By Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian

Posted August 4, 2006

BRATTLEBORO — From veterans to grandmothers, more than 50 activists representing some 100 organizations in five states turned out for a Vermont meeting unified by a single goal: a quick and concrete plan to end the war.

And if it takes impeachment to get there, they said at a follow-up rally on the Brattleboro town commons, then so be it.

"It's time to move this to a higher level of national consciousness," said organizer Dan DeWalt, a Newfane selectman and the activist behind the impeachment town meeting resolutions that passed in seven Vermont communities earlier this year.

Participants at the July 30 meeting said that although they didn't agree on every point, there was unanimous support of a "Declaration of Peace" now circulating throughout the country and planned to culminate in a week of grassroots activism and nonviolent civil disobedience in Washington starting Sept. 21 if a hard deadline for withdrawal is not met. (See sidebar).

The declaration, already endorsed by nearly 200 individual U.S. peace groups including United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of 1,400 organizations, "is a pledge to take nonviolent steps for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops — and to engage in peaceful protest if a comprehensive, concrete and rapid plan for an end to the U.S. war in Iraq is not established and begun by Sept. 21, 2006, just days before Congress adjourns for the fall elections," according to the website http://declarationofpeace.org.