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**Please circulate
widely**
http://www.answercoalition.org/
March on the
Pentagon
Saturday, March 17,
2007
~ 40th
anniversary of the historic 1967 march on the Pentagon
~
~ 4th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war
~
On
March 17, 2007, the 4th
anniversary of the start of the criminal invasion of Iraq,
tens of thousands of people from around the country will
descend on the Pentagon in a mass
demonstration to demand: U.S. Out of Iraq
Now! 2007 is the 40th anniversary of the
historic 1967 anti-war march to the Pentagon during the
Vietnam War. The message of the 1967 march was "From Protest
to Resistance," and marked a turning point in the development
of a countrywide mass movement.
In the coming days and weeks, thousands of organizations
and individuals will begin mobilizing for the upcoming March
on the Pentagon. Organizing committees and transportation
centers are being established to bring people to the March on
the Pentagon.
The March 17 demonstration will assemble at the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Constitution Gardens) at
12 noon in Washington, D.C.and march to the Pentagon.
Endorse
the March on the Pentagon.
Organize
transportation
Donate to
help make the March on the Pentagon a powerful
success.
Sign
up for email updates
Initial endorsers include:
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney
General
Alice Walker,
Pulitzer prize winning author
Cynthia
McKinney, Congresswoman
Ron
Kovic, Vietnam Veteran, author, Born on the 4th of
July
Malik Rahim, Founder, Common Ground
Collective, New Orleans
Paul
Haggis, Director of Crash, 2005
Academy Award for Best Picture
Chaplain James Yee,
former Army chaplain, Guantánamo Detention
Center
Howard Zinn, Author, A People's
History of the United States
Rev. Luis
Barrios, Iglesia de San Romero - UCC
Heidi
Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers
Guild
Elias Rashmawi, National
Coordinator, National Council of Arab Americans
(NCA)
Mahdi Bray, Executive Director,
Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
Mara
Verheyden-Hilliard, Co-founder, Partnership for Civil
Justice
Brian Becker, National
Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition
Mounzer
Sleiman, TV commentator and Vice Chair, National
Council of Arab Americans
Ben Dupuy,
Co-Director, Haiti Progres
Juan Jose
Gutierrez, Executive Director, Latino Movement
USA
Calvin Gipson, Former President, San
Francisco LGBT Pride Committee
Rev. Graylan
Hagler, Senior Pastor, Plymouth Congregational
Church, Washington D.C
Kay Lucas,
Director, Crawford Peace House, Crawford, TX
Eugene
Puryear, Howard University, student
leader
Gloria LaRiva, Coordinator,
National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
Mimi
Kennedy, Actor (Dharma & Greg)
Ed
Asner, Actor
Shirley Knight,
Actor
Statement from
the ANSWER Coalition
on the March 17-18 Global Days of
Action
|
Make an end of the year tax-deductible
donation
We need to raise $50,000 in the next weeks to launch
the March on the Pentagon. We must pay to reserve buses,
print hundreds of thousands of leaflets, stickers, and
posters, pay for stage, sound, and other logistical
expenses.
Time is running out to make an end of the year
tax-deductible donation. Click
here to make a
donation. |
The people of the United States want an end to the war in
Iraq. The elections in November were a clear repudiation of
the Bush administration's war of aggression. The new Congress,
however, has no intention of ending the war. Bush and the
Pentagon generals are determined to prolong the war. Tens of
thousands of more troops will be sent to Iraq. We are building
a massive antiwar movement on the national and local level.
Only the action of the people will stop the war.
We are returning to the Pentagon because the Iraq war has
resulted in more than 655,000 Iraqi deaths (Lancet), on
top of more than 1 million killed by sanctions between
1990-2003. This is genocide.
We are returning to the Pentagon because U.S. military
deaths will soon exceed 3,000. But that doesn't begin to tell
the story. There have been 21,921 wounded as of Nov. 30 and
another 17,835 evacuated due to serious injury or illness as
of Sept. 30, 2005 when the Pentagon stopped releasing these
statistics.
We are returning to the Pentagon because it is U.S.
missiles and bombs, including hundreds of thousands of cluster
bombs that have been sent to Israel to kill and maim the
people of Palestine and Lebanon. These weapons are a war
crime. The estimate is that between 2 million and 3
million cluster bomblets were dropped on Lebanon, and more
than a million remain unexploded -- posing a danger to
civilians for years to come. The war in Iraq is one front in
the U.S. plan for domination of the Middle East. Colonial
occupation is a crime whether it be in Iraq or Palestine or
Lebanon.
The Global Military Machine
We are returning to the Pentagon because it maintains 714
military bases in 130 countries to extend the influence of US
transnational corporations, oil giants and banks. The slogan
of national security and the war on terror stands exposed as a
pretext for a global empire enforced by military might and
limitless violence.
While the focus of the recent years has been to use
military power and violence against the Arab people, the
Pentagon has been targeting peoples and nations all over the
world. U.S. troops occupy South Korea. U.S. nuclear weapons
target North Korea. Interventionist actions are already taking
place in the Philippines, and are planned against Cuba,
Venezuela, and throughout South and Central
Asia.
The Warfare
State: Spying, Surveillance, Secret Prisons and Torture
Facilities
We are returning to the Pentagon to demand the immediate
closure of Guantánamo and all other torture facilities. The
grotesque revelations of torture and abuse in Abu Ghraib were
the tip of the iceberg. Punishing a few rank and file soldiers
and counting on the mass media to tire of the story, the
Pentagon has tried to conceal the reality that it engages in
arbitrary detention and torture of those it identifies as
“enemies.”
We are returning to the Pentagon to demand an end to the
surveillance and other spy programs conducted against the
people of this country by the Pentagon and other
agencies.
Militarism: The Social Costs of the Warfare
State
We are returning to the Pentagon because the military
budget of this country is a dagger in the heart of programs
that meet peoples' needs. More than 47 million people in the
U.S. are without health care coverage and one out
of every four children is born into extreme poverty.
Fifty percent of all bankruptcies in the last year were filed
by people who couldn't pay their hospital and doctor's bills.
Factories are closing and whole communities and neighborhoods
are being turned into ghost towns. Skyrocketing tuition is and
will continue to make the dream of a college education harder
to realize for working class youth. In the last year, Bush and
Congress cut money for education, food aid and veterans'
benefits while the Senate voted almost unanimously to rubber
stamp the new “war” budget of $590 billion (the official
budget number of $443 billion conceals at least $150 billion
in expenditures.)
We are returning to the Pentagon to challenge the system
that is addicted to war and global domination. The Iraq war is
a criminal endeavor based on lies. It was always about
conquering the entire Middle East with its vast repositories
of oil. While the Iraq war has been an absolute catastrophe
for the entire people of Iraq and for tens of thousands of
U.S. soldiers, it must be remembered that many U.S.
corporations are benefiting. They are the recipients of new
Pentagon orders for weapons, supplies and contracts. The Iraq
war costs approximately $279 million each day. That breaks
down to more than $11 million every hour of every day of the
year. The total cost of the Iraq war will be $2 trillion,
according to the Iraq Study Group report.
Unless the people act now, the human and economic costs of
the war will only increase. For more information go to http://www.answercoalition.org/.
Let's unite and stand together at the Pentagon on March 17.
Take a moment and take action now:
Endorse
the March on the Pentagon.
Organize
transportation
Donate to
help make the March on the Pentagon a powerful
success.
Sign
up for email updates ![]() |