, had prepared some of the troops for the blow by switching the call-back eligibility. Many who had expected to stay home until 2010 are being called back to begin training in June. A second tour of overseas duty two years earlier than anticipated fits the governor's description -- abusive and a mistake. Our troop needs are such that Corzine should try to appeal, although that would mean shifting the burden to some other state, possibly in similar straits. The departure of more troops leaves North Jersey residents vulnerable and exposed. Where will manpower and equipment come from the next time we're flooded or in the next emergency requiring extra hands? The guard unit being sent overseas includes troops from cities all over New Jersey -- Teaneck, Morristown and Jersey City among them. As the guard's deployment orders were being rolled out, so too were logistics for antiwar activists' scheduled walk across the George Washington Bridge, the first leg of a war protest in Union Square Saturday. Regulars demonstrating with Military Families Speak Out at the Teaneck Armory vigil Wednesday were testing their voices and stamina for a major rally tomorrow in downtown Manhattan. It's like dejà vu all over again. War protesters armed with signs and loud voices are going back to the front lines to fight for an end to the conflict. Click here to read more. |
| Weather not a barrier to dozens of protesters The Record Sunday, October 28, 2007 By BOB GROVES and ELIZABETH LLORENTE STAFF WRITERS Wind and rain did not stop a small group of North Jersey peace marchers from parading across the George Washington Bridge on Saturday to protest the Iraq war. "What do we want?" Paula Rogovin and Mauro Camporeale shouted into the thick mist, high above the Hudson River. "Troops out!" replied the band of 65 marchers behind them on the bridge's pedestrian walkway. "When do we want it?" the two leaders cried. "Now!" The foul conditions probably kept some members of the Bergen Peace & Justice Coalition from attending, said Rogovin, 58, of Teaneck. But the fog of anti-war did not discourage those who crossed the bridge to join other protesters in Washington Heights. "We're not disappointed at all," said Rogovin, whose 25-year-old son Eric recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. Rogovin belongs to Military Families Speak Out/Bergen County, which is part of the Bergen coalition. From Washington Heights, the marchers headed downtown to larger rallies at Union Square and Foley Square. The "regional mobilization" of protesters in Manhattan, sponsored by the national group United for Peace & Justice, called on Congress to stop funding the war and to bring the troops home. The North Jersey group assembled on Hudson Terrace in Fort Lee, under the bridge ramp. They held a variety of signs proclaiming, "No more blood for oil," "How many will die for Bush's lies?" "Tell Congress no more $ for war!" "Funding the war is killing our troops." "I'm not against war," said Bob Drozd, 58, of West Milford, who was marching with his wife, Joann, 52. "I believe World War II was a good thing. "But this is the wrong war at the wrong time." The Drozds' 23-year-old son, whose name they declined to give, served as an Army infantryman in Afghanistan, they said. He is currently in Italy recovering from hearing loss caused by an improvised explosive device, they said. "Afghanistan is not a good place," said Bob Drozd, a quality-control manager with a private defense contractor. "If we had sent in 100,000 troops, we would have been out of there in a year. The United States, however, was right to send troops to Afghanistan, but not to Iraq, he said. Across the street, six members of the pro-war Gathering of Eagles taunted the peace marchers with a sign that read, "90 percent of you don't even know why you're here." "They're communists," Carolyn Van Zorge, 56, of North Bergen, said of the anti-war marchers. "They don't speak for us or our military or America. "It's very demoralizing. They're undermining our troops." "It's not much of a gathering," Mauro Camporeale, head of the Bergen coalition, said of the six Eagles. "It's their right to counter-demonstrate," said Camporeale, 29, a labor organizer from Saddle Brook. "They call all of us communists, but we're a wide variety of political groups." As they crossed the bridge, the marchers were greeted by honks of car horns and gestures from drivers, some friendly, some not-so. The oldest marcher may have been Ed Pica, 83, of Teaneck, who wore a World War II veteran baseball cap and fought to keep his umbrella under control. Pica said he had been an engineer for the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bomb that ended the Big War, but he was marching against the current conflicts. Sarah Dalton, 9, of West Milford may have been the youngest. "I'm marching to end the war," said Sarah, who wore a pink raincoat and carried a small American flag. "Why? Because it's not good to kill people." Her father, Tim, said he is primarily against the war to prevent its escalation into Iran. Click here to read more E-mail: groves@northjersey.com |
| Click here to read about MFSO in the news - 2008 |