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February 20, 2009

Peace Activist Peter DeMott Dies at 62
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And the longtime peace activist Peter De Mott has died at the age of
sixty-two. Shortly before the US invasion of Iraq, De Mott and three
other peace activists poured their own blood on the posters, flags and
walls of a military recruiting station outside of Ithaca, New York. The
activists became known as the St. Patrick’s Day Four. Demott served four
months in federal prison for the action. He became a peace activist
after fighting with the Marines in Vietnam.

Peter De Mott: “I arrived in Vietnam on 8th of December of 1968 and was
there, for about two more weeks—I left on the 30th of November of ‘69,
so there for about one week shy of a year. And so, I participated in
that war, and I know firsthand that war only begets more war, that war
is organized mass murder and that it doesn’t really solve anything. It
just makes the likelihood of enduring peace coming about all the more
difficult. And then, so I—in the buildup to the war in Iraq, you know,
my personal experience of having been in the Vietnam was very
motivational for me in that it inspired me and kind of morally compelled
me to speak out in a nonviolent way to say, ‘No, this war must not
happen, and I’m willing to put my body in the way of the war and its
actualization in any nonviolent way that I can.”



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