Common Dreams News Center
March 8, 2006

PEAKS ISLAND, Maine - The last time Annie and Perry O’Brien were on a peace march together, she was carrying him in a Snugli. From March 14 to 19, they’ll be walking side by side from Mobile, Alabama, to New Orleans on the Veterans’ and Survivors’ March for Peace and Justice. The O’Briens, a mother and son from Peaks Island, Maine, are supported by more than 60 individuals who are sponsoring their walk.

Perry, a 23-year-old veteran of the war in Afghanistan where he served as a medic with the 82nd Airborne, was honorably discharged as a conscientious objector in November 2004. He has created a website to guide soldiers through the process of applying for conscientious objection (www.peace-out.com) and has been active with Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War since his discharge. He is currently a student at Cornell University.

In addition to participating in the march, the mother-son team is also partnering in writing a book about nonviolence for children, to be published in 2008 by Charlesbridge Publishers of Watertown, MA. Annie (Anne Sibley O’Brien) is a well known illustrator and author who has published 25 children’s books. In 1997 she won the National Education Association’s Author-Illustrator Human & Civil Rights Award.

The Veterans’ and Survivors’ March for Peace and Justice is an action of Veterans For Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and other veteran and family organizations, in coalition with organizations supporting victims of Hurricane Katrina. Veterans of wars abroad along with the survivors of Katrina and Rita are joining together for this march and caravan to establish ties of material solidarity between those who oppose the war abroad and the social and economic costs for working people at home. It will arrive in New Orleans on the third anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

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