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FARMINGTON — Veterans for Peace will organize a peace walk through the state called the Maine Walk for Peace, Human Needs and Veterans’ Care, from Nov. 2 to 11.

The event will kickoff at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 2, at Old South First Congregational Church, 227 Main St., with a potluck supper and election night program. Most evenings during the walk a program and discussion session will be held at local churches and schools.

The walk will be led by Buddhist monk the Rev. Gyoway Kato, who is with the Nipponzan Myohoji order that does peace walks all over the world. Last April, Kato led a similar walk through Maine calling for an end to the nuclear arms race.

The group hopes to remind the public that thousands of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and military sexual trauma are being re-deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suicides in the military have reached an all-time high. The peace walk will also focus on the environmental costs of war.

“The purpose of this walk, at least for me, is to listen to my neighbors’ stories about the impact of these wars on their families and their hometowns,” said Maine VFP founding member Doug Rawlings from Farmington. “I want to walk, to bear witness, to listen and then to put their stories into the public dialogue about war. I want to give voice to those whose voices have not been heard.”

Walkers will begin in Farmington and will travel to Skowhegan, Waterville, Bangor, Belfast, Rockland, Bath, Freeport and will end in Portland, where the group will participate in the Nov. 11. Veterans Day parade.

The peace walk will average 16 miles of actual walking each day and because of the great distances between stops, occasional shuttling will be necessary. Some people will walk the entire distance and others will join the walk for an hour or a day, or several days. The public is invited to join.

For full walk schedule and registration information, visit vfpmaine.org/vfp.htm.

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