Dear Congressman Kucinich,

On behalf of the Granny Peace Brigade Legislative Action Committee here in New York City, I’m writing to thank you, as always, for your inspiration. We know that this is a busy time with you back at home with your constituents, but hope you could help answer a Big question for us.

Here it is: How could so many people elected to Congress by United States citizens who are at least 60 % utterly fed up with what the war in Iraq has wrought for servicemen here, for our economy, not to mention for the Iraqi people, sign H. Con. Res 362?

We hold phone-a-thons in various gathering places throughout NYC, helping people contact their representatives by phone to express their opinions about what’s going on in Congress. We’ve been focusing lately on what we call the “wall of shame”, the list of 20 New York State Congressional Representatives who signed on to Rep. Ackerman’s resolution.

People are astonished to hear that their legislators have signed. They are routinely told when they call the offices, for example, Nita Lowey’s office, that they are mistaken, that the bill does not call for a “blockade” of Iran. But, of course, it does just that. And it also contains at least 80 percent misinformation and outright lies about Iran.

We want to understand the government better. How did this happen? How could Jan Schakowski sign this bill? How could Amy Klobuchar sign the Senate version? How could John Lewis do this? Barney Frank? To us, this is an atrocious and dangerous act of government. Can you help us understand the process? We do know that probably the resolution was drafted in the AIPAC offices. But even so, it is so much like what led up to the misinformed attacks on Iraq. Where is people’s courage? What are people afraid of? If you can’t tell us in writing, could we have a conversation sometime via phone, or could you tell Luis what to tell us??

If you’d like to know what we’ve been up to since your hosting our press conference in January 2007, you’ll see on our website, that we’ve been working on several fronts, doing counter-recruitment, holding teach-ins about Africom and the buildup of military bases in South America and the Caribbean. And of course the phone-a-thons are our outreach to getting people more vocal and involved with their representatives.
Please let us know if there is a time when we could talk with you, or write to us. You can write to me, or to grannypeace@gmail.com.
May the Department of Peace be born in the next administration.

Thank you,
– Caroline Chinlund