…to hear from Alice Walker, Mark Ruffalo, Craig Murray, Olympia Dukakis, Daniel Ellsberg, Boots Riley, Malachy McCourt, Bill Goodman, Reno, Elmaz Abinader, and a special message from Sean Penn, and to get organized for Oct. 5. See below for video, audio, pictures, and reports from the events (with more to come later).
Click here toof listen to a dramatic reading the Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime [mp3]
Click here for a report from the New York event.
Click here for a report from the San Francisco event.
Watch, listen, & read the speakers from Monday night:
(Video, audio, and transcripts will be posted as the become available. Check back here for the latest.)
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Listen: [mp3] Transcript: The arrogant, the misguided, the cowards would argue that an immediate pull-out of our troops from Iraq would inspire lack of confidence and the lost credibility of the United States. President Bush and his functionaries indeed have lost enormous credibility for the perception of our country internationally. Perhaps more damaging than that, they have created the greatest cultural, religious, and political divide domestically since our own Civil War. We the people of the United States have a unique opportunity. We can show each other and the world that what the Bush administration claims is their mission is not ours. And, by leading our country as a citizenry and demanding of our government an immediate end to our own military and profit investments in Iraq, display for the entire world that democracy is a government of the people. What more powerful message to send the world than that we ourselves can choose – in policy, in peace, and in humanitarian support. In fascism, one serves the State. Let’s show the world that with democracy, we can make the State do our bidding, and that such bids would not be the blind ones, given exclusively to the friends of power. But rather, the domain of the people of freedom everywhere. This is an administration that advocates torture, deceives the public, spends billions of dollars on a failed war. This is an administration where in the year of Katrina, Exxon Mobil claimed the highest profit margin in the history of world business. It is an administration that belittles, demeans, deceives, and indeed kills our brothers, our sisters, our sons, and our daughters. At the U.S./Mexico border, we panic at the notion of illegal entry, without blinking an eye as our elderly line up every Saturday morning with wheelchairs, walkers, canes and joint pain, queued up in the desert heat to enter Mexico where they can purchase affordable medication. In the human family, this President is indeed pushing his wheelchair-bound grandmother down the stairs with a smile on his face. Everyone knows that these are true statements. Everyone. Some are ashamed of where they”ve put their support in the past, their passivity in the present, with the courage of their minds and hearts at bay. What an exciting thing to reverse this as one America and show the world who wears the pants in this house. Stand up as an American and join World Can’t Wait and those demonstrating this Thursday, October 5th. Out of Iraq. And out with Bush. |
Message from Sean Penn, read by Mark Ruffalo|
Listen (with an introduction from Boots Riley): [mp3] “Who are we becoming? Who are we becoming? What does it mean to be a human being? We are completely right at the verge of really not having a clue.
“And that is why it is so essential to stop the people who have taken our government. They are not people who can take us, as a species, where we need to be going. They don’t know where they are supposed to be going. They have no clue. And so it is really truly up to us — and I keep wanting to say to everyone, it is up to us, and lovingly — as horrendous and as terrifying as this is — I say this peacefully and lovingly because of the peace that I’m saying we need to embody if we expect to see it in the world.” |
Alice Walker
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Listen: [mp3] “I don’t want to be up here today but I feel I have exhausted the way we have been taught to affect change in the way our government conducts itself”. I have voted, I have called, I have written letters, I have given of myself with my time and my money, and still we have a government that refuses to respect the Constitution, a Government that engaged in a war with illegal justification, a government that abandoned its own during Hurricane Katrina, a Government that now condones torture, a government that favors big corporations before it favors my children or yours. Step down, Mr. Bush, We are not torturers. Step down Mr. Bush, We are not war profiteers” We are Americans and we Demand you Step Down.” |
Mark Ruffalo
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“They revoke our civil rights and patronize Muslims as non-humans so that when they arrest and torture humans we accept this, so that when they tell us habeas corpus is gone we will accept this, so that when they invade Muslim countries to get their oil and gas we will accept this”we are not accepting it anymore! It is the anti-war movement in the
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Craig Murray|
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Olympia Dukakis
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Daniel Ellsberg
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Reno
Segment of The World Can’t Wait at Cooper Union Oct 2
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Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights |
Emergency Meetings to Stop Torture and the Bush Regime Draw Crowds and Celebrities
By Sunsara Taylor
“They [the Bush regime] have to go. I had a dream about two weeks ago. And I was on my way here to be with you and I was coming along and as I was coming through the back door back there”and I started right away fussing and ranting and raving and kvetching because there weren’t many people. And I was saying where are they? So when I came tonight, I was looking to see if, in fact, you had come, and you have come.”
Alice Walker, Mon. Oct 2nd, Grand Lake Theater in Oakland
On Monday, October 2nd, more than twelve hundred people packed into emergency gatherings held by World Can’t Wait [worldcantwait.org], one on each coast to respond to Bush’s new torture legislation and to mobilize for nation-wide protest on October 5th to Drive Out the Bush Regime.
At one of many high points in the evening in New York Mark Ruffalo, after having admitted his reluctance to have taken the stage to speak about politics and to challenge the president, lifted his arm and proclaimed, “Step down, Mr. Bush! We are not torturers!” The first time I heard him deliver this line, part of a statement [http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601003_mark_ruffalo_step_down/] he pre-recorded so it could be played in Oakland as well, I got chills. But this time as I listened to the sustained shouts and cheers from the crowd, it hit me how much it meant that people came out that night.
It was not until the Friday before at about five pm that we finally decided to move our previously planned meeting from a community center to Cooper Union’s Great Hall that seats 900 people. All weekend I lived with a tight knot in my stomach wondering if we would be able to fill the place in just a couple days. But when I arrived there was a line of more than 600 people down the block and around the corner waiting to get in.
What filled the Hall that night was not just people, it was also a choice that was being made the only way it is possible to make it: collectively. The choice was to not become paralyzed in the face of a fascist onslaught, but to take to join together, to refuse to be silent, and to prepare to take to the streets in protest as part of a nation-wide movement to stop the regime.
Ruffalo was joined on the stage by a remarkable collection of individuals who, like him, acted on their feeling of responsibility to lend their voices and their platforms to those who are coming together to resist.
Sean Penn, who has earned the love of millions through his art as well as through his fearlessness in seeking out and giving voice to those who are silenced under U.S. bombs in Iraq or in the toxic Katrina floodwaters, sent a defiant and hopeful message for Ruffalo to deliver. After indicting the President for his arrogance, his assault on democracy, and his murderous policies, Penn threw open a challenge and an invitation to everyone, “Some are ashamed of where they”ve put their support in the past, their passivity in the present, with the courage of their minds and hearts at bay. What an exciting thing to reverse this as one America and show the world who wears the pants in this house. Stand up as an American and join World Can’t Wait and those demonstrating this Thursday, October 5th.”
Olympia Dukakis did a stirring rendition of the Call for the movement to Drive Out the Bush Regime [http://www.worldcantwait.net/av/10-2/dukakis-call.mp3] which has been published as full-page ads in the New York Times several times as well as in USA Today and later led a call and response to Eve Ensler’s ode to the President, “Fire His Ass!” [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXCp9djObk]
Reno, who will always hold a special place in the heart of New Yorkers for being the first comic to puncture the post 9/11 jingoism, gave people the gift of deeply satisfying laughter as she cut into the policies and outlooks of Bush, Rumsfeld and the rest. [http://www.worldcantwait.net/av/10-2/reno.mp3] And writer and radio host Malachy McCourt joined WCW National Director, Debra Sweet, on stage and sang “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”
There were two speeches that anchored the evening and which armed people with the truth that they need to understand and act on the full implications of Bush’s regime and his new legislation.
Craig Murray was the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan until it became clear that the U.S. and the UK were complicit in the widespread use of torture against Muslims, Arabs and South Asians even where the intelligence showed that the individuals had nothing to do with “terrorist” organizations. He received an extended standing ovation as he climbed on stage and then told the story of how families of torture victims would come to him with pictures of the bodies of their loved ones and plead with him for help. People were moved and emboldened as he told of forfeiting his career and sacrificed long-time friendships to tell the world the horrors that he had seen and which are growing more widespread by the day. [http://www.worldcantwait.net/av/10-2/craigmurray.mp3]
Then, to help people understand the full implications of the new torture legislation was Bill Goodman, a lead attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who has defended Guantanamo detainees, sued the regime over their use of “extraordinary rendition,” and is involved in the lawsuit aginst the NSA spying. In an impassioned speech he explained how this new law shreds one of the foundations of modern society: the right of habeas corpus, that is the right not to be held indefinitely without charges being presented against you and being given the chance to defend yourself against them in a court. He made clear that regardless of all the double speak, torture – including waterboarding – has now been made legal and that all this is not the end, but just a step towards, the extreme repression that the Bush administration has in store if it is not stopped.
A few hours later, at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland a sister event was held. At it, Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and is currently calling for leakers to come forward now to prevent the looming war on Iran, hip hop musician Boots Riley of The Coup, Alice Walker [http://www.worldcantwait.net/av/10-2/grand-boots-alice.mp3], poet Elmaz Abinader shared poetry and honesty about the need for sacrifice, courage, and the involvement of millions to stop the Bush regime.
These days, millions of people are living at the pivot point between fear and outrage. A dream, a word of caution – or encouragement – from a friend, or a flash memory of the Abu-Ghraib images might be all it takes to push one over to one side or the other.
When the Bush Republicans and their enabling Democrats came together in Congress to pass the Military Commisions Act of 2006 they were seeking to both instill fear and to rely on this fear to prevent people from challenging a regime that would condone such barbarisms as torture. This, on top of their headlong rush towards theocracy with an end to women’s reproductive rights and gay rights, a new war against Iran, their suppression of science, and their relentless assault on the rule of law is enough to make any thinking person lose sleep at night.
The problem for the regime is, this only works so long as it works. And while it certainly isn’t settled which way the scales will tip, the coming together of more than twelve hundred people at events on Monday night on boths coasts certainly show the real possibility of people’s collective hopeful political action winning out over fear. And over the Bush regime. As does the mushrooming growth of protests planned for Thursday across the country.
Just ten days ago, the number of protests being planned for October 5th was under 60, as I write it has grown to more than 190. An impressive number of these protests are scheduled in “red” states – with nine planned in Bush’s homestate of Texas, 13 each planned in Florida and North Carolina, and four in Alabama! Most are new to political life, but are coming forward in the hope that acting together with many tens of thousands on a single day they can help create a different dynamic in this country.
After the New York program was over I met a well dressed, middle aged white woman. I asked how she heard about the event and she said her friend had invited her. So, we found her friend and I asked her how she heard about the event. She told me that she was going to Union Square farmer’s market to buy her daffodils and someone handed her a flyer. She read it and said thank you, so the person told her she should take a stack and pass them out. “I”ve never done anything like that before, but I went up to complete strangers and handed them these flyers,” she pantomimed handing out flyers with her arms as she spoke and then looked right in my eye, and gave voice to something new that is rising up in this country. “It felt sooo good. I was giving people something they could DO. Do you have any more flyers? I want to let more people know about the protest on Thursday. I really feel like together we can stop Bush.”
Sunsara Taylor sits on the advisory board of The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime and writes for Revolution newspaper.
Responses from the audience at Cooper Union:
At Cooper Union in New York Monday evening, the 600 people who came out, largely on a moment’s notice, outraged that torture was now legal, were looking for a way to stop this regime. The speakers echoed what was in the air: that we refuse to be a nation of torturers. Below are some responses from people attending the event when asked:
What changes do you hope to see come out of the actions on October 5?
“I”d love for congress to just listen for once. We live in a democracy. I think we should have our voices heard.”
-Sheila, 18, Student
“Restore the Republic. I”d like for Congress to take a glance at the constitution.”
-Derrick Lee 35, Ca. Wildlife Bioligist
“Right now the public is uninformed. October 5 can bring truth to people about what is happening.”
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“I hope people become more aware, more conscious, that people come together to bring about some serious change. Something really wrong is going on and we”ve got to do something about it. There’s no excuse to say “there’s nothing I can do.” It’s time to get out and organize.”
-Latik
“I’m worried about
-Kim, 27, Dancer
“Hopefully enough people will show up. People in the
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“I”d like to see my point of view more accurately articulated in the media.”
-Martha, Theater Producer
“I hope that it’s taken seriously, that it’s on the front page. People should know why he should be impeached.”
-Grayson, Student
“Media coverage has been disappointing, even non-existent. I would like to see a push in the media to show that we are not the minority in this. Everywhere you turn there’s more disfavor for the war than support for it. Bush always says “you”re either with us or against us,” and that if you don’t support the war then you”re unpatriotic. Well, the majority of the country doesn’t support the war, so does that mean that like 60% of the country is unpatriotic? Come on.”
-Mike McKee, 25, Actor
“I”d like to see a general strike in the
-Kathy, 53, Librarian, Book Editor
Report from Evening of Conscience in Oakland:
World Can’t Wait packed the house at the Grand Lake Theater in
Alice Walker spoke of the close proximity we are to the end of the world under the leadership of politics like those of the Bush Regime. She countered that stark reality with the healing knowledge of doing the right thing on Oct. 5, and continuing unceasingly in struggle against the Bush Regime, and destructive politics in any form.
Elmaz Abinader followed the poetry of Dennis Bernstein and Alice Walker with her own hard-hitting poem about Abu Ghraib torture with the saxophone back drop of a 16- year-old local high school student.
Daniel Ellsberg elucidated the stakes at hand. He pointed out the fact that the torture and rape of children written about by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker is the sort of practice that has been ratified in Congress with the new torture bill.
Standing ovations were repeated throughout the night, which finished on a super-charged note in support for the Oct. 5 Day of Mass Resistance.