Speakers called on Cal State Long Beach students to promote peace in confrontational but nonviolent ways at the Center for Peace and Social Justice’s “War is Expensive — Peace is Priceless” festival in the USU ballroom Wednesday.
Four speeches were given and one poem was read promoting peace.
“We need to challenge our government,” said Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel.
Wright told students how she practiced the philosophy of government scrutiny when she resigned from her position in protest of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Giving listeners a current example of promoting peace, Wright mentioned a Lt. Cmdr. Diaz who leaked out the names of about 800 Guantanamo Bay prisoners. He was later court-marshaled, which led to a six-month jail sentence and a dishonorable discharge.
Wright also stated that military personnel who refused to go to war as conscientious objectors were just as a courageous as those who went to war out of a sense of duty.
Stephen Zunes, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco, used historical examples to show that a transition to democracy must come from nonviolent groups protesting for it.
In contrast, Zunes said, the “democratic experiment in Iraq” has failed since the United States invasion of Iraq was done so for self-centered purposes and came to be seen as an occupational force by Iraqis.
Zunes said students have successfully fought for peace via protests against South Africa during its apartheid era and against the Vietnam War. Currently, Zunes said students are fighting for peace by remaining unwilling to fight in a war they disagree with. He said this is the reason the draft hasn’t been reinstalled.
Maricela Guzman, an activist and disabled army veteran, told the audience how she came to be a promoter peace through fighting for veteran benefits.
Congress had reduced funding for veteran benefits before the invasion of Iraq, at a time Guzman said she wanted to make sure veterans were taken care of.
“It was kind of selfish because it affected me,” Guzman said.
Guzman said she wanted to speak out for veterans, since, she said, those in uniform don’t have a voice and will one day need the care she’s advocating for. She then told the audience that promoting peace involved civic activism.
“Peace is the daily work that we do to affect our communities,” Guzman said.
More radical leftist garbage. Put down your books and pick up a gun. Why let others do your fighting for you? Is it to protect illegal immigrants that are destroying are countrie. We need to bring the draft back and send all of the liberal CSULB college students to war in order to save the brave volunteers who are diying in there place. Put every drug dealer, illegal imigrant and murder in our prison system in a uniform and let them do some real hard time.