The Friends are on Facebook with their Cost of War campaign, and they sent me a message with a link to their new short video comparing one day of spending on the occupation of Iraq with our needs here at home. Schools, housing, school lunches, health care — these are all the things that we supposedly can’t afford, even while we spend $720 million per day on an illegal, immoral occupation and our economy suffers.

Take 1 minute, 46 seconds to watch their video, then take ten seconds to sign their petition to Congress. Or maybe you want to select a different Friends-sponsored activity:

•  Use their Friends for Peace site to make yourself a little peace sign, take a picture of yourself holding it, then upload to their web-based slide show.
• Visit the Eyes Wide Open exhibit site. (It’s been to Oregon). The exhibit is sad and hard to look at, but a great opportunity to talk with people about the human toll of the war.
• If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, check out their local actions page.

AFSC just has so many excellent programs, and are so thoughtful about approaching the roots of problems. You may also want to check out their peacebuilding/conflict resolution program.

Whew! It was nice taking a break from the Internet. A week after returning from vacation, I finally got my in box down to a reasonable number, then one day offline took care of that. But, in my sea of messages this AM, I did see a quick request from SaveDarfur.org. The peacekeeping mission in Darfur — an effort that is a combination of UN forces and African Union forces — has begun to deploy to Darfur, but does not have any helicopters for transport. This mission is in concert with a number of diplomatic and conciliatory efforts, aimed at ending the genocidal violence in Sudan, and has the supposed support of the security council, yet the UN Secretary-General’s repeated requests for helicopters have not gotten the equipment this mission needs.

So take a quick minute to nudge our administration to send helicopters — they several quick options for action, including a petition you can sign, or a means to send an email to the White House. I chose to send an email, and pointed out in it that George Bush’s office wrote to me last fall to tell me he was very committed to action on Darfur to end the violence there. So, presumably, he cares. And of all the people in the world who have access to military transportation, he’s pretty well connected.  So ask him to send the helicopters — we’ve got them.