Declaration of Peace Challenges Local Media to Report on Winter Soldier

The weather Wednesday morning was cold, rainy and generally terrible, but that didn't stop activists from remembering the 5th anniversary the Iraq War bright and early. Members of Declaration of Peace Rochester gathered at 9am outside of the Gannett Building, home to the D&C, to express their disappointment at their coverage of the war, especially the lack of reporting on Winter Solider.

Mary Adams rigged together a makeshift sound system that played the testimony of the soldiers from the roof of her car into the streets outside the Gannett building. She described the reasons for the action.

"Declaration of Peace has been campaigning on the illegality of the
Iraq War. Today we are here because last week hundreds of Iraq War
vets testifying in DC about the illegality [of the war] and moral
situation that they were place in. While the European and Arabic
media covered the event in detail, the D&C only wrote an editorial,
there was essentially no news coverage. It shows the failure of the
US media to cover the primary sources: the soldiers who are forced to
deal with the effects of occupation."

Several members of the group wore gags and blindfolds. Mike Connelly
explained that they represented the media's lack of seeing what's
happening in Iraq and lack of speaking out about it. They also
represented the effect on the public — when the media doesn't report
the soldiers first-hand testimony from Iraq, we become blind to the
human cost of the War and unable to speak out about it.

After a little while, about a half-dozen members of the group entered
the Gannett building to deliver an personal invitation to several
reporters to cover an upcoming press conference where soldiers from
Rochester who attended Winter Soldier will talk about their
experiences.

The corner of Broad and Exchange was fairly busy that day and several
passersby stopped to take the group's information and listen to the
testimonies from the sound system. Many cars saw the protester's sign
as they past by and I heard quite a few honk in approval.

After the group hit up the D&C they went on to visit other media
locations including channel 8 and 10. The group plans to send their
invitation to every media outlet in Rochester.