Join our vigil for peace and justice, every Sunday from 12-1 p.m. at Broadway, Park and Elm Streets in New Haven. Click on our Mission Statement to learn the history of this vigil and why we are still doing it for over 25 years.
The reason we have been out here during five presidential administrations—and will be here for the next one, too
Since 1999 when our Sunday vigil began, passersby have asked us what “endless war” we’re talking about, what we mean by the phrase. We mean this: the serial wars fought throughout the world are one war being waged on many fronts. Adults and children continue to be slaughtered, maimed, traumatized, and driven from their homes everywhere so that immense wealth and power can be concentrated in the hands of a very few people.
Here in the United States and globally, bigotry, discrimination, and widespread economic injustice serve the same end of enriching the few at the expense of the many. The weapons of the endless war include:
- continued development and production of an ever more deadly nuclear arsenal
- the funding and fueling of criminal wars and genocide
- aerial drone strikes against human beings many thousands of miles away (targets whose bodies the bombardiers, operating their weapons by remote control, will never have to see)
- mass incarcerations and deportations of immigrants and refugees (condemning them, in many cases, to a future of torture or death)
- the systematic dismantling of the infrastructure and social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that most of us not only depend upon but have funded with our hard-earned tax dollars all our lives
- the destruction of our environment
- the racist use of the police force to terrorize Black and brown communities
- the never-ending attacks on women’s and LGBTQIA+ people’s rights
- the systematic, vicious undermining of citizens’ rights to vote
- the destruction of labor unions and the creation of a “gig economy”
- the refusal to pass a living, national minimum wage
- the propagation of a vicious, profit-driven health care system that discriminates against the poor, elderly and disabled.
We believe that our tax dollars should instead be spent on the things we need to sustain and improve our lives and our planet: universal, unrestricted, comprehensive and not-for-profit quality health care for all; emergency, full scale, and sustained action to address and do everything possible to ameliorate climate change; and excellent housing, education, and resources for everyone.
People throughout the world have been and are risking their lives to open this path, and to resist and overthrow the systems and policies that stand in its way. In the U.S., our responsibility as citizens in these times is a grave one and a critical one. Full citizen engagement has become imperative.
We from the New Haven Sunday Vigil wish everyone a happy holiday season and a strong and peaceful New Year.
In 2025, and in the years that follow it, may we each have the wisdom and strength to protect each other, our planet and the most vulnerable in our communities; the discernment and courage to stand against a government controlled by billionaires whose only goals are the further concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands; and the hope and vision to work to create a better, safer world for the many.
Charles Pierson, “How Bad is the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act?”, Counterpunch
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/30/how-bad-is-the-2021-national-defense-authorization-act/
https://atthebrink.org/podcast/modernizing-doomsday-the-true-cost-of-our-nuclear-arsenal/
Below is an article about the New Haven Sunday vigil from several years ago.
Forty two years later, still protesting
Published letter to the editor explaining what is missing in the article