When the President used the State of
the Union address January 31 to relentlessly push his case for unending war on
the world, unimpeded domestic spying, faith-based initiatives and an attack on
stem cell research and abortion, some reported this as a “moderate speech
with no new proposals.” But there
was a different response in the streets of more than 60 cities, when tens of
thousands perceived Bush’s address as a State of Emergency. Then, Saturday,
over two thousand came right to the White House to demand “Bush Step Down
and Take Your Program with You!”
Many thousands of individuals who
had been looking for something that can really make a huge change in this
country and the world found it this month in the vehicle we are building with
The World Can’t Wait ( Drive Out the Bush Regime. A soldier who just returned from Iraq one week earlier drove
straight from Indiana to protest in DC on Saturday after hearing about it 2
days before. At the rally we met people who had traveled from Oklahoma, Maine,
Indiana, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, the Carolinas and other places, who had
not yet hooked up with a WCW chapter. Many commented on the spirit and
determination of the crowd, including the sight of elderly and disabled people
marching through a driving rain alongside this very young movement. Many
longtime organizers noted the wide range of nationality, age, and political
outlooks, not often seen together in a way that is united around a common
message and purpose. Political office holders, union officers, religious
leaders, Iraq veterans and military families, leaders of a new student
movement, defectors from the Bush Regime, and revolutionaries shared a common
stage and goal.
In the weeks preceding, the World
Can’t Wait reached millions through local newspaper and radio ads in San
Francisco, Washington and NYC, and through national ads on Air America
Radio. Our ad in The New York Times on
January 20 brought new signers to the Call, including U.S. Representatives John
Conyers, Cynthia McKinney, Bobby Rush and Maxine Waters; Daniel Ellsberg;
CHOICE USA; Dennis Rivera (President, Local 1199 SEIU); Gloria Steinem; St.
Clair Bourne; Mark Ruffalo; and Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski (ret). Prominent
artists and writers have starting speaking to their audiences on the importance of the people standing up
now. Former CIA consultant Ray
McGovern, speaking at the National Press Club where the findings of the
International Bush Commission on Crimes Against Humanity were presented, said:
‘This is what our German forebears in the 1930’s did not do. They sat around,
blamed their rulers, said âmaybe everything’s going to be alright.’ That is
something we cannot do.’ We learned that
people in the national press are watching this movement closely to see if it
will reach, as they put it, ‘critical mass.’
Friend and foe alike are now dealing
with the existence of an emerging movement that is demanding the extraordinary.
At the same time, we have to soberly
assess everything we said was coming to a head in January: the fact that Bush
has been able to install Alito to the Supreme Court with no effectual
opposition by Congress. This surrender
is not being answered with mass resistance on the part of hundreds of thousands
who are deeply opposed to this. As events accelerate and Bush blitzkriegs
through his program of massive military spending for endless war, now rattling
his saber at Iran) as prisoners in Guantanamo are forced to end their hunger
strike, indefinitely detained in a twilight zone where there is no due process
and no one to witness) as the NSA revelations are being readied for another
white wash and more betrayal) we must also confront the fact that our numbers
and our reach are still far short of what it will take to stop this all this
madness.
Our movement is brand new and the
thousands who came into the streets represent millions more who want to see
this President out of office and his whole program repudiated and reversed, but
who do not yet know about this movement, or are not yet convinced that mass
independent political action and protest can make a decisive difference. Or
they may be still hoping to passively wait it out, not confronting the horror
that will be done in their name if they remain idle and complicit.
Our movement with its powerful Call
needs to reach out even more broadly to organizations and institutions to join
us and to plan broader and more powerful resistance. There are many people we
must connect with who have never stepped into taking responsibility for the
direction of history before. While we are considering our next major steps we
need to actively investigate with those who have acted and those who have not
yet done so– to get a deeper understanding of both why those who came have
decided to act now and what is holding back those who have not yet done so.
This is not just a job for the organizers of committees but for every
participant in this movement. Seek out
and really listen to people– engage with people on the substance in the Call
to drive out the Bush Regime with the content of what ‘your government’ is
doing; with the morality of ‘that which you do not resist and mobilize to
stop;’ with the reality of where politics as usual has brought us to; and with
the positive and hopeful message that there is a way to really make a huge
change in this country and in the world if we act. As the Georgetown law students put it on February 4, ‘we are what
we have been waiting for.’
As we carry out this mass inquiry
and analysis and plan our next big steps, chapters should firmly take hold of
what we have built and accomplished and take it forward. Get back to everyone we have talked with and
bring them actively into the movement. Ask people to volunteer and get
organized to make their efforts really matter!
1) If you have not already done so,
bring social gatherings together to report back and sum up our work protesting
the State of the Union. Make use of our website (including the speeches and statements
sent) to give people a sense of themselves and the significance of what they
are bringing into being, and get their input.
2) Return to the analysis and
political objectives contained in the Call.
This is critical for maintaining our bearings and direction, and allows
people from many different perspectives to unite. Get this out even more
widely, leafleting and posting, as well as continuing to print and publish it.
3) Get back with all the new people
we met, encouraging them to hold fund-raising house parties. The Portland chapter has a goal of a house
party in every neighborhood they marched in on January 31. Plan fund-raising
events and reach out to potential funders so that we can really build up the
infrastructure and reach of this movement.
4) Organize forums, town hall
meetings and speaking engagements where people representing for or who have
signed the World Can’t Wait Call can speak to what the situation is and what it
requires. Invite speakers who can speak to the “Your Government”
indictments of our Call. Hold events on particular aspects such as the response
to Katrina. Especially important on
college campuses, we need speakers who can give the full sense of what this
regime represents, and speak to the influence of openly theocratic political
operatives in every area of this administration, of the fascist remaking of law
and government, etc. As we are doing
all this, we should be making further steps in developing World Can’t Wait as
an organized political force in its own right, founded on the Call as its basis
of unity, and increasingly drawing in individuals and organizations of various
kinds to be part of the movement to Drive Out The Bush Regime.