For the week of Oct. 27th – Nov. 2nd, World Can’t Wait responded to the urgent and volatile situation developing in the world with Emergency Teach-Ins as the 2006 mid-term elections increasingly shaped the debate in a politically charged moment. It was less than a month after the Military Commissions Act (the “Torture Bill”), when World Can’t Wait launched a nationwide effort to hold teach-ins on campuses and in communities to “explore the actual content of the Bush program and where it is taking the world.”
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Organize viewings of the NYC teach-in at your homes, dorms, churches, etc.: |
Over 40 cities and towns took part in a call issued by World
Can’t Wait to hold events to learn and discuss: where is the Bush
regime taking the world and why must it be stopped?
On Oct. 30
in New York City, the flagship teach-in event featured a unique range
of experts and high caliber speakers who spoke to an audience of 325
people. [Click here for a report on the New York City Teach-In].
Keeping in line with World Can’t Wait’s efforts to dramatically change
the national political equation; the NYC event was web streamed and
made available online – thousands of people have watched it so far.
The event greatly impacted people even “in the know” and challenged
widely held assumptions about the situation in the world today. As a
journalism major who attended the NYC event noted:
We
are a generation that has an unprecedented amount of information coming
at us from all angles, but a severe deficit in actual understanding.
People are given opinions without being told the perspectives they are
born of, people are shown circumstances without being given pretext or
context.I knew torture was wrong when I walked into the event
that night, but hearing Goodman explain the terms of the Military
Commissions Act, redefined my sense of urgency when it comes to driving
out the Bush regime.The military commissions act, was
described by news media as a “compromise”, brokered and signed upon by
John McCain, the most outspoken critic of torture that exists in
congress–a former POW himself.Goodman described what the Military commissions act means from the
perspective of one Maher Arar, the Canadian software engineer who,
despite the Canadian government’s urgent pleas, was sent by the United
States to Syria, where he would surely be subjected to vicious torture.
Of the 40 plus cities, many screened the Bush Crimes Commission DVD
and invited speakers for their teach-ins. The Bush Crimes DVD had a
very powerful effect on the audience and organizers from Seattle and
San Francisco State University noticed many people weeping while
watching the Torture section of the DVD. The teach-ins reflected the
breadth and potential to unite with a wide section of people who are
seriously alarmed and outraged by the Bush administration’s horrendous
rampage that is radically reshaping every sphere of American life. A
biology professor from UC San Diego spoke about the attacks on science
by the Bush regime in San Diego, an artist performed poetry about
Hurricane Katrina in Atlanta, and a professor (Dr. Vinay Lal) from UCLA
discussed the attacks on dissent and critical thinking in academia (or
as he called it ” a flat out assault on thinking”). These are all new
and positive developments in World Can’t Wait’s mission to create an
atmosphere where driving out the Bush regime takes on a whole new level
of reality.
Students in Chicago held an all-day teach-in at Columbia College
that was attended by over 80 students, with three professors canceling
class to bring their students to the World Can’t Wait Teach-In. Over
100 mainly Black and Latino youth attended a presentation by Larry
Everest at Oakland High after 4 teachers supportive of World Can’t Wait
brought their classes to hear what is the truth behind Bush’s war in
the Middle East and what kind of future do we face if Bush’s agenda is
cemented into place. The teach-in at Oakland High was a tremendous
accomplishment and events like this need to spread through high schools
all across the country. The horror and unrelenting nature of America’s
war in the Middle East was brought alive by Everest and provoked many
of the students to ask about the possibility of the U.S. government
issuing another draft and also how can we stop the war NOW.
As
World Can’t Wait is developing plans for a new wave of Teach-ins and
attempting to break new ground with the DVD of the New York City
flagship event the advances made in this past round of teach-ins brings
home the urgent need for people to grasp how far the Bush regime has
already gone in implementing its fascistic agenda and how serious this
regime is about taking the world into a place beyond our worst
nightmares. An organizer from Seattle remarked that after hearing
about the what the Military Commission Act is really all about from a
member of the ACLU, an unusually high amount of people signed up to
take responsibility for driving Bush out office. This reflects the
profound point in the call for the emergency teach-ins that ” “the full
implications of these sweeping changes are not widely understood, even
among those who oppose the administration. This is a major reason why
public resistance to Bush’s outrages is nowhere near what is urgently
needed.”
It is critical for those active in the movement to
drive out the Bush regime to think about this in light of summing up
October 5th and trying to figure out how to raise the level of
resistance to a whole other level. The question of how deeply people
understand the seriousness of the Bush regime’s mission will greatly
determine how people will resist its agenda and this question needs to
be discussed with people we encounter way beyond the sphere of World
Can’t Wait.