Your Neighborhood Peace & Justice Group
A group of neighbors founded Prospect Lefferts Voices for Peace and Justice in the fall of 2001. Horrified by the loss of life on September 11, we also feared seeing our city's grief turned into an excuse for wars of aggression. We wanted to connect our desire for "peaceful tomorrows" on a global scale to efforts for social, economic, and racial justice in our own corner of Brooklyn.
What We Do
- We visit local high school classrooms, often with members of Vietnam and Iraq veterans' groups, to talk with students who are being targeted by military recruiters about what it's really like to serve in the armed forces and where to look for other options.
- We hold forums in the neighborhood to promote discussion of such issues as the U.S. invasion of Iraq, attacks on Arab-American and South Asian communities in Brooklyn, the erosion of our civil liberties, and the parallels between U.S. military aggression abroad and domestic assaults on immigrants, the poor, and people of color.
- We show films on topics such as the Iraq War, police brutality in communities of color, the U.S. invasion of Panama, and the international debt crisis.
- We invite our neighbors to march with us in demonstrations opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and promoting racial, economic, and social justice at home.
- After 9/11, we joined in weekly demonstrations at an INS detention center in Sunset Park to call for the release of hundreds of Muslim and Arab men who were swept up and held for long periods even though they had no connection to terrorism.
Who We Are
Many of us are parents. Some of us are teachers. We are immigrants and U.S.-born, from a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Some of us are active in local churches. Not all of us actually live in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, but we all share a commitment to progressive organizing with a strong neighborhood base. We meet twice monthly to plan future activities and encourage each other in these discouraging times.
If you share our goals, we'd love you to join us. Please e-mail us for information at prospectforpeace@gmail.com.