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Announcement :: Iraq : Peace : Protest Activity |
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Morrison Fund/Anti-War Benefit |
Current rating: 0 |
by Steve Ucherek and Pamela Crews
Email: stu_blackout1 (nospam) insightbb.com (unverified!) |
30 Nov 2004
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December 9th concert to benefit memorial fund for Sgt. Shawna Morrison, killed in Iraq on 5 September 2004. |
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Thursday December 9 at the Highdive, Champaign, Illinois
9:00 p.m. (or maybe 9:30!)
Anti–War!
Benefit show for the Shawna Morrison Memorial Fund
Featuring:
the Blackouts
the Beauty Shop
Headlights
New Sense
This show benefits the Shawna Morrison Memorial Fund, set up recently upon receiving news of Shawna’s death in Iraq earlier this fall. Her colleagues at Radio Maria—a restaurant in downtown Champaign—started the fund in an effort to give meaning to such a senseless, needless death. The fund’s purpose is to give financial support to someone who might be in a situation like Shawna was when she signed up for the United States Army and later the National Guard.
Shawna attended high school in Paris, Illinois, and joined Army while she was still in high school in order to receive finances for college. She joined the National Guard after meeting her commitment to the regular Army so she could continue her studies.
It is our belief that people from small towns and from impoverished areas are being exploited by our country’s aggressive foreign policy overseas. It is our hope that with the money collected through the fund, we can give assistance to a student in the Paris area who may feel the only way to gain an education beyond high school, is to join the military. We feel that higher education should be available to all members of society. No person should be asked to give their life for that education.
Shawna loved her country and was proud of her service, yet her government turned its back on her when it was time to give her what she had earned . She wanted desperately to finish college and have a career, yet the Army withheld her tuition money. Shawna loved her life and loved people. She was a true joy to everyone who encountered her. Our question is...why? Why does her life end? For the defense of her country? For the defense of the Iraqi people? Or for the greed of our current administration, who have plunged our country and its people into an unjust, pre-emptive war?
Wherever you stand on the issues, this affects all of us. Shawna is one of US, the people of this country and of this community. When our country calls, people like Shawna go off to foreign lands and fight in its defense. Typically, those who serve do not ask questions. Instead, they assume that their government calls them to service only as a last resort. But that has not been the case with Iraq.
We invite you to come celebrate the life of one of our own. Shawna Marie Morrison was so much more than just a good soldier; she was a human being, whose life was worth more than all the oil in the world.
Come take a stand against this unjust war! And against the senseless slaughter of fellow human beings all over the globe.
We are men of peace we are men who work and we want no quarrel. But if you destroy our peace if you take away our work if you try to range us one against the other we– will know what to do. If you tell us to make the world safe for democracy we will take you seriously and by god and by Christ we will make it so. We will use the guns you force upon us we will use them to defend our very lives and the menace to our lives does not lie on the other nomansland‘ that was set apart without our consent it lies within our own boundaries here and now we have seen it and we know it.
Dalton Trumbo
END WAR! |
This work is in the public domain |
