Nov. 6 conference to launch mass antiwar actions
2010Christine Marie 2010-11Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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“Both Democrats and Republicans appear to have decided that talking about the wars is not in their best interest,” observed Helene Cooper in her Oct. 28 New York Times article, “In 2010 Campaign, War is Rarely Mentioned.” Cooper’s commentary highlights one of the many painful contradictions of the 2010 election cycle. Despite the fact that the world as a whole is riveted by the horrendous revelations contained in the latest Wikileaks, and newly outraged by evidence that the U.S. government is sabotaging any Iran-Afghanistan antiwar discussions, the U.S. political class is, by and large, mum on the wars.
This silence is a slap in the face to the tens of thousands of rank-and-file unionists and community activists who marched on D.C. on Oct. 2 sporting T-shirts and carrying signs calling for money for jobs and education, not war.
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC), the group that hosted a July antiwar conference in Albany, N.Y., that drew 800 participants, is working to counter the electoral embargo on discussion about the war and its impact on working people by organizing a series of campaigns leading to national antiwar demonstrations on April 9, 2011, in New York City and San Francisco.
While the Democratic and Republican contenders have not been eager to address the debacles unfolding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine, and other sites of U.S. and U.S.-backed military aggression, important new forces have been eagerly seeking out antiwar organizations for joint activity.
On Nov. 6, at a New York City conference to launch the organizing effort for the April 9 bicoastal demonstrations, UNAC will be joined by leaders of a new formation, the Muslim Peace CoalitionUSA. Initiated just in time to endorse the Oct. 2 jobs rally in D.C. by Iman Malik Mujahid, a Chicago civic leader and broadcaster, the Muslim Peace Coalition brings together Muslim organizations from 14 states under the mission to “stand with those who stand with us!”
The formation of the MPC-USA is an indication that a growing number of Islamic leaders in the U.S. recognize that the best response to Islamophobia includes a good ideological offensive against the so-called “war on terror,” accompanied by defense campaigns rooted in the broadest civil liberties and peace communities.
New contacts with the large MuslimAmerican community have, at the same time, awakened layers of the antiwar movement to the dangerous and growing number of U.S. government attacks known as preemptive prosecutions. In the great majority of the cases tracked and victimized targets in the MuslimAmerican and African-American communities are identified, befriended by (continued on page 3, in “Republican and Democratic opponents for Congress”)
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INSIDE SOCIALIST ACTION: Banks fudge housing docs — 2 Hutchinson for Congress! — 3
Afghanistan disaster — 4 France in revolt! — 6 Wikileaks counts Iraq deaths — 7
Canada off Security Council — 8 Death penalty / FBI raids — 10 Mumia Abu-Jamal — 12