Locally Grown Food Banquet coming soon

I get email:

Locally Grown Food Banquet
When: April 1st, 2008 @ 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Where: Sherman Function Hall
The night will consist of:
-An opening panel discussion with different community leaders and
Brandies professors.
– Following there will be a meal consisting of local, organic, and
fair trade foods. All prepared by Brandeis Students!”

After emailing Stephanie Sofe, I was informed that this event will be free. Excellent.

A great event on a somber day

A few hours ago, all of Innermost Parts’ contributors attended a march and vigil on campus to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war. We marched from Shapiro to Usdan and back in a loud trail of over 120 people – a very large number for a club-organized Brandeis political event. We gathered in a circle to listen to speakers, sing songs, and reflect on how the war has impacted us, America, the Iraqi people, and the world.

I was incredibly impressed by the large turnout and the passion that so many people had, five years in. I know that my attention has drifted somewhat away from the war over the last few years, and I feel this event brought it back to the front of my mind.

A final thought someone brought to my attention today, and which I’d like to leave you with – this is the first of its wars for which the United States has paid absolutely nothing (at least in terms of dollars) up front. In every other war, there has been an increase in taxes or some other financial mechanism implemented to pay for the war. But in this one, every penny has been borrowed from foreign governments and investors. So while ours may physically be a near-unilateral occupation, governments are financially responsible for this war the whole world round.

By President Bush’s own count, we have spent half a trillion dollars on this war, itself a sgering amount. Our generation and the next will be the ones paying. But by the conservative estimate of Harvard economist Linda Bilmes and Columbia economist Joseph E. Stiglitz in their new book, the total cost, accounting for the lost income of disabled soldiers’ families, the cost of supporting wounded veterans, etc., the cost is somewhere around $3 trillion dollars to America. Internationally, there is another $3 trillion cost.

These numbers are so large I cannot even wrap my mind around them. I would call them tragically ridiculous, but words seem silly compared to the unfathomable good such money could have done elsewhere.

VoteVets

Hey, this is Sahar. Welcome our newest contributor, Rivka Maizlish.

Hey all. Rivka in the house! I worked at the DFA table today at the protest/rally/vigil thinger, and I’m glad to announce that we have raised 81 dollars to send to VoteVets.org, a non-partisan, progressive political action committee that elects veterans who have pledged to end the war.

Hoorah. That’s all. Catch y’all later.

War stories

More eloquent, better informed writers than I have written about the failures and lessons of the war. I do not presume that I can outdo them on insightful analysis. I do, however, have something that no one else has. For five years, I alone have borne the story of my own experience with the Iraq war. For the nearly the entirety of my teenage life, the Iraq war has loomed, omnipresent but simultaneously far-off, in my civic and political consciousness. It has had, I suppose, a similarly large effect on all of us who came of age in these modern times. Perhaps my story is a typical example of my generation. Perhaps my story is as unique as every one of us.

Today, on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I’d like to share some of that story with you, as honestly as I can. Perhaps you might like to share, as well.
Continue reading “War stories”

Pro-Peace rally today

Assuming it rains, people will be reading the names of the dead starting 2:15 in Shapiro Center, or possibly earlier in Usdan.

Big event will be 5:15 in Shapiro Campus Center. People will be handing out mini-fliers at Rabb, etc before that.