|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
Hidden with code "Submitted as Feature" |
|
News :: Protest Activity |
|
Anti-War “Main Event” in downtown Champaign |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ricky Baldwin
Email: baldwinricky (nospam) yahoo.com (verified)
Phone: 328-3037 |
11 Apr 2005
|
|
After protesting US imperialism on North Prospect for the past three years, AWARE is trying out a new venue in downtown Champaign this Saturday April 16 from 2-4 pm. |
(Champaign) The new facilities at One Main Street are not even full of shops yet and the protests are already starting out on the sidewalk, brought to you by the organizers of “Prospect for Peace”.
On Saturday April 16 from 2-4 pm members and supporters of the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort (AWARE) will gather with signs and leaflets to express their opposition to US war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and any future “preventive” wars.
The group has been demonstrating on North Prospect near Marketview in Champaign for over three years, since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, because they feared the US government would response inappropriately. Yet little did they know how right they were.
Within weeks of the attacks, Congress passed a comprehensive revision of civil liberties under the euphemistic title “USA PATRIOT Act”, leading to an ongoing national outcry. Last month the Montana State legislature passed a resolution denouncing the Act, joining a handful of other states and dozens of US cities including Urbana.
Soon thereafter the Bush Administration embarked on a “war on terrorism” (apparently a euphemism for a kind of international campaign of intimidation, the express purpose of which was to “shock and awe” -- or, terrorize -- US enemies. The first attack came in Afghanistan, where the purported planners of the Sept. 11 attacks had been hiding. The government there had had the nerve to ask for evidence before extraditing any suspects.
“We don’t need evidence,” was the Presidential reply. “We already know they’re guilty.”
Then in Iraq, where the US finally lost the majority world support it had enjoyed little over a year before, as millions of angry protesters now took to the same streets that US supporters had recently walked. The Bush Administration declared that the Iraqi government still harbored “weapons of mass destruction” even after years of UN weapons inspections.
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell even made a dramatic speech before the UN, in which he promised to reveal evidence of the weapons, as well as the infamous connections to al-Qaida. The evidence turned out to be an “artist’s rendition” of alleged mobile weapons factories and recordings of unidentifiable men speaking Arabic -- along with Mr. Powell’s assurances, of course.
No WMDs were ever found, apart from a few that had been sealed earlier by UN inspectors -- some of which subsequently disappeared during or after the US invasion. Likewise the much-touted connections to al-Qaida, later shown to be built on shifting sands as well, except that since the invasion and overthrow of the Iraqi government sympathy for and connections to a wide variety of terrorist factions has blossomed in Iraq.
The US Administration also threatened numerous nations along the way, including Somalia, Syria and Iran, and famously warned, “Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.”
Now US troops are still mired in Afghanistan and Iraq, hopelessly surrounded by homegrown resistance as well as imported Islamist fighters, defending foreign-imposed governments and US-based profiteers, with no end in sight.
Protesters say their support has been growing on North Prospect, with fewer and fewer expressions of disapproval and more and more exuberant expressions of support, but the super-busy street is not a very good venue for actually talking to people.
One Main Street offers the opportunity to talk with passers-by as well as the slower automobile traffic. A large rally on March 19 commemorating the second anniversary of US war in Iraq drew larger than expected crowds at the site. |
This work is in the public domain |
