It was fitting that Bill used his 90th birthday party to organize for Worldwide Humanitarian Aid. Friends and family gathered on February 5 at the First Congregational Church to celebrate with Bill and give donations of sewing machines, medical equipment, school supplies and money for his organization. There were many cakes to choose from and a sundae bar to graze at, while singing and commemorating the many accomplishments of the man of the hour.

Bill led the group HADCCO-Hunger and Development Coalition of Central Ohio, was the local organizer for Pastors for Peace and a longtime member of the Columbus-Copapayo Sister City Project. Besides being a progressive United Church of Christ pastor, Bill also traveled all over the world to deliver humanitarian aid and good will. I have memories of him at 74 years old, bouncing around in the back of a very small jeep from San Salvador to the countryside in the middle of the night to avoid military checkpoints; trekking through untouched terrain near Copapayo, El Salvador; and leading all the children in our sister city in games and songs.

Back in 1994, the Free Press crusaded against the cash-burning power plant and dioxin generator on the South Side of Columbus. The words “Shut it down!” with the subtitle “June Alexander battles cancer and the trash-burner” on the June 1994 cover. The July-August 1994 Free Press issue revealed a rigged trash-burning test hiding record levels of carcinogenics spewing from the plant. With Theresa Mills, the late Roberta Booth and the Loscko family and workers on the inside, the Free Press broke story after story. An article by Free Press Editor Bob Fitrakis appeared in the now-defunct Columbus Guardian with leaked internal safety memos showing a tenth of the workforce at the plant had died during its decade of operation. The plant was shut later year. Now the stacks have been turned to rubble and the plant is dead. May the workers rest in peace. These articles and more will be included in the fifth volume of The Fitrakis Files scheduled to be published this spring.

Recruiters have to be brave in order to keep working. They have to make dozens of calls every night to high school students at home. They are in essence nothing more than super aggressive sales people trying to sign young people up to a life of killing and violence.

Surveys show that fear of death is a powerful motivator that keeps those same students out of the military, even with the bribes of college tuition, sign up “bonuses” and the supposed benefits of “honor”, medals and more.

One survey shows that those fears doubled from the year 2000 to 2004, despite assurances from the administration that the war in Iraq is good for everyone. What is war worth if it means getting killed, especially when that war was based on lies and deception, (as most wars are)?

The military faces a huge problem because they base their fundamental strategy on an all volunteer force. Recruiting volunteers is a policy that has been in place since 1973, when the draft was eliminated.

For the last several decades, the corporate establishment, because of their control of the media, gained more and more control of the country. However, after the 2000 election, which won voter fraud in Florida and by the bizarre action of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, a great mobilization took place that was aimed at winning the next election. The accomplishments of this mobilization were phenomenal. A coalition of traditional democrats, old lefties, and new activists matched the tremendous 150 million dollar war chest accumulated by the Republicans. Theirs came from corporations and rich donors, ours mostly from small donations from more ordinary people. Then, we register millions of new voters—mothers, minorities, and young people—and they voted.

We stuck to the right issues—the mistake of going to war, the lose of good jobs, the huge tax give away to the wealthy and its consequences to our economy, the destruction of our environment, our failed medical delivery system, the erosion of our civil liberties, our loss of respect and support in the world, and the government’s lying to us on the reasons for going to war.