Saturday, August 29, 2009, from 11AM-2PM Republican Congressman Gus Bilirakis will hold his 3rd Annual Military Fair at East Lake High School in Tarpon Springs. The fair is used to glorify military service and weaponry to children. We will not passively stand by as our public schools become centers for military indoctrination. Public schools should be centers of academic and personal growth, we won’t allow them to be used to showcase and glorify the military. Last year, Bilirakis allowed gun dealers there on the school grounds selling weapons and letting kids play with them. ***This event makes no sense when there are ZERO TOLERANCE POLICIES in regards to possessing weaponry on school campuses.
The law states that if a child so much as displays a plastic pirate sword during a Halloween party on school grounds, he or she gets expelled. Yet, they allow the military to set up weapons displays and invite gun dealers to have booths where children can point weapons at each other at our public schools. The larger context is even more alarming. The decades long defunding of public education, the resultant decline of K-thru-12 systems across the country, and the growth of the charter school movement has produced a situation in which the Military creep into the wreckage with an offer many parents cannot refuse. Desperate parents enroll their children in programs they believe will teach them "leadership skills", fearing they have little or no other option.
Militarism is an issue that must be confronted with long-term strategies, and challenged on the National, as well as neighborhood level. Our goal is to inhibit the power of the military-corporate-educational complex by slowly and positively transforming an interventionist and imperial foreign policy. We start by refusing to allow military exhibitions in our neighborhood schools.
We will not raise our children to kill another mother’s child!
In solidarity, please JOIN CodePink Tampa Bay, St Pete for Peace, Florida Green Party members, Veterans for Peace, St. Pete for Peace, FLPAN and other local peace action groups on Saturday, August 29th, 2009. We’ll meet at 10:30AM at the entrance to East Lake High School at 1300 Silver Eagle Drive in Tarpon Springs, FL 34688
For more information email:
codepinktampabay@yahoo.com
See us on our social networks:
http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/codepinktampabay
http://www.twitter.com/codepinktampabay
http://www.myspace.com/codepinktampabay
http://www.youtube.com/user/CODEPINKtampabay
http://www.meetup.com/codepinktampabay/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8768072319
TAMPA: Congressman Bilirakis's ANNUAL MILITARY FAIR @ EAST LAKE HIGH SCHOOL in Tarpon Springs, FL 8/29/09
Code Pink Tampa Bay's Mother's Day Vigil--please join us!
Code Pink Tampa Bay wants to invite all peace-loving people to join us for our Mother's Day Vigil near MacDill AFB, Tampa, Florida. We want to remind our community that Mother's Day was originally created to honour peace. We stand in solidarity with the national organization of Code Pink Women for Peace and their 24 hour vigil outside of the White House in Washington, DC. We also stand with all Mothers from all over the globe who have children in the military and want the wars to end and their children to come home. And in the words of Julia Ward Howe, "...We, the women of one country, Will be too tender of those of another country, To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
Please wear pink, bring signs, pink flowers and pink sidewalk chalk. We will be writing our messages of peace on the sidewalks and laying garlands and bowers of pink flowers along the walkways. (***Real flowers only, please! And chalk, not paint! Make sure your signs reflect the message of Mother's Day for Peace and bringing our sons and daughters home.) All other Tampa Bay area peace groups are invited to join with us in peaceful solidarity.
We will be gathering at 830AM until 1PM on Sunday, May 10, 2009, Mother's Day. Please meet @ the northeast corner of Gandy and South Dale Mabry with your signs. This is a very public corner and has been used for actions before by many of the local peace groups. There is ample parking and a Publix and other stores nearby for water and other refreshments.
***Photographers and videographers are needed to record and video this event. Please contact us directly. If you have any other inquiries, please direct them to 813-312-2292 or to the following email addresses:
codepinktampabay@yahoo.com
hczipri@msn.com
anitastewart@gmail.com
( Write MOTHER'S DAY in CAPS on the subject line )
REFERENCES:
See the national organization's Call to Action on the national Code Pink website here:
http://codepinkalert.org/a
Check out the video of the reading of the "Mother's Day Proclamation" poem by Julia Ward Howe:
http://www.youtube.com/wat
Read all about the original Mother's Day:
http://womenshistory.about
Please JOIN, FOLLOW and FRIEND the Social Networking Sites for Code Pink Tampa Bay:
http://www.myspace.com/cod
http://www.groups.yahoo.co
http://www.facebook.com/gr
http://www.twitter.com/cod
http://www.meetup.com/code
