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One Year After our Anti-War Resolution: What We Can Do Now |
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by Danielle Chynoweth, Urbana City Council
(No verified email address) |
20 Mar 2004
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Last year, Urbana became one of 120 cities for peace when we passed an resolution against war. Despite the fact that Iraq was not an imminent threat, had no nuclear weapons or stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and had no link to Al Qaeda of the attacks of September 11th, we went to war.
Bush's decision killed 10,000 Iraqi civilians and riskedthe lives of hundreds of thousands of U.S. Soliders. Some 575 have been killed.
What follows is a text of the speech I will be giving in front of the County Courthouse at 4 PM today. The event starts at 3 PM at the Urbana Middle School. |
Speech for the Anniversary of the Second U.S. War Against Iraq
In front of the Champaign County Courthouse, March 20, 2004
by Danielle Chynoweth
June Jordan is a poet and essayist who died recently and too young. The same corporate control of our democracy which has led the country into war is slowly killing us at home. June Jordan died June 2002 at the age of 65 after battling breast cancer for decades.
Read "The Bombing of Baghdad" by June Jordan
Last year, Urbana became one of 120 cities for peace when we passed an resolution against war. Members of the public packed city hall - most to show support - some to show concern - for the resolution. We effectively held a local version of the national debate congress abdicated when it handed over war powers to the President, further consolidating unprecedented power in the hands of the executive. These debates were of a very high caliber. I want to thank AWARE for making that resolution happen.
When I joined the cities for peace delegation to Washington and New York, I personally delivered our resolution against war to Senators Durbin and Fitzgerald, and Representative Tim Johnson. Fitzgerald responded by insisting Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction" he could use at any moment. Johnson told me he had complete confidence in the President's access to intelligence. This is the same time the President was threatening "mushroom clouds" if we did not strike.
Despite the fact that Bush knew then and it has been verified now that:
- Iraq was not an imminent threat.
- Iraq had no nuclear weapons or stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction
- Iraq had no link to Al Qaeda of the attacks of September 11th
Let me repeat.
- Iraq was not an imminent threat.
- Iraq had no nuclear weapons or stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction
- Iraq had no link to Al Qaeda of the attacks of September 11th
Despite this, the U.S. went to war, killing 10,000 Iraqi civilians and risking the lives of hundreds of thousands of U.S. Soldiers - some 575 have been killed.
There have been some amazing successes of the last year. One was the number of people who turned out both nationally and globally to oppose war. These were the largest pre-war rallies in history. The other has been the swift uncovering of deception, corruption in post-war contracts, and complete censorship and bias of major news corporations. Historically, this kind of uncovering has taken decades and been revealed to the mainstream long after a regime is out of power.
But you will say - the Bush regime ignored the hundreds of millions who gathered in global protest and went to war, so what can we do with this information? Kick this regime out of power in November. The Bush regime is not our audience, the voters are. And it's not just the Presidential race that matters.
Senator Peter Fitzgerald is retiring after he leaked that he and the President were discussing the need to openly assassinate world leaders. If we work hard, anti-war candidate Barack Obama will fill the space left by Fitzgerald's fall from grace.
I wrote Representative Tim Johnson after it was uncovered that there were no weapons of mass destructive asking how he could have supported raining death on an innocent people with a leader that posed little threat to our country and calling for the censure of the President. Johnson's office always writes me back. This time he did not write back. Anti-war candidate David Gill is running against Johnson. Let's work for Gill to turn up the heat on Johnson.
Our audience is not the Bush regime, it is the American people. As long as we have even a smattering of democracy, Bush isn't the locus of power. The locus of power is the dynamic between leader and follower. As my late friend Herbert Brun, a survivor of Hilter's regime, used to say "Believers make liars." Without the believers, the liars have no power. So believers make liars, but who makes the believers?
CBS/Viacom, ABC/Disney, CNN/Time/Warner, Clear Channel, News Corp/Fox News
To quote commentator Ira Chernus: "Truth dies, just as people die, every day in Iraq. Sometimes the people are killed by Americans paid with our tax dollars. But we rarely hear about it, thanks to other Americans, the ones who kill truth: the journalists." And I would add the corporations.
Last year, after we passed the resolution, amongst a slew of hate mail, I received a letter which said" "You endanger the lives of this city, by fostering distrust in the leaders of our nation at this vulnerable time." Fostering distrust in Bush is exactly what we need to do right now.
I don't know what the statistics are now, but last Fall, if you were a Fox news consumer, you most likely still believed Iraq was linked with Al Quaeda, 9-11, or weapons of mass destruction. Even 25% or PBS viewers had these misconceptions.
We must spread to the news of these lies to our neighbors, coworkers, and community. Where else are they going to hear it?
We must link Bush's request for over $160 billion for the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq to our state budget crisis. The millions in arts, music, teachers, librarians we just cut from our school district.
We need to give names and faces to those who have died:
Rowand Mohammed Suleiman 8 months - Lower body blown off after crawling over cluster bomblet last April
Mawra, Mohammed, Zainab Kassim ages 5-9 killed with their car was hit by tank fire last March.
Entire Abdul Rasul family killed in the aerial bombardment of their house
Sahar Sarhan (wife of Mohammed Ali Sarhan) and their unborn son killed by a rocket strike to the ambulance carrying them to the Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad.
- http://www.iraqbodycount.net/names.htm
By the way, army captains are handing out "sympathy payments" to the relatives of Iraqi civilians killed or injured by the U.S. military. No admission of U.S. guilt, but you get $1,000 for an injury and $2,500 for a death. Now you know what Iraqi life is worth, in official U.S. eyes.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-04.htm
We must work with the Americans and their families who are being used as gun fodder and being made into a new generation of veterans.
Body bags are now "transfer tubes." The Bush administration has banned the media from the homecoming of of dead soldiers since 2000. Bush has not attended a single memorial or funeral for soldiers killed in action during his presidency. At least 7 soldiers have committed suicide after returning home, but we don't hear about it.
The army is offering re-enlistment bonuses of $10,000, but many are turning it down. In a New York Times op-ed by a graduate of West Point now in Mosul, Army officers now feel that "every order they receive is delivered with next November's election in mind, so there is little doubt at and near the top about who is really being used for what over here."
This is all fertile soil for organizing. We must organize with those whose lives are on the line.
I want to conclude by sharing stories of some of the activities from around the world yesterday and today.
Reuters is reporting that upwards of a million people marched in Rome today, while 10,000 marched on the U.S. embassy in Athens, and about 1,000 protested outside a U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany. The march in Romw included a cadre of Italian policemen marching against the war.
New York: Recent crowd estimates have a mile and a half completely full of protesters, from 23rd to 34th St. Yesterday, activists unfurled a "No Blood For Oil" banner across 1st Avenue during the rush hour.
In San Francisco yesterday, hundreds locked down outside Bechtel corps headquarter effectively shutting down their offices. Bechtel is one of the corporations most profiting from the war with a 3 billion dollar contract to reconstruct Iraq. The rally was lead by teachers and healthcare workers.
A Pew survey found that “large majorities in every country, except for the U.S., hold an unfavorable opinion of Bush.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63816-2004Mar16.html
Yesterday, 20 Arab Journalists walked out of Powell's speech in Baghdad in protest of the shooting deaths of 2 Iraqi reporters by U.S. troops.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114622,00.html
Iraq: Thousands rallied in the street of Baghdad today to protest the U.S.-led occupation, expressing outrage over poor security and unemployment.
Arkansas: The 17 people against the war in the conservative town of Jonesboro Arkansas are banding together to protest today.
http://arkansas.indymedia.org/feature/display/3048/index.php |
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