Twin Cities protest demands "Hands of Iran and Syria" (Fight Back! News/Staff)

Minneapolis, MN - In response to growing war threats against Iran and Syria, over 50 people responded on Jan. 18 to a call to turn out to a weekly peace vigil in the Twin Cities.

The vigil, held every Wednesday on the Lake Street/Marshall Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and Saint Paul, has on many occasions become the focus for people wishing to speak out against new and developing war threats.

The vigil is sponsored by Twin Cities Peace Campaign and Women Against Military Madness. The sponsors were joined by other groups to build the Jan. 18 vigil, including the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition and the Anti-War Committee.

A statement issued by organizers says in part, “This week, with the growing talk to military confrontation between the U.S. and Iran and the growing discussion of U.S. and Western intervention in Syria, we made a special urgent appeal for people to come out and join us to say 'No new wars - U.S. hands off Iran and Syria.’”

"The U.S. government uses talk of human rights and nuclear weapons to win support for new wars and interventions. But after ten years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, wars based on lies, with the untold deaths of thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war makers in Washington are in no position to lecture anyone about human rights or weapons of mass destruction," the statement continued.

"Bombs and military intervention do not bring peace, democracy or human rights, instead they bring colonial occupation," the statement concluded.