Message to the NATO/G8 Protest
Sisters and Brothers, I cannot tell you how moved I am to be standing here with you today; with you who are the leaders of the next great stage of the fight to end U.S. wars. Their campaign to make us give up our right to protest brutal military occupation and robotized assassination has failed. You stood up with the powerful tools of mass peaceful legal action and said no to the new security state, said no to its racist and religious profiing, mass incarceration, its militarized police forces, its pre-emptive prosecutions of Muslim Americans, its privatized detention centers, its marshalling of secret evidence, grand jury witch hunts, detention without charges or trial. We say NO! We say NO!
After this march, please join with the United National Antiwar Coalition to continue this fight on a national basis. Some advised us not to march in an election year. Do you agree? Of course we must march! The horror wrought by the U.S. and NATO military in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain is not ending. And the terror brought upon people by the midnight boot on the door, by the crippling economic sanctions on Iran, the weapons shipments to Syria, combat troops to Africa—all these are BIPARTISAN decisions. They are enacted with equal vigor by the Democratic and Republican parties alike! Only our independent mass mobilizations will end this barbarism.
We must build a new independent movement in collaboration with the Muslim and Arab American community, with immigrants, unionists and the Black community.
- No to the NATO G8 war and austerity agenda!
- No war or sanctions on Iran or Syria!
- End all U.S. aid to Israel.
- Free all the Palestinian prisoners of administrative detention.
- U.S. out of Afghanistan and Pakistan NOW.
Christine Gauvreau is a member of the Administrative Committee of the United National Antiwar Coalition and the organizing committee of Connecticut United for Peace.