Text of presentation from Debra Sweet, World Can’t Wait national director, to World Can’t Wait’s national meeting on January 13 2007.
Imagine for a moment, that you”re trying to explain early
2007 to someone from another political era in the U.S”.back a long time ago,
like 1974.
A president, in power for 6 years, is escalating a
war in the Middle East which is growing more
dangerous to the globe’s future by day. He is now threatening nearby countries,
and has not ruled out the use of nuclear weapons, risking a lot in an effort to
expand an unchallengeable empire. This
president has grabbed more power for his office than any predecessor, more
quickly than anyone was prepared for, openly broken the law to spy on citizens,
ordered the military to detain and torture people illegally. And then he got Congress to make all this legal!
He’s a triumphant Christian, even saying publicly he believes God put him in
office, and he’s surrounded himself with like-minded fundamentalists who
believe reality is what they say it is.
While he’s been in office, a large American city was
inundated by hurricane water and wind, and thousands were left for 5 days to
die, while the military was sent in, not to rescue, but to keep order. Hundreds of thousands of residents – poor and
African American – are not being allowed to come home, probably ever
again. And no one was every held accountable
for the preventable suffering. But he
flew across country in his pajamas, on a religious holiday, to sign a special
law preventing a woman with irreversible brain damage from being allowed by her
husband to die, because he says she has the “right to life”. He’s appointing people to be in charge of
womens” health who don’t even believe in birth control, much less abortion, but
recommend prayer to stop menstrual cramps, and he won’t allow scientists to
study stem cells from frozen fetal tissue.
You probably would mention that he was put in office
by the Supreme Court after stealing an election through intimidation of voters.
And that people who have a sense of world history say his regime is the most
dangerous threat, ever, to the world.
He’s responsible for the biggest foreign policy debacle in U.S. history,
which 70% of the population is against.
But even with public opinion growing against him, he pushes on. Laws get worse by the day, and the whole
thing is moving steadily to the right.
Your friends ask, there are still two parties,
right? What is the other party doing?
They”ve spent six years accommodating to the
president, you say. After complaining for a moment, they accept whatever new
outrage has already been affected, and adopt its logic. The paralysis of this opposition party has
led to a deadly passivity among the people for years now. Still, millions turn out to the polls and try
to cast their vote against this war and this president’s policies. And commentators quickly begin to ask, will
the people be satisfied if the opposition party doesn’t stop the war? And some of them are starting to speak out –
even supporters in the president’s own party, and in the military, are openly
questioning him and doubting that his escalation of the war will succeed,
saying he has only 90 days to show progress, or he could lose the whole thing.
Your friends from another political era, or another
country, or a sane universe, will say to all this: Why the hell is this
president still in office? Have people
really gotten stupid in 3 decades? Don’t
they know what to do?
They would say: You know what to do. It’s up to the people. Raise the alarm, tell the truth loudly, get
people organized and drive that regime OUT!
*********
Looked at objectively, this is what we”re up
against. For 18 months, since we began
in July 2005, World can’t Wait has been attempting to move millions of people
to act on their own interests, and those of the people of the world, to create
a political situation – enough upheaval in society – to isolate the Bush regime
based on the crimes it’s committed, and force it from office, setting the basis
to reverse the direction it set.
We in World Can’t Wait undertook, for a third time in
a year, to manifest – all over the country at the same time on October 5 – that
the Bush program must be brought to a halt.
And, though most people in this room, and hundreds of others, put a lot
on the line in challenging people to come out, and yes, there were many good
things that happened all over the country, we had to be honest. It wasn’t bound to fall short, but it did —
even far short — of what was needed.
All of us have been very frustrated by this; even
angry at people who sat by, and watched, when, if all of people who were watching
would have acted, if, going into the election, we had hundreds of
thousands of people in the street against the whole Bush direction, giving a
reference point to people who want to stop all of this”it would have meant, for
one thing, not hundreds of people in the streets Thursday against the
escalation of the war, but many thousands.
But angry, frustrated, or confused, we are still
responsible to determine what should be done, and to lead people to do it. After October 5, we went through an intense period
of “active investigation” to understand what questions among the people we need
to answer. People had a lot of feed-back
and thinking and we”ve listened to it all, poured through hundreds of emails
and conversations from the meetings. A
draft of our work in progress is in your packets.
Today we have to hash out some of the main themes and
questions that came up, and work towards answering them together. We”ve
organized this conference to discuss 3 main topics: the war, impeachment, and
how to get a movement among the youth.
The goal for this weekend is a basic plan to remove the Bush regime from
office in 2007.
Here are the key questions among the people we need to speak to:
-
Very simply, last year, most people put their energies
into the November election. The
confines of how people see that politics work in this country are this: those
in government make the decisions, and we in the oppositional movements protest
in order to pressure them to change parts of such policies. Challenging “politics as usual” — those
killing confines set by the terms the Bush Regime and the leadership of the
Democrats – brings very fundamental things into question. Even understanding that the role of people
living in this country is to STOP the government from doing bad things is such
a basic, yet radical thing, that we have to keep repeating it.
-
The Bush regime is attempting to sell their program to the
people with a very heavy ideological push. Look at Bush’s speech Wednesday night: the
American people are now being asked for sacrifice, and told to brace ourselves
for more blood, in the name of spreading “democracy” and preserving “safety”,
calling it “the decisive ideological struggle of our time”.
All
the themes of the Christian fundamentalist, “personal responsibility” crusade
have been used to justify the horrors people are living through, from the
destruction in the wake of Katrina, to the deaths in Iraq, the swelling prison
population, to the message that women are, after all, just incubators. We have to help people see what’s real, and
what’s wrong.
-
The terms of the “war on terror” are in themselves terrible. In essence the “war on terror” is a war for
empire, a cover for a war to remake the world starting with the strategic area
of the Middle East. This has been cultivated in strategic
conception since long before 9-11, and deeply distorted how people living in
this country see the world.
A
newly elected Congress person is criticized for wanting to be sworn in on the
Koran – because he’s Muslim; racial profiling is completely standardized in
law, policy and culture against South Asians and Muslims; the lives of those
killed in Iraq
are so inconsequential as to be uncounted.
And there is a hard core of people, all through the US military and
the fascists who support Bush, who spread this poison. This is enforced from spokespeople of the
Bush regime, which has created a situation in the Middle East where the actions
of the U.S.
are widely hated and opposed.
-
The general situation on campuses is far too quiet. The right and people like Horowitz have far
too much initiative – silencing dissent and critical thought and if it
continues what we think of as academia will be a thing of the past. We can’t dream of a situation where the Bush
administration appears illegitimate to millions without a section of youth see
what is happening, rejecting the notion that “you can’t change anything”, and
coming into action this spring. A big
theme of our meeting this weekend is now to make driving out the Bush regime a
mission of the current generation of youth.
-
What came forth from some of the prominent people in
the last few months – and here, Sean Penn, for his statement on October 5, as
well as his incisive speech calling for impeachment last month should really be
noted – is important. Many more should
come out and do so. They should not be
the exceptions, but the trend. We know
that what we are able to getting this demand known and felt in society is
connected to having well known people speak it, and identify with it.
-
Many people speaking out most strongly right now, and a
growing section of our movement, are basing their arguments on what they see as
the founding principles of the country, and acting on the basis of “saving the
republic” from the fascist direction of the Bush program. We have to learn much more about how they see
history, why they think Bush must be stopped, and how this can be done, drawing
them into this vehicle to mobilize mass numbers of people. While some in World Can’t Wait think that
very “republic” is the source of imperialist domination of the world, and work
for a different society, we have much in common to unite on, and we should
do so while continuing to explore our differences, while bringing more and more
people into this movement.
Here is the urgency of this moment in January
2007″and the opening. Bush has a
dramatic, and risky plan to escalate and expand the war, not all of which he’s
revealed. As he was giving the speech,
US forces when into Kurdish territory, broke into an Iranian diplomatic
building, and seized files and people, in violation of the sovereignty of both Iran and the
Kurdish region – a clear provocation.
Bush is trying to pacify Baghdad
militarily, but the military commanders he fired say it can’t be held without a
political solution, of which he has none.
If he destroys the Shiite militia, he risks a wider war. If he doesn’t, he can never control the
country. The Maliki government is a weak
puppet; the Iraqi military is not loyal to the U.S”yet the plan is largely
based on them. And we should all be
aware of the threats from both the U.S.
and Israel against Iran, and the
potential for this going wildly out of control.
The Bush regime is trying to remake the world,
risking a lot to advance their mission of global empire, and this is turning
into a debacle for them. And it is
moving very fast. All the “talking heads” are saying Bush has only a few
months to make progress in Iraq. A few leading Republicans don’t even want to
be identified with the “surge” strategy.
The Times said Condi Rice was subjected to derision and devastating
criticism in the Senate. The Democrats are now talking about a “symbolic
resolution” against the war, and maybe, cutting off funds for it. The Democratic Party’s program is US control of the Middle
East, and they have no program to stop the war. Dick Durbin — even before the Republicans —
blamed the Iraqis for leaning on the US for help, saying it’s time they stood
up and fought for themselves, saying the Iraqis screwed up the war, as if the
U.S. invasion and occupation was not the problem to begin with. They say
the war has been poorly prosecuted. NO,
it was an unjust war to begin with.
There’s a challenge we have to make to all the people
who said we need a majority of Democrats in Congress first, or we can’t impeach
Bush, or end the war. “Now, the
Democrats have a majority and they are telling you to take impeachment off the
table and wait! You have to tell the
Democrats NO! There is no way a president who has committed war crimes and
crimes against humanity should be in office.
Now he’s pledged to commit more and worse – he is moving towards war
with Iran. A president who has no popularity and little
legitimacy should have none – and you won’t either if you don’t more to impeach
him and end the war.”
Last week, we raised the demand for impeachment and
an end to the war as Congress opened. A
few hundred of us got a lot of attention, giving the talking heads a reference
point, as they kept flashing to the protests, or alluding to them by asking,
“will this satisfy the people vote voted for the Democrats to end the
war?” Were the people who voted the
Democrats in to bring change going to settle for the Democrats not changing
things? I know everyone has seen Sunsara
Taylor standing her ground with Bill O”Reilly over whether we represent the
majority of the people. But did you see
the next segment with Dick Morris, the former Clinton operative who is now a
right-winger? When O”Reilly tried to
dismiss her again, as a lunatic, Morris said, no, they do represent a lot of
people. He said he thought we could get
2 million people in the streets of D.C.
This is a very fluid situation, and how it turns out
is not decided. But the missing element
is – again — the people. Nation-wide
political ferment and turmoil is just what is needed when your government is
doing what the Bush regime is doing, and no one at the top is stopping
them. Congress may have to jettison
George Bush and stop the war, but this will only happen through us setting the
terms that Bush must go on the basis of war crimes for an illegitimate,
pre-emptive war of aggression.
People didn’t look at themselves as determining
things. But – read the end of the World
Can’t Wait Call – what the people DO in this situation is decisive. Miracles are possible, overnight, led by a
group of determined opponents who have come to see there is no other way and
that mass action can bring about another direction when politics as
usual can not. There are people
who worked very hard on October 5, and have stepped away, thinking this is
impossible, just because it hasn’t happened, yet. But the students of history, the pundits, the
political operatives in the Bush regime-they don’t think it’s
impossible.
Let’s go back
to the Nixon example. He won in a
landslide in November 1972, and waved goodbye in disgrace in August 1974.
The U.S. war in Vietnam was going terribly. The military was
disintegrating. The whole of society was in political upheaval —
campuses were being shut down and taken over, soldiers were in political
rebellion, hundreds of thousands were out in the streets, the music of the time
pulsed with disaffection and dreams of a better world, revolution was on the
lips of many among the most oppressed — and millions more were on the verge of
losing their faith in the whole political system. Even then, the
Democrats were not pushing for impeachment until Nixon fired his own special
prosecutor. It was in the face of all
this that some Republicans changed their position and voted for impeachment,
that John Dean, a member of Nixon’s own cabinet, refused to lie for him, where
his subordinates refused to carry out Nixon’s orders.
Today all this
is being rewritten as if this was an unfortunate and painful period and the
pardon of Nixon by Gerald Ford is being upheld as a model for national unity
and healing. But Cindy Sheehan was
getting at something profound when she said at the WCW event last week that if
Ford hadn’t pardoned Nixon, and Nixon had been held accountable for his crimes,
then perhaps Bush wouldn’t have been so emboldened to believe he was above the
law and perhaps Casey Sheehan might never have died in Iraq.
We”ve had some critically important discussion within
World Can’t Wait about raising the demand for impeachment last week as Congress
opened. People were concerned that we
were abandoning the effort to mobilize the people to drive out the regime, and
throwing our lot in with the Democrats who might lead impeachment. This
internal debate helped to solidify what we think. Impeachment is encompassed as part of the
total mission of driving out the Bush regime, and could be the mechanism by
which Bush and others are removed from office.
But impeachment is not the totality of what we are pursuing, nor is
World Can’t Wait reducible to an “impeachment organization”.
The administration is very vulnerable to
investigations, and impeachment. Is
there one mechanism that, even worked very hard from inside of the whole logic
and way the business of congress works that can really stop this which can the
regime from office? Not without a huge
upsurge compelling them to do so! The
World Can’t Wait demand of impeachment of the Bush regime on the basis of war
crimes and crimes against humanity can move this situation forward immensely.
None of this is just a legal detail, much less an exaggeration.
We all need to be on a mission to get everyone in the
WCW office, on the Steering Committee – really everyone we talk to, to watch
the DVD of the Bush Crimes Commission hearing.
Become an expert on Bush’s crimes yourself, so you can tell others,
whatever your platform is. This is part
of the people setting the terms very widely in society. People should think “Bush=war criminal”,
conveying the totality of what the Bush regime represents v the interests of
the people.
We”re here to prepare for a very intense period,
wrangling with each other, and then with thousands, and millions of people,
over the morality of acting now, this year, to remove the Bush regime, and the
complicity we would all assume by not doing so.
Our mission is to hash out, this weekend what will it
take to Drive Bush from Office? What
elements might go into creating the kind of political situation our Call
describes? What are the key elements we can work on to bring this about? Based on that, what plans should we be making
for 2007 based on these first key goals of:
-
getting people out of the framework of pressuring the
Democrats
-
responding to the critical juncture of the escalation of the
war
-
putting youth and students on a mission to drive out the
regime
-
winning prominent people to step out
-
creating a culture of resistance
We have these key proposals for immediate concrete
action:
1. Very wide
distribution of our Call – before November 2, we got out over a
million. But still, not enough people
have seen it. Every time we”ve run this
Call as an ad, it’s resonated with wider sections including with people who
previously thought it was extreme or an exaggeration because the situation is
developing. What difference it would
make if in the situation of an incipient upsurge around the war, this Call was
setting terms, telling people what they need to know and giving them a vehicle
to act? This Call boldly speaks the
truth about where society is headed and what kind of struggle we are called
upon to wage to stop it. We need
numerical goals, and fresh thinking on how to do this.
2. In 5 weeks,
February 17-18 we propose to hold an Emergency Conference to Drive Out
the Bush Regime. The character of the
conference is something we”ll settle on this weekend. Everyone, hundreds or 1000, who wants to be
part of an historic assembly to make a plan to remove the Bush regime from
office this year, in 2007 would come together.
The World Cant” Wait, and the organizers in this room cannot do this
alone. There are thinkers, leaders,
activists of all kinds, academics, celebrities, lawyers, and a bunch of regular
people who want to make history who are waiting to hear what to do, and want to
be part of making such a plan. This
could build events to protest the 4th anniversary of the war in
March.
3. As a shaping element critical to our whole effort,
a movement on campuses to drive out the Bush regime. This cannot happen without the youth and
students fueling a sense in society that the regime is illegitimate, dangerous
and intolerable. We”ve identified that
students don’t know the direction, scope and trajectory of where the Bush
regime is going. The plan for 100
teach-ins has to really be united on this weekend, and specific and very
ambitious plans made for them.
In addition, we are announcing a “Mission of a
Generation” Speaking Tour to key campuses from January 22 to February
15. Sunsara Taylor and youth organizers
from around the country will be joined by Liam Madden, a founder of the
Peititon for Military Redress campaign.
4. Concerts and culture: Making the question
of driving out the regime reverberate everywhere in society means it has to get
into the culture.
There are other questions we will address. The January 27 march on Washington to stop
the war is hugely important. DRIVE OUT
THE BUSH REGIME must be seen everywhere there, and we must find 1000’s or
organizers who can immediately be organized to come to the Emergency conference
and begin politically acting right away.
A national mobilization, this time on the scale
possible and necessary, should be discussed and a proposal made for the
February Conference.
Before the Iraq war started, the Not in Our Name
Statement of Conscience was published in over 60 papers worldwide, and a second
one had a big impact just after Bush was elected in 2004:
“It is our responsibility to stop the Bush regime
from carrying out this disastrous course.
We believe history will judge us sharply should we fail to act
decisively.”
What we do MATTERS.