Erie Times-News Articles (December 20, 2008)

The following two articles about EPI were published in the December 20, 2008 Erie Times-News:

Peace activists want troops home
By Robb Frederick robb.frederick@timesnews.com

State Rep. Pat Harkins once stood in the House chamber and read a letter of condolence to the family of Staff Sgt. Victor Cortes, who died in Iraq in 2005.
On Friday he stood with a dozen members of the Erie Peace Initiative, who presented him with petitions criticizing the deployment of 4,000 more Pennsylvania soldiers. "Do not misconstrue this," Harkins, D-1st Dist., said. "I am behind our troops 120 percent. But I think it's important that we have the Guard at home."
The state's 56th Stryker Brigade goes to Iraq in January. The 1st Battalion of that group includes 700 soldiers who train in Cambridge Springs. The unit used to meet in the old brick armory at East Sixth and Parade streets in Erie. Members of the peace group stood there Friday, saying the brigade should not have been activated for service in Iraq.
"The governor has the power now to bring them home," said Anne McCarthy, who helped coordinate the protest. She read from a script that was covered with plastic. Rain spattered it as she talked. When she finished, she and other members presented Harkins with 500 petition signatures, most of which were collected at a July Fourth event.
The signatures were easy to get, McCarthy said. "So many families are affected by this," she said. "It's very close in our community now."
Members of the Stryker Brigade will be home for Christmas. Most have been training in Louisiana in advance of the Iraq trip. They are due back at Fort Indiantown Gap next week. The unit will deploy in mid-January, Col. Chris Cleaver, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, said this week. They will stay in Iraq for at least nine months.
Harkins would like to shorten that. He supported a House bill designed to stop Guard deployments to Iraq. The measure failed, but Harkins said he will support a new version when it is introduced in 2009.
State Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-38th Dist., plans to introduce a similar bill in the Pennsylvania Senate in early 2009.
Members of the Peace Initiative will continue to circulate their petitions, organizer Bob Johnson said. "We've got to keep working on it," he said.


Ribbons represent Iraq war deaths
By Valerie Myers valerie.myers@timesnews.com

They take no stand on the rights and wrongs of the war in Iraq, only on compassion for the people who have fought in it and died.
McDowell High School students are hosting a public exhibit of 4,209 ribbons -- one with the name of each American soldier killed in Iraq -- through Jan. 6.
Juniors Stephanie Turak, Lauren Vitale and Kristina Krasowski assembled the ribbons display as a project for their Tolerance 101 class. They knew there would be more than 4,000 ribbons. Still, they were shocked when the ribbons from the Erie Peace Initiative arrived.
"I'd thought, 'OK, we'll hang them up.' Then when we got them, and actually saw how many there are, I had to stop for a time. It really hit home," Turak said.
The Erie Peace Initiative made and exhibits the ribbons in memory of the American service people killed in Iraq, EPI Chairman Bob Johnson said. Ribbons do not include branch of service, rank or age, only names. A banner in teacher Dave Hoderny's Tolerance 101 classroom lists all of that information.
Vitale, 17, and Krasowski, 16, were especially struck by the ages -- many of the dead soldiers and Marines were just 18. "A lot of young people have died," Vitale said. "It's weird," Krasowski said. "Eighteen, that's my sister's age."
Hoderny encourages students to remain neutral on the war and other issues until they've heard and weighed the causes, aims and results from as many perspectives as possible. They've discussed genocide, AIDS, terrorism, illiteracy, hunger, and war.
"It's not an easy class, and I don't mean academically," Hoderny said. "I tell students they're burdened with the world's problems."