March 10, 2003
More than one million people led by Hollywood stars sign anti-war petition, calling for tougher UN inspections.
Oscar winner Jessica Lange was among a clutch of Hollywood stars Monday who helped deliver an anti-war petition - signed by more than one million people - to the US mission to the United Nations.
Lange was joined by Ethan Hawke and Steve Buscemi in leading a small group of protestors to the mission in New York, where they handed over the petition which called for a tougher UN inspection regime in Iraq to replace the threat of military action against Baghdad.
"I do not want my children to inherit the legacy of this war," Lange told reporters. "Americans are a moral people and that requires that we do not let our government lie to us about the righteousness of our cause. "This war will not serve the basic goodness of the American people and this is not the moral compass we can allow ourselves to be directed by," Lange said.
The signatures for the petition were gathered worldwide over the Internet in just five days by a lobby group, Moveon.org, which is part of a peace coalition known as Win Without War. Copies of the entire petition, which included 600,000 US signatories, were handed to all 15 members of the UN Security Council, ahead of a key vote this week on whether to set Iraq a specific deadline to disarm or face war.
"We are calling on the world's second superpower, the general public, to rise up and tell their governments ... that we can contain and control Saddam Hussein without war," said Tom Andrews, the national director of Win Without War.
"We want to give the UN inspectors more time to do their job. It is not too much to ask," Andrews said. Hollywood has lent a publicity-generating voice to the anti-war movement in the United States, specifically through its own lobby group - "Artists United to Win Without War."
There has been speculation that anti-war actors and actresses will use the upcoming Oscars ceremony as a forum to put their message across. "I hope they do. I think that would be fun," said Ethan Hawke, who rejected the suggestion that the anti-war movement was unpatriotic. "I'm proud to be an American," he said. "That's why I'm here. I want to go on being proud of being an American."
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