The following message from Sean Penn & recorded by Mark Ruffalo was sent to Oct. 5 rallies:
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.