I suspect we had at least three or four times that number at “the march” but about one hundred of us Mennonites actually made it Saturday morning to our own fairly informative and inspiring denominational gathering (utilizing the fellowship hall of the Capital Hill United Methodist Church.) This included some sharing - with only an hour’s worth of sleep behind her- from Susan Mark Landis, who had a major hand in the overall planning of the whole event, and who had participated in the civil disobedience (“Divine Obedience!”) the night before. We also heard insights from others on the Peace and Justice Support Network, hearing about some new ideas for peace advocacy, education, and resources for the Mennonite Church USA, including some new endeavors for and by the youth in our own denomination.
Some profitable time was spent listening to and interacting with Dr. Peter Dula, who recently joined the faculty of Eastern Mennonite University as an assistant professor of Religion and Culture, but spent quite a bit of time just prior to this as the Mennonite Central Committee’s Iraq Program Coordinator. He shook things up a little by postulating that the two most practical actions we can take, if we are going to have any hope in actually challenging current policies, besides just talking about them with people in power, are to 1) get off the oil grid - by growing good gardens and ride bicycles as much as possible and 2) engage in war tax resistance! Well – now that generated some discussion! We then took time to process our experience of the weekend, thus far, in smaller regionally-based groupings before heading out.
— Clair Hochstetler, Goshen , IN
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