Call to Action

["marco rodrigues" <machetero_ngola@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lenin would have clipped all extraneous text before replying to a message, so 
should you.
~~~~~~~~~
A call to Action

[Apologies for duplicate postings.  Please take a moment to read and/or forward 
to anyone else who may be interested.]


Hello friend.  Our nation has responded to the horrific events of September 
11th by conducting a bombing campaign against a country that is one of the 
poorest in the world and which has already been devestated by decades of war.  
Innocent people are being killed and a huge humanitarian crisis is emerging as 
tens of thousands of people have become refugees with nowhere to go and little 
or nothign to eat.  Domestically, our leaders have used the "War on Terrorism" 
to cut back on civil liberties, detain people with little or no evidence, and 
stifle dissent.  Anyone accused of making "unamerican" comments is ostracized.  
The administration has told us that this will be a war that will go on perhaps 
endlessly.  The failures of the "war on drugs" should have taught us by now 
that any war on an abstraction such as "terrorism" will fail miserably and only 
increase repression on the poorest nations of the world and the poorest people 
within the U.S.

Arundhati Roy stated in her article "The algebra of infinite justice" 
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4266289,00.html):

     "In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then the US secretary of state, was asked on 
national television what she felt about the fact that 500,000 Iraqi children 
had died as a result of US economic sanctions. She replied that it was "a very 
hard choice", but that, all things considered, "we think the price is worth 
it"...

      So here we have it... The sophistry and fastidious algebra of infinite 
justice. How many dead Iraqis will it take to make the world a better place? 
How many dead Afghans for every dead American? How many dead women and children 
for every dead man? How many dead mojahedin for each dead investment banker? As 
we watch mesmerised, Operation Enduring Freedom unfolds on TV monitors across 
the world.
      A coalition of the world's superpowers is closing in on Afghanistan, one 
of the poorest, most ravaged, war-torn countries in the world..."

We must stop this drive to war.  We must stop the death and suffering of so 
many innocent people.  We must not let our leaders rob us of our fundamental 
freedoms under the guise of "national unity."  We must stop the hundreds of 
racist attacks occuring across the country on anyone who happens to appear 
Muslim or Arab.  We must demand an explanation as to why so many people are 
being held in inhumane conditions
in prisons across the U.S. with no evidence tying them to the events of 
September 11th.

This war will not bring security or peace.  Only a world order based on true 
economic and social justice will bring true peace.

This is a call to action.  This is a call to build a city-wide, nation-wide, 
world-wide resistance.  We must shout loud and clear, "NO!"

I feel that the marches that have taken place in NYC and across the world since 
September 11th have been valuable, but I also feel the time for marching along 
a planned route, holding some signs, chanting a few cliche slogans, is not now. 
 Now is the time to mobilize youth and all New Yorkers, especially people of 
color who have been most affected by the racist backlash, whose sons will be 
the first sent off to war, and who to this point have been underrepresented at 
anti-war actions.  I am afraid the situation is much worse than what we 
realize.  We are at the beginning of a course of events that may well have no 
foreseeable end.

As New Yorkers we are in a particularly unique position, being that it was our 
city, our families, our friends who were most gravely effected by September 11.

A mass, coordinated city-wide action involving youth, high school, college, and 
university students, grassroots activists, labor, and their allies, which would 
go beyond the tactics of the standard permitted march, is in my opinion 
essential at a time like this.  We must carry out an action that the media will 
have no other choice but to cover.  We must make our voices heard before it is 
too late.
I propose a city-wide student strike leading to a day of coordinated direct 
actions, and I welcome any suggestions and criticism.

I propose that people who would be interested in taking such action, as a 
preliminary step, subscribe to the following email list and begin sharing ideas 
and thoughts:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NYCstudents4peace
To Subscribe: send an email to <NYCstudents4peace-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

You do not have to be a student to join in this effort, although we would like 
to include as many students and youths as possible.  You do not even need to be 
from the immediate New York Metropolitan area.
But if you are enraged by the inherent injustice in "Operation Enduring 
Freedom," in the wealthiest nation on the earth bombing on eof the poorest 
nations, in the suffering of all peopel everywhere, in racist backlash, 
attacks, and profiling, and the erosion of our civil liberties, then join this 
list, and contribute your thoughts, ideas, analysis, and plans.
For those who have internet access, a group such as this provides a way to 
facilitate discussion and planning between people.

I thank you for taking the time to read this message.  If you have any 
questions or comments direct them to me: <machetero_ngola@xxxxxxxxxxx>

---

Come out October 27th: www.internationalanswer.org

Information on the current war:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/poc-911
http://www.nomorelostlives.org/
http://www.madre.org/toolkit.html
http://members.localnet.com/~jeflan/jfafghanpipe.htm
http://www.indymedia.org/peace/
http://pax.protest.net/
http://sf.indymedia.org/antiwar/
http://rawa.fancymarketing.net/index.html
http://www.alternet.org/issues/index.html?IssueAreaID=25
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11518
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11463


"In the Third World, there are 1.3 billion poor people. In other words, one out 
of every three inhabitants lives in poverty.
 More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger; and 790 million 
of them live in the Third World...

 At the moment of birth, an inhabitant of the Third World can expect to live 18 
years less than another of the industrialized world.
 Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is barely 48 years. That is 30 years 
less than in the developed countries.
 It is estimated that 654 million people living in countries of the South today 
will not live past 40...

 More than 11 million boys and girls under five years of age die every year in 
the Third World from diseases that are largely preventable. That means more 
than 30,000 every day, 21 every minute...

 And all of this is happening at a time when, throughout the world, 800 billion 
dollars are put into military spending..."