Yoko Ono signs U.N. Oneness Day petition

NEW YORK, July 13 (UPI) -- Yoko Ono has joined other prominent people signing a global grassroots petition appealing to the United Nations to declare a Oneness Day, her Web site says.

Other famous or influential signers include South African Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, spiritual authors Deepak Chopra and Neale Donald Walsch, sportscaster Gary Bailey, Dalai Lama envoy Sonam Tenzin and U.N. adviser Janis Roze, the petition organizer said Monday.

Michael Jackson fans also signed the petition in honor of the late singer, whose 1985 song "We Are the World" says "the world must come together as one," the petition list indicated.

On her Web site, Ono calls the Oneness Day appeal "potentially the most important petition ever launched." The activist artist, musician and widow of John Lennon also promoted it on her Facebook and Twitter social-networking pages.

"We are all one, united with infinite and eternal love," Ono's imaginepeace.com site says.

Lennon's 1971 song "Imagine" envisions a world of peace through oneness.

Humanity's Team plans next May to deliver the petition, signed by at least 50,000 people and supported by U.N.-member countries, to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon or next year's General Assembly president appealing to the world body to declare an annual Oneness Day, said petition drive coordinator Anna-Mari Pieterse of Pretoria, South Africa.

The day would "commemorate and strengthen the ideals of oneness and compassion within and among all nations and peoples," she told United Press International.

The movement, based in Boulder, Colo., also plans to simultaneously unfurl a five-story Oneness Mandala featuring some 10,000 "peace portraits" from a building across from the United Nations headquarters in New York, Pieterse told UPI.