The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
About 60 people showed up in front of the township Municipal Building on March 1 for an impromptu peace vigil, in response to the U.S./Israeli bombing of Iran.
The vigil was organized by township resident Michael Steinbrück, who also participated in the organization of the “No Kings” rallies held in the township.
Among those in attendance were Mayor Phil Kramer, Deputy Mayor Alex Kharazi, and Township Council members Ram Anbarasan, Shepa Uddin and Shubhendu Singh. Kramer and Kharazi, who both made brief comments, said they were not speaking for the Council, or in their official positions.
Steinbrück said the event was meant to be “a very sort of visceral response to everything that I think I’ve been feeling that kind of came to the culmination yesterday, with everything that’s happening abroad, and I needed people, and we all need people, and people need a place to come together.”
“If we’re going to be who we say we are, and if diversity is at the heart of the strength of Franklin, then you know this this proves it,” he said.
“So coming together, meeting someone you didn’t know before, trying to make one small step toward a more peaceful world,” he said. “I’ll sleep better tonight, I know that, and we just have to think about how to sustain and grow it.”
Steinbrück said he initially chose to gather at Veterans Memorial Park to “honor and pray for peace, for the fallen American servicemen and women, and for all casualties of this illegal war. I wanted a civic space intended for this type of prayer and reflection and this is part of the park’s purpose.”
“Unfortunately it was still snow-covered and there were older residents and people with disabilities, so we stepped across to accommodate them and everyone,” he said.
Steinbrück told the crowd that he has been meeting with a Rutgers student who is organizing protests in New Brunswick, and the student asked him for whistles.
“And I think about what a whistle means to a child, and when I was growing up” he said, becoming emotional. “And now with children in our schools asking for whistles to blow, to warn their families and their neighbors, that this is what was happening in our schools. This is what’s happening in our communities.”
“So we can’t circle the wagons,” he said. “There’s only one wagon, and we have to be there for each other.”
Kramer said that he wasn’t “speaking as mayor, and I’m not speaking for Council, their presence says something, but I think it was important to be here.”
“Someone may say something about doing this in front of the Veterans’ Memorial,” Kramer said. “You may have heard of a guy named Douglas MacArthur. He asserted that soldiers pray for peace more than any other, because they bear the heaviest wounds in war.”
“War is something that, sometimes we enter into, sometimes we have to enter into, but it should be avoided at all costs,” he said. “Peace needs to be the goal that we go for, and we need to be very careful when we use the enormous might of this country.”
Kharazi said that he would organize vigils when terrorist attacks occurred when he was president of the Franklin Township Interfaith Council.
“But I never imagined that I would be participating in a vigil to call to end the war from the president who had promised to be president of peace,” he said. “But unfortunately, that has not been the case.”
“So we are asking our president that please, you started a war, please stop it,” Kharazi said. “Too many people already have been killed. Too many innocent children have been killed, not only in Iran, in Israel, in other countries, including our own service members. It’s time to call this war to end.”
“There’s nothing good about war,” he said. “A lot of innocent people will be killed. Generations will be lost, great leaders will be lost. Children who might be the best leaders in the future, they will be lost.”
“So please, keep in your prayers for this war to end as soon as possible, and keep the victims of this war in your prayers as well,” Kharazi said.
Imam Rizwan Rizvi of the Masjid-e-Ali on Cedar Grove Lane said wars can only have negative outcomes.
“You have human loss, sacred life, and loss of any innocent human being,” he said. “You have economic imbalance that happens right after war because wars cost a lot of money.”
“Globally, we’re all affected by it,” he said. “We’re standing here in Somerset County in Franklin Township. A war that happens 6,000 miles away is affecting all of us over here.”
“I’m not saying flights are the most important thing right now, but people who wanted to get home, they’re unable to fly home,” Rizvi said. “They’re stuck in different places.”
“So these are all very different outcomes of war,” he said. “And, of course, we should not be entering into a conflict which is not ours. Life is important to us. Their lives are also important. And therefore, we’ve got to make sure that we don’t do things that are disrespectful to their peace.”
“Dialogue is the way to go,” Rizvi said. “Giving more bombs and giving more weapons to other people is not the way to go. Getting down and solving your issues is what diplomacy is all about.”
Steinbrück recited a quote from his father, a Lutheran minister.
“Know this, the peace we seek cannot tolerate the bombs we drop, or the firing of missiles from above upon innocent villages. It goes back to the heart of shalom and the church as refuge,” he said.
“I was hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, homeless, and you welcomed me, fed me, clothed me, healed me, and embraced me with limitless love,” Steinbrück said. “Instead of spending trillions on armaments of death and destruction, why have we not seriously contended with the malnutrition of our children, the homeless families in need of housing, a war-oriented economy exhausting vital resources for human survival in this God’s world.”
Steinbrück said after the event that he was happy with the turnout.
“Yeah I thought it would be me and Pax my dog,” he said.
Rizvi said after the event that he thought it was very timely.
“it brought us all together on such a short notice and I think it’s needed,” he said. “Sometimes we need awareness and sometimes we just need to be somewhere where we can share our immense sorrow that we’re feeling right now with the innocent lives that are being lost.”
“So we just had to come out, sharing our thoughts with some strangers that we did not know,” he said.
Rizvi, who studied in Iran for seven years, said he was concerned that he was not able to contafct his friends there, as are Iranian members of the Masjid.
“They’re worried,” he said. “There’s no communication. Once again, last time when there was a 12-day war, the internet was cut off.”
Rizvi said he doubted that changing the regime that has been in power since 1979, the United States’ stated purpose in the bombing, would be feasible.
Secular Iranians, he said, “feel for their country, so they want to remove this government. It’s not like, you know, something that has been there for 50 years now, you can just go out and overthrow it and then come out.”
“And they have leadership after leadership,” he said. “And it’s not going to be that easy, what they’re trying to achieve.”
Following are some scenes from the event:
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