Why LatAm Solidarity Activists Are Marching on Pentagon

sent by Nicaaragua Network - Feb 22, 2007
http://www.nicanet.org

Why Latin America Solidarity Activists Are Marching on the Pentagon

by Chuck Kaufman,
National Co-Coordinator, Nicaragua Network;
member, ANSWER Steering Committee

The March on the Pentagon, March 17, 2007, will be on the Saturday
before the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and in the
fortieth anniversary year of the March on the Pentagon in 1967 which
moved the Vietnam anti-war movement from protest to resistance.
Latin America solidarity organizations such as Nicaragua Network,
School of the Americas Watch, Mexico Solidarity Network, Free the
Cuban Five, Haiti Progres, and Venezuela Solidarity Network among
others, are marching on the Pentagon because there are direct links
to our Latin America solidarity work.

As ANSWER Coalition National Coordinator Brian Becker wrote in an
article entitled, Why we are Marching, "The disease that must be
uprooted is the system of militarism. Bush is asking Congress for
nearly $700 billion for the Pentagon next year.

Congress will approve fundingas it always does.

The Pentagon has over 700 military bases in 130 countries. It carries
out its own spying program against people in this country. It carries
out targeted assassinations against those deemed to be "enemies of
America." At Guantanamo and elsewhere, the Pentagon operates prisons
that are labeled "torture facilities" by the United Nations. The
biggest media corporations are also military contractors."

Latin America has many of those 700 US military bases including the
most infamous at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Pentagon is building a
new base on the island of Curacao just off the coast of Venezuela
and on the Caribbean Coast of Honduras near Nicaragua. And, of
course, the Pentagon runs the School of Assassins at Ft. Benning,
GA to train Latin America military officers to oppress their own
people.

If the Bush administration were not bogged down in Iraq, it would
probably be invading Venezuela in an effort to halt Latin America's
increasing independence from the US empire and savage free market
capitalism.

When the Bush Administration invaded Iraq, Zapatista subcommandante
Marcos said that Chiapas "is now Southwest Iraq." Only three Latin
American countries joined Bush's "coalition of the willing" to
occupy Iraq and only one still has troops there. The Iraq war is
intensely unpopular in Latin America where they are all too familiar
with US military invasions and occupations.

It is time for the US peace movement to move from protest to
resistance. The right-wing is organizing an intensive "big lie"
campaign claiming that we intend to "desecrate" the Vietnam war
memorial. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a transparent
effort to diminish the March on the Pentagon. Any statements that
discourage people from coming to Washington on March 17 simply play
into the hands of the war supporters and the Bush regime.

It is no coincidence that only 25 counter demonstrators usually
turn out when we march on Congress, but that supporters of US
militarism are pulling out all the stops to oppose a march on the
Pentagon. They know where the real power lies. They know that
when the American people wake up to what the Pentagon's bloated
budget could buy in terms of housing, health care, jobs, and education
in the US, and the suffering that $700 billion annually inflicts
abroad, the legalized robbery of our tax dollars by the post-World
War II military-industrial complex will come to a screeching halt.

Local demonstrations and other actions that stop "business as usual"
are critical to the evolution by the anti-war movement from protest
to resistance.

But, periodic national marches in Washington, DC, when the anti-war
movement comes together in our tens and hundreds of thousands, play
a crucial role in building and empowering locally-based resistance.

March 17 is one of those pivotal dates that will be seen 40 years
from now as the date the Iraq anti-war movement moved from protest
to resistance, just like we now see the 1967 March on the Pentagon.

On March 17 it is vital that Latin America solidarity activists
join with veterans, students, Muslims, Christians, Jews, peace
activists, and our newly outraged neighbors and co-workers to march
on the Pentagon to demand:

* US Out of Iraq Now

* From Iraq to New Orleans Fund People's Needs not the War Machine

* End Colonial Occupation: Iraq, Palestine, Haiti and Everywhere

* Shut Down Guantanamo

Visit the ANSWER web page http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org) now
for transportation and logistical details, for contact information o
n the more than 100 organizing centers in 40 states, or to volunteer.

Nicaragua Network | 1247 E St. SE | Washington | DC | 20003

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