STONEWALK 2004: BOSTON, MA to NEW YORK, NY.

9/11 Family Group Announces Boston-to-New York "Stonewalk"
Walk and speaking events highlight the human cost of war

July 26-September 2, 2004

While politicians convene in Boston and New York this summer, family members of 9/11 victims will make a dramatic statement of solidarity with victims of terrorism, violence and war from around the world. From July 26 through September 2, they will walk from Boston to New York, pulling a 1400-pound granite memorial honoring the "Unknown Civilians Killed in War."

The walk is sponsored by September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a group of 120 family members of 9/11 victims, in conjunction with The Peace Abbey, a multi-faith retreat center. Through this walk, and through speaking events in dozens of communities along the way, they will bear witness to the tragic reality that civilian casualties constitute 80% of the deaths in war, and ask that this human toll be a prime consideration in U.S. policymaking decisions.

The Boston-to-New York walk also will acknowledge the tragedy that linked those two cities on September 11th, 2001, symbolically remaking that connection with a message of peace and a memorial to all of those who died that day. The memorial's journey will be made solely by human effort, using no animals or machinery, demonstrating the power of individuals to "move mountains" for the cause of peace.

Nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows represents more than 125 family members of 9/11 victims and thousands of supporters around the world. Since the groups founding in February, 2002, its members have made contact with a host of other civilian victims of terrorism and war, including victims of the cycles of violence in Israel and Palestine; family members of victims of the nightclub bombing in Bali and the train bombings in Madrid; family members of those killed in Oklahoma City; survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; those who survived the bombing of Guernica, Spain and Dresden, Germany; those affected by terrorism in Kenya, Cambodia, Chechnya, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, and those wrongly impacted by bias crimes, deportation or imprisonment as a result of the "war on terror."