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40 day fast against sanctions: please send postcard of support



Dear friends,

As you may know, on August 6th, 12 members of Voices in the Wilderness US
began a 40 day liquids-only fast against the sanctions on Iraq outside the
US Mission to the UN in New York (see press release below for more info).

If you would like to send them a message of support you can write to them
c/o St Vincent Ferrer Church,
1603 Brooklyn Ave, Brooklyn, NY  11210

Their names are:

Cynthia Banas,   Vernon, NY
Lorie Blanding,   Easthampton, MA
Felton Davis,   New York, NY
Joan Gregory,   Marlboro, NY
Brian Kavanagh,   Hartford, CT
Kathy Kelly,   Chicago, IL
Johannes Limberger,   Germany
Ceylon Mooney,   Memphis, TN
Joe Morton,   Baltimore, MD
Mark Paye,   Chicago, IL
Henry Williamson,   Charleston, SC
Jerry Zawada,   Hammond, I

Best wishes,

Gabriel
voices in the wilderness uk

*********************************************
Breaking Ranks:
A Fast to End the Siege of Iraq

August 6th - September 14th
Tel: 646-208-2098

Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-based campaign to end the economic
sanctions on Iraq, today announces “Breaking Ranks: A Fast to End the Siege
of Iraq.”  Fast members will gather in New York City August 6th through
September 14th.

The fast will begin on Monday morning, August 6th, with a Press Conference
at 10:00 a.m. at “The Isaiah Wall,” E. 43rd Street and 1st Avenue, across
from the UN Building.  After the press conference, the fasters will process
to 45th St. and 1st Avenue, across from the US Mission to the UN, where they
will return to demonstrate and fast every day for forty days.

“We are trying to encourage the member states of the UN to ‘break ranks’
with the US in its insistence on endless sanctions for Iraq,” said Kathy
Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness [VitW] and twice nominated for
the Nobel Peace Prize.  “The more ‘smart’ they try to make the sanctions,
the more adept they are at killing the Iraqi people.”

Former Under-Secretary General of the UN, Denis Halliday, will join in the f
ast on August 6, and will be available for interviews.  Halliday is also a
Nobel nominee.

August 6th, the fifty-sixth anniversary of the US atomic attack on
Hiroshima, Japan, also marks eleven full years of the US-led embargo on
Iraq.  In 1999, UNICEF estimated that the sanctions had contributed to the
deaths of half a million Iraqi children under the age of five.

Most of the fasters have been to Iraq, and they will use the time of fasting
to tell UN representatives and the general public what they have seen and
heard about the effects of the sanctions.

Besides fasting, participants will vigil and leaflet across the street from
the UN (the corner of 45th Street and First Avenue), perform street theater,
attend Arabic lessons, and hold nightly public discussions on the effects of
the sanctions. They will seek meetings with UN and US representatives.
Additionally, group members will consider breaking the fast if staff from
the US Mission to the UN will, on occasion, share with them a meal of cooked
lentils and rice, representative of the food
distributed to Iraqis through the “oil-for-food” program.

In early September, VitW, in conjunction with local activists across the
U.S., will organize “Life Under Siege” tent encampments in numerous
communities and on college campuses.  The encampments, envisioned to last
three (or more) days, will attempt to depict living conditions forced upon
Iraqis by eleven years of unrelenting economic sanctions.

For further information on either the fast or in a “Life Under Siege”
encampments, contact:

* G. Simon Harak, S. J. Contact on 917-662-5790, Breaking_Ranks@yahoo.com,
<mailto:Breaking_Ranks@yahoo.com>, Efax: 801-907-7260

* Voices in the Wilderness, 1460 W. Carmen Avenue, Chicago, IL 60640,
773-784-8065; kkelly@igc.org;


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