Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership

Our witness will continue as we commission two delegations of religious leaders to submit an Interfaith Plea for Peace on our behalf directly to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Participants will process to the Hart Senate Office and to the Cannon Building. We will pray and witness in a respectful, determined and nonviolent spirit. Our plea:

• End the U.S. Occupation of Iraq
• Resist War Against Iran
• Support our Troops
• Support an Iraqi-led Peace Process
• Say NO to Torture
• Say YES to Justice

Those led by conscience to nonviolent civil disobedience will kneel and pray outside the doors of the Cannon or Hart buildings, echoing the call that our religious leaders are making: that Congress act now to change the moral direction of our nation to the way of peace. We will do this to faithfully dramatize the moral urgency of ending the war once and for all. By remaining in place in continuous prayer for peace, we will quite likely be placed under arrest.

Other participants will stand and pray nearby, witnessing for peace.

You must register to take part in the nonviolent civil disobedience and attend one of the legal briefings. At any time, you may choose to update your registration to say that you are considering or pledging risking arrest. Nonviolent Civil Disobedience readings

This peaceful, faithful and nonviolent civil disobedience – divine obedience – will dramatize how our faith calls us to publicly withdraw our consent from this policy and enjoins us to risk making peace.

As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in The Trumpet of Conscience, “There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes right through that red light... Civil disobedience is a strategy for social change which is at least as forceful as an ambulance with its siren on full.” On March 7, people of faith and conscience will respond to the emergency of the war in Iraq by remaining in prayer at the U.S. Capitol.