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Below is the text from World Can’t Wait’s ad in the New York Times Oct. 4th.
Click here to see the fullpage ad.
SILENCE + TORTURE = COMPLICITY
THURSDAY
OCTOBER 5
NO WORK! NO SCHOOL! MARCH WITH US!
“Can’t the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by
our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted,
not only the “intelligence” that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked
away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage
so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march
in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that
torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?”
Ariel Dorfman, “Are We Really So
Fearful?”
YOUR GOVERNMENT HAS NOW CODIFIED TORTURE. The new law does not prohibit the government from
using “alternative interrogation techniques” that include sleep deprivation,
extreme cold, personal degradation, waterboarding (simulated drowning),
“temporary” disablement, and psychological disorientation. The new law grants
George Bush the sole authority to decide what torture is. Abu Ghraib and the
secret renditions were horrible. But to take the next step and write such
practices into law is even worse – qualitatively worse.
Your
government has officially shredded constitutional promises of basic and
fundamental rights to due process –
taking a huge step towards replacing the rule of law with the arbitrary rule of
men. The new law will give the president the right to hold people indefinitely
without charging them, and without review from the courts, nullifying habeas
corpus rights. Congress has now passed legislation that denies defendants the
right to see evidence used against them, and allows the use of “evidence”
gained through torture. It forbids anyone to invoke the Geneva Conventions in
any civil case or habeas corpus proceedings undertaken against the U.S.
government, and, according to some experts, it may also forbid this in criminal
cases.
Your
government – which already holds over 14,000 people overseas without charges – has dramatically expanded the scope of who it can
detain to include people anywhere in the world, including within the U.S. People can
now be declared an “unlawful enemy combatant” simply for providing what the
president decides is “material,” including financial or indirect support for
hostilities against the U.S.
Your
government is rewriting the law on crimes against humanity to exclude itself, incurring the contempt and hatred of people all
over the planet.
Few in
Congress made anything but the most token show of opposition, as leading Democrats let Bush set the agenda,
staying silent when it mattered, refusing to filibuster, then voting no only
when the die was cast.
This
unprecedented legalization of torture is part of a package coming from the Bush
regime. That package includes an
atrocious, nightmarish occupation of Iraq
and now the ominous threat of war against Iran. It includes an assault on
critical thinking and serious motion toward a theocracy. It includes the
criminal response to Hurricane Katrina. It includes a systematic attack on
women’s reproductive rights, and the demonization of gay people and denial of
their basic human rights. It includes the scapegoating of immigrants and
severely repressive new legislation aimed at them.
And it gets
worse with every passing week. As the call for The World Can’t Wait-Drive Out the
Bush Regime states: “The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society
very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.” With this
legalization of torture, who will now deny that? The stakes are clearly
enormous.
If Not Now,
When? If Not Us, Who?
THIS MUST
HALT! This entire package must be
repudiated, and the whole direction of this country must be reversed.
There is a way to act against this onslaught, effectively.
There is a vitally important step to take now to begin driving out this regime
and reversing this nightmare direction:
Join
those demonstrating this Thursday, October 5, in over 100 cities across the
U.S., raising the demand to DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME.
Think of the message that people taking off work and
school and marching this Thursday, would send to the tens of millions within
the U.S. who are already deeply distressed and even outraged over the direction
that the Bush regime is dragging the country and the world, but who feel
paralyzed. And think of the message it would send to the hundreds of millions
around the world, who think that Bush acts in our name. Demonstrations like
these could galvanize the political atmosphere so that the next day in America,
and for days and weeks to come, the conversation and the sharp debate over the
water coolers, at the lunch wagons, on the campuses and street corners will
revolve around whether and how to stop this disastrous course, and how to
remove the regime that is perpetrating it. The mobilization throughout society
would reverberate up to the very top, and back down again. The political
dynamic of fascist-type onslaught from forces represented by Bush – and
passivity from everyone else – would
begin to be seriously reversed. A real basis for hope could fight its way into
existence, drawing forward others. Come out this Thursday. And do more, now, to
help make it happen. Donate. Volunteer. Organize your friends.
“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 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. WHICH
ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.” – From the call “The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the
Bush Regime!”
Join in mass protests
in over 150 cities & towns
Find locations & times
for your area at worldcantwait.org or 866-973-4463
DEMONSTRATE IN NEW
YORK CITY:
12 noon-Dag Hammerskjöld
Plaza, March to Union
Square/Rally 4pm
worldcantwait.org