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Welcome to Crosses4Peace.org!

A Grassroots Internet Peace Project sponsored by U.N.C.O.I.L.

(United Napans Concerned Over Iraq Lunacy)

JEFFREY HEATON: THE INSPIRATION FOR CROSSES4PEACE

"We want to bring light to the fact that while people make their way to work every day here, other people are dying over there." - Jeffrey Heaton

Not long ago, one of our members read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a contractor from Lafayette, California by the name of Jeffrey Heaton who built a memorial, with the cooperation of members from the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center, Rossmoor's Grandparents for Peace and the Lamorinda Peace and Justice Group.
A privately owned Lafayette hillside became both a public public memorial for U.S. troops killed in Iraq and a statement statement against the war.
On the hillside next to the Lafayette BART station are now now planted over 420 (and that number is increasing every week) week) white, wooden crosses.
This gave us an idea: why not ask others to do the same? We realize that 420 crosses is a greater burden than most can bear, but if each of us could display just one simple white cross in his or her yard, we could speak volumes without saying a word. Or, as this effort was so aptly described by a member of the Sonoma County Chapter of the Veterans for Peace when he learned about it: “Rather than putting three-thousand crosses in one place, the idea, here, is instead to put one cross in three-thousand places.” (Exactly!)
Simple, silent. Recognizable, undeniable. A white, 36” x 18” cross in your yard, similar to the ones at ARLINGTON WEST or as Mr. Heaton’s group is currently displaying, would mean so much. Honor the sacrifice of the fallen troops, mourn the innocents lost, help end the suffering sooner. Let every friend, neighbor and passer-by know that you support peace.

The Iraq War: impossible and irresponsible to forget. We don’t need a cemetery-like field of crosses or a million-person peace march to remind ourselves that our American soldiers serve and die in this dreadful war daily and that we grieve not only for them and their mission, but for the Iraqi people torn apart by this horrific tragedy. One cross will do it. One lawn at a time.

A single white cross — the burial symbol of all dead in military cemeteries and thus to us a universal symbol of war and death — measuring 36” x 18” on your front lawn can honor all those killed in Iraq and symbolize that you do not aim to forget the fallen, nor that until this war is brought to an end once and for all, that there will be too many others destined to meet a similar fate.

Following our three-year tradition of activism in pursuit of peace, but recognizing that there is a diversity of views on how to best bring this war to an end, we will be capping off ’06 and launching ’07 with a new approach. If yellow ribbons ‘round the old oak tree caught the steadfast emotion of an era gone by, why not a single white cross on a lawn to depict not only war and death, but remembrance and, hopefully, renewal.

U.N.C.O.I.L. calls this project Crosses4Peace. And we would like to invite the entire world to join us in this effort. Find out how to get involved by clicking HERE.

An Internet Peace

Project Sponsored

by U.N.C.O.I.L.

(Find out more

about U.N.C.O.I.L.

by clicking HERE.)

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