Aren’t you glad we
live in a country where at least we have the right to freedom of speech and
political protest?
While George Bush is legislating torture and threatening to
attack Iran,
those protesting to bring this to a halt are being denied permits to march in
the streets on Oct. 5. In San Francisco, the march
permit was denied for “Homeland Security” reasons. In NYC, police say the permit was denied for
“safety and traffic” reasons and are trying to force the march route
to a location where it would be unseen and unheard.
This is outrageous.
The world needs to hear a loud repudiation of the Bush regime on the
streets all across America
Oct. 5, and this blatant suppression of dissent cannot be allowed to pass. There must be an all-out political battle to
win permits to march on Oct. 5 in places that will have the most impact. Below you can find more info on the permit
denials and what you can do about it – flood the city governments with phone
calls and emails; if you have a platform to speak publicly, use it; and if you
are a lawyer, help fight this in the courts.
Chicago New York
City San Francisco
Update: permit granted for New York City march down 2nd Ave.
Chicago
The
City of Chicago
denied our application for a permit to march on Thursday, October 5.
Come to the hearing and demand the permit be granted:
Friday, Sept. 29, 9:30 AM
Department of Administrative Hearings
Municipal Hearings Division
400 W. Superior, Room 112
Chicago, IL 60610.
Over the last 2 weeks, the Bush regime has been on a major public opinion
campaign, justifying and accelerating the disastrous course that they are
taking the country. As one woman told WCW, “I feel like I’m on a train
heading over a cliff with no way to get off.”
This march following our rally at noon in Grant Park is a right for the
thousands staying out of work and school on that day in order to make known
their determination to bring this to a halt. We have a right to break the
deafening silence and let the public know that there are thousands and
thousands who feel this way and to call on others to join us as we march. We
have a right to be seen and be heard.
We intend to rally and then hold a massive, peaceful but noisy march to take
our cause directly to thousands of people in the Loop
to make known that we will not go along with the Bush program and urge them to
join us. As many point out, the media doesn’t cover the depth and breadth of
dismay with politics as usual — why aren’t there polls about impeachment or
coverage of the 1000s demonstrating outside the UN when Bush spoke last week?
That’s another reason why we have to take our message directly to the people.
As our Call
says, “Acting in this way, we join with and give support and heart to
people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be
stopped. This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence
us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here
and around the world. We are reaching out to the people who have been so badly
fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop.”
Here is what it all boils down to:
It’s acceptable for the government to kidnap people and take them to secret
prisons to torture them; to spy on millions of Americans; to wage an illegal
war on Iraq, but it’s not ok to inconvenience traffic to accommodate OUR RIGHT
TO PROTEST ALL THIS????
We are asking you to:
Call Andrew Valesquez III, Executive Director, Office of
Emergency Management and Communications of the City of Chicago, at 312-746-9111 and tell him to
grant World Can’t Wait’s Oct 5 application to march. (It would be great if his
voicemail is overflowing when he comes to work Monday morning, but keep calling
until our permit is granted.)
Call or fax the office of Richard M. Daley, Mayor, and tell
him the same thing. We have a right to march in the streets on October 5th
Office of the Mayor: 312-744-3300, or fax: 312-744-8045
Call World Can’t Wait at 773-227-2453 or email us at
Chicago@worldcantwait.org to let us know how you can help:
– Can you contact officials from organizations, churches, or influential
persons to join us in demanding the right to march in opposition to the crimes
being committed in our name?
– Can you can join us at a press conference early this week? In addition to
prominent individuals, we also want groups of students, union members, and
representatives of many communities speaking out and representing the face of
this movement.
– Can you can join our legal team or do you have suggestions of people we
should contact?
Please
donate all you can to support this.
All out for October 5! Bring this to a Halt!
For those who would like more information about the permit
application process:
The City is required to provide a “comparable route” if the
applicant’s proposal is denied. In our case, we applied for the northbound
lanes of Michigan Avenue,
then following the flow of traffic west on Ontario
and south on Clark to Federal
Plaza, where our
permitted rally is scheduled to begin at 4:30 PM. The plaza is occupied prior
to that. In denying our request, the City offered us a non-march: three blocks
on Jackson to Federal Plaza,
putting us there at 2 PM in the middle of an arts and crafts fair. This would
be a seriously detrimental precedent for everyone if the City can consign
protest to the margins.
If the City is concerned with costs, they can save thousands by not deploying
their police squads in full riot gear in the hundreds as they did last November
2, which was completely unnecessary except as a tactic to instill fear in the
public. The City seemed to recognize this when riot police were not deployed at
our State of the Union protest on January 31. The City would like to make this
a discussion limited to traffic control problems, but that is not the issue.
Our proposal was designed to minimize traffic disruption while still allowing us
to take our message to thousands in the downtown area. World Can’t Wait will
now mount a public relations and legal fight to secure a permit to march where
we can reach the public with our message and we will be in close touch with
people in other cities facing the same battle.
World Can’t Wait – Chicago
Office
1741 N. Western Avenue
Office Hours:
Monday through Friday 4:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Sundays 1:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Saturdays 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Phone 773.227.2453
Email: chicago@worldcantwait.org
World Can’t Wait – Chicago meets Monday at 7 PM
ACME Art Works, 1741 N. Western Avenue, Chicago
Surburban and neighborhood groups meet Wednesday evenings. Click here
for details.
New York City
Update: permit granted for a march down 2nd Ave.
contact 212-969-0772
or nyc@worldcantwait.org
We are asking everyone to contact Mayor Bloomberg and the city council to demad that the march route requested be given a permit immediately.
Mayor Bloomberg
Phone: 212-788-3000, 212-new-york, or dial 311 from within NYC
Fax: *FAX (212) 788-2460
E-MAIL: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html
Sample fax or email:
Mayor Bloomberg:
We urge you to insist that the NYPD grant our (The World
Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime) permit to march through the heart of Manhattan on Thursday,
October 5, 2006.We cannot allow protest against torture and endless wars to
be marginalized because of “traffic concerns”.We do not want to become a nation of torturers. We urgently
need to tell the people of the world that we will no longer allow the crimes of
the Bush administration to be committed in our name.Please declare our right to march along 42nd St and down Broadway so we can send
this message to the largest audience possible.
New York
City Council:
http://www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/member_list.cfm
Speaker, Christine Quinn: Phone: (212) 564-7757, Fax:
(212)564-7347
Email: quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
Right
now, there is a question demanding to be answered: who deserves legitimacy and
the largest platform to address the world: torturers or those who oppose them?
The
New York Police Department (NYPD) has denied the NYC chapter of The World Can’t
Wait’s request for a permit to march across 42nd street and down Broadway for
“safety and traffic” reasons. Their counter-offers would divert the
outpouring on October 5 away from the heart of the city, where most people go
to be “seen and heard”.
This
comes just days after the NYPD arrested and brutalized Father Luis Barrios and
other activist leaders, including an Iraq
veteran and mother of a Marine now in Iraq, as they opposed President
Bush’s visit to the United Nations, calling him out as guilty of war crimes.
Father Barrios, a prominent columnist and activist leader in the immigrants’
rights movement, and a national leader of The World Can’t Wait, was knocked to the
ground by police and then charged with felony assault on a police officer and
resisting arrest.
We
are told that it’s acceptable for the U.S. government to declare citizens
and non-citizens enemy combatants and subject them to torture in secret prisons
for the rest of their lives, but it’s not okay to inconvenience traffic to
protest this?
In
places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military kidnaps people from their
homes in the dead of night, holds them captive for years without access to
lawyers or family, and the people who oppose this get relegated to sidewalks,
deserted streets and pens, and are brutalized and arrested.
The NYPD told us they would offer no route other than 2nd avenue, and
have suggested they would deny the whole permit otherwise.
We feel 2nd
Avenue is not only incomparable, but visually
sends a message that if you oppose torture and the rest of the Bush program,
you will be marginalized and literally “kept to the side”. We cannot
allow this. The people of the world who are under our government’s bombs and
occupation are looking for resistance in the United States, and wondering where
we stand.
***We
are forming a legal team to launch a major fight in the courts – volunteers are
needed.
Fight
for the permits – all out for Oct 5th!
San Francisco
Update 9/27: march permit has been granted for San Francisco.
SAN FRANCISCO POLICE DEPARTMENT CITES “HOMELAND
SECURITY” AS GROUNDS TO DENY PERMIT FOR OCTOBER 5th WORLD Can’t WAIT MARCH,
PART OF NATIONWIDE DAY OF PROTESTS TO DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME
Last Thursday, the San Francisco Police Department
categorically denied World Can’t Wait a permit to march ANYWHERE from Justin Herman
Plaza, on the occasion of
nationwide demonstrations on Thursday, October 5th. The only reason given for the denial and
refusal to negotiate a march route was: “Homeland Security.”
After calls by outraged citizens and the press, late Friday
the SFPD reversed its position and agreed to negotiate a march route related to
Justin Herman Plaza,
but the outcome is still uncertain.
Negotiations between the SFPD and World Can’t Wait are now scheduled for
3:00 PM Monday September 25.
World Can’t Wait now holds city permits for October 5th
rallies at Justin
Herman Plaza
at noon, at 7 PM to begin an all-night protest vigil “to listen to the
voices of the victims of the Bush Regime,” and another rally early the
following morning after the vigil. The
organization has applied for a permit to march on Market Street during weekday afternoon
hours.
World Can’t Wait calls the police department’s original
refusal to allow a march route in downtown San Francisco “unacceptable” and
the invoking of “Homeland Security” “patently ridiculous and
chilling.”
There will be a press conference on Monday Sept. 25 at 1:00
PM on the steps of San Francisco
City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place. Speakers include SF Supervisors Ross
Mirkarimi and Chris Daly — Carlos Villareal, Executive Director of the
National Lawyers Guild SF Chapter — and spokespeople for The World Can’t Wait.
Organizer Ima Davis said, “To invoke “Homeland
Security” as a reason to suppress political protest is to accuse protestors of
being terrorists, and smacks of fascism. We urge every citizen of San Francisco and the
whole Bay Area to call Mayor Gavin Newsom, the Board of Supervisors, and SFPD
Chief Heather Fong, to demand that the SFPD negotiate a march route in good
faith with World Can’t Wait for its October 5th march.””
Contact the mayor’s office and demand that the march permit
be granted:
Mayor Gavin Newsom: Phone:
415-554-6141
gavin.newsom@sfgov.org Fax 415-554-6160
For more information, contact the San Francisco chapter of World Can’t Wait:
(415) 864 5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
2940 16th Street, Room 200-6
San Francisco, California 94103
Our office open Mon thru Fri 9AM – 9PM
Sat & Sun call to make an appointment
“The
point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their
side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of
examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by
a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE
GET IS UP TO US.” -from the Call for The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the
Bush Regime
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