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News Release Citizens for Peace & Justice www.medfordcpj.org
John Frohnmayer, Jeff Golden and the Rogue Valley Peace Choir will headline what has become an annual event in downtown Medford: a big peace rally & march beginning at 11:30 am Saturday, March 21st, in Alba Park, marking the 6th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. More than 4,250 US troops have died in the Iraq War; more than 660 in Afghanistan.
Citizens for Peace & Justice of Medford is the principal sponsor of the event with help from Peace House, Southern Oregon Jobs with Justice, Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom – Ashland Branch, UNETE, PFLAG of Josephine County, Oregon Action, Veterans for Peace – Rogue Valley Chapter 156, Rural Organizing Project, Southern Oregon Health Care for America Now! and the Jackson County Pacific Green Party.
We are celebrating the way all of these groups work together for peace and justice in our community. The local event is one of hundreds throughout the nation this month calling for all US troops to be pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Author and former Jefferson Exchange radio talk show host Jeff Golden will serve as Master of Ceremonies. John Frohnmayer’s featured speech will focus on “Peace as a State of Mind.” A Medford native, Frohnmayer achieved fame by being fired from his post as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1992 for refusing to pull federal funding from a museum exhibiting the works of Robert Maplethorpe. He has written a book and a musical about the ordeal. Frohnmayer comes from a famous legal family (his brother is former Oregon AG David Frohnmayer, the outgoing president of the University of Oregon, and his late father Otto was a prominent Medford lawyer.) John is currently a liberal arts professor at Oregon State University. After Frohnmayer’s speech and others, the Rogue Valley Peace Choir will perform. Then, the crowd -- with banners flying -- will march through downtown Medford and back to Alba Park where the Ashland Taiko drummers will entertain. Attendees are urged to bring lawn chairs to enjoy the program in comfort and peace & protest signs to carry during the march. Monitors will remain in the park during the march. News release from: Allen Hallmark, 13365 Duggan Rd, Central Point, OR, 855-2312
