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Welcome to the LMNOP Homepage!
Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace sponsors weekly antiwar walks around Lake Merritt in Oakland every Sunday at 3. These start and end at the colonnade at the northeast end of Lake Merritt between Grand and Lakeshore Avenues. For directions and transit information check out Where, When? to your left on each page.
Some History of LMNOP
In January of 1991 it became apparent that the United States was going to start bombing Iraq. A lone individual started holding a nightly vigil at a gas station near Lake Merritt, holding a sign that read No Blood for Oil! Richard and Emma, two Lake Merritt neighbors, were walking home from the grocery store one evening & saw him. They decided that something should be done to help this one brave soul who was demonstrating against war.
Richard & Emma printed some flyers announcing the first Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace walk around Lake Merritt. They were totally amazed when several hundred people showed up the next Sunday. The antiwar walks continued every Sunday until "victory" was declared and the Gulf War was officially over.
The United States & England, of course, still continue to bomb Iraq just about every week, and the sanctions imposed on Iraq continue. These have taken a gruesome toll on the civilian population, killing over a million people whose only crime was to be born in Iraq. Our Resources area contains Petitions, Actions, Books, Websites and much more. All Resource pages include World Peace, Iraq, and Palestine Resources. Recently added are Wellstone and Protests pages and galleries. Resource pages soon to come include Environment, Poverty, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, India-Pakistan, Corporate Fraud, Truth in Media. Join our weekly - biweekly email list to keep up-to-date. Also, please consider signing up for the LMNOP Daily Fact & Act email. We also have Posters & Signs available.
In 1999 yet another war seemed imminent as the United States prepared to bomb Yugoslavia. There were some big antiwar demonstrations in San Francisco at that time. At one of those, three people who had participated in the LMNOP walks back in 1991 got together & decided that it was time to break out the signs and start the walks again.
These continued until the bombing of Yugoslavia stopped.
At that point we began to develop an email list, and for the next couple of years we would contact people to go with us to various anti-war events, especially in support of Palestine and against the sanctions on Iraq.
After the attack on the World Trade Center last fall, and the rapid vote to allow Bush blanket authority to make war on whoever he pleased, it was obvious that our govenment was intent on dropping bombs somewhere or other very soon. We have to admit to having some anxiety about starting the peace walks again, due to all the jingoistic manipulation of people's genuine grief. But we suppressed our trepidation and started the weekly peace walks up again on September 23, 2001.
The response from the community was overwhelmingly positive from the very beginning. The attendance has ebbed and flowed, but we're still out there every Sunday, presenting a presence for peace to the neighborhoods surrounding the Lake. Besides all the support from passing vehicles, even after over a year, passersby still come up to us and thank us for doing this!
Demonstrate your opposition to war!
The LMNOP walks are important because they demonstrate to our neighbors and our government that there is opposition to war, and that there are people who are in favor of a more humane and sane foreign policy.
We hope you enjoy the LMNOP web-site, and that you find it interesting and educational. The site is updated a couple of times a week, so check back often.
We hope that you will join us next Sunday at 3 at Lake Merritt! If that is not practical we encourage you to join the Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil. If that doesn't work for you either we encourage you to initiate a weekly antiwar walk in your own community.
Peace!
Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace
Weekly peace walks around Lake Merritt in Oakland
Every Sunday at 3 P.M.
Information
(510) 763-8712
Directions & Public Transportation Information