From a Black woman in the US, a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, who has had many family members - brothers, husband, sons, daughter - in the military.

We hope it does not come to war, which will draw in more people and money, becoming a global war.  They should stop and reason it out. Women and children in Iraq will suffer most, and their children are as precious as ours.

In WWII, Black people were called on to fight but did not want to go, because we did not have our rights in the US.  My four brothers went and were destroyed by war.  One came back with a terrible drinking problem because of what he suffered in war.  They all came back to no job, or any rubbish jobs.  My oldest brother was digging dumps for human waste, work no white person would do.  Some men got low-paid farm work, or were unwaged, just working for gas or groceries, or goods, not wages.

In joining the military people are following the money, and Black people are put in the front line, but we are not up front here in the USA.

Now my grandson says he wants to go, he says, "they'll pay for my college", but his father who spent years in the Navy, says no, we'll find some other way.  It's only young people who want to go, because they don't know what war is.

Today many Black folks are out of work, but also many white people, too. The military is going on, while people are more and more out of work. Vietnam vets and their families are very unhappy about this war; they have had it with war.  And their kids can't even get funds for college, after the parents have served time.  Free lunches have just been cut in my grandson's school - what was free you now have to pay for.  Some local schools are also being closed, because they found a dangerous mold in them which is making many children ill, including causing asthma or making it worse.  They knew about the mold 10 years ago but did nothing, and now they say they have no money to deal with it and want to combine schools and overcrowd classes.

Yet they have money for bombing and killing.

Some immigrant people, especially mothers, are thinking of going home, even though they fled terrible violence, because they are so afraid of their children being drafted into war.