by Paul Brooks and Deborah Medenbach: Middletown (N.Y.) Times Herald-Record
Middletown, NY--Manna Jo Greene knows she is not bulletproof, but she is willing to put herself on the line as part of a "human shield" to halt the seemingly unstoppable American-led invasion of Iraq.
Within two weeks, Greene hopes to travel from her home near Rosendale to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the Middle East country in the United States' crosshairs. Organizers hope to get 5,000 volunteers for the effort.
"My intention is to prevent the war," Greene said yesterday. "I am willing to do whatever it takes. I intend to live with the Iraqi people and I hope the fact that 5,000 Americans are willing to do this will deter the war."
She will go despite the American government's ban on traveling there, despite the chance that war could explode there around her, despite the protests of her friends and co-workers, even of her two grown sons.
"'Ma, it's all well and good, and we appreciate your commitment,' " she said they told her at dinner in New York Thursday night, " 'but when you get to the airport, you have got to get past the Greene brothers to get on the plane.' "
There had been this frustration gnawing away at her in recent months as the war talk intensified, Greene said. Millions of Americans oppose the war under the current conditions, according to one poll, and anti-war demonstrations seemed fruitless. "Demonstrators are too easy to ignore," she said from her home on Cottekill Road. "But I couldn't think what to do about it."
Then she discovered the "Become the Change" campaign, initiated by Gandhi's grandson and others. She immediately signed a "peace pledge" to join 5,000 other Americans who will travel to Iraq in the weeks before the war, which many predict will come late this month or early in February. She estimates it will cost $2,000 to get to and from Iraq and to fulfill her two-week commitment.
"It's a very dangerous situation. ... I could find myself in an active war zone," she said. "It's possible I could get there and [organizers] not have someone to replace me. I could be detained," she said. "Anything can happen."
The decision doesn't come easy, said Greene, 57. The longtime environmental and anti-war advocate works for the Sloop Clearwater. She runs the Hudson Valley Sustainable Network, a group supporting environmentally sensitive construction, out of her home.
A pacifist, she said she used to schedule family vacations around marches in Washington, D.C.
"I am not defending Hussein," she said. "I abhor his methods as much as anyone."
War is different. "It's a waste of American lives and American resources," she said. "It's time to say enough is enough.
