{google}-6198627474954237543{/google}
Text of Speech:
In April,
the Supreme Court upheld what is dishonestly called the “Partial Birth
Abortion” ban. Bush was gleeful, saying, “The Supreme Court’s
decision is an affirmation of the progress we have made over the past six years
in protecting human dignity.”
But last
September, when he was pressing for the passage of the Military Commissions
Act, Bush lashed out at the Geneva Conventions ban on torture, saying,
“What does that mean, ‘outrages upon human dignity’?”
These
views from “Dubya” — where enforced motherhood is an advance for human dignity
but the idea that torture degrades human dignity is incomprehensible —
concentrate the Orwellian misuse of language of Bush’s and his fundamentalist
fascist agenda. Think about the kind of world that this regime is forging.
So, the
first point I want to make tonight: if the agenda that the Bush presidency has
ushered in is not repudiated and if the Bush regime is not driven out in
disgrace before their term is up, then the sweeping changes this administration
has begun will be legitimated and will continue — no matter who becomes the
next president.
Many of
you are here tonight because you thought the Democrats who took the majority in
November would change things. They could have, but they didn’t.
They
could have defunded the war, but instead they gave Bush $100 billion and said
he doesn’t have to notify Congress before attacking Iran. This is keeping with a long
record.
The
Democrats could have filibustered Alito or Roberts, but now we have abortion
rights dramatically undermined and worse to come. The Democrats could have
impeached Bush for illegal wiretapping, but instead they made the wiretapping
legal.
The
Democrats could looked up the chain of command and held Bush and Rumsfeld
accountable for crimes against humanity when the conscience of the world was
shocked by the torture at Abu Ghraib, but instead, they passed the Military
Commissions Act, making torture legal!
A lot of
times people get so excited to hear Bush criticized that they don’t actually
listen to what the Democrats are arguing. Now that the war is going terribly,
they say it is being poorly managed or a mistake. They don’t talk about how the
U.S.
occupation sparked a civil war by funding first one side, then another or how
this has unleashed waves of ethnic cleansing, filled the morgues with bodies
bearing signs of torture, or created the fastest growing refugee crises in the
world. Instead, they blame the Iraqis for the mess in their once modern and
secular country.
Listen:
Hillary:
“The American military has succeeded. It is the Iraqi government, which has
failed.”
Obama:
“Our troops have done what’s been asked of them, now it’s time for the Iraqis
to step up.”
Then
there is IRAN
— probably the biggest emergency facing us and the least understood.
In recent
weeks, Dick Cheney stood on an aircraft carrier off Iran’s
coast, threatening that the U.S.
would “prevent Iran
from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.” Three strike
groups with 2 aircraft carriers and 70 attack planes — sailed through the
Straits of Hormuz. Joe Lieberman warned, “We’ve got to be prepared to take
aggressive military action — to me that would include a strike over the border
into Iran.”
Much more
has — and is — being done to prepare for a possible war. The news reported
this week that in the debate between diplomacy and war, Cheney’s war position
is ascending – and there are reports of a show down by the fall. All this flows
from the core objectives of the Bush regime: to radically reshape the whole Middle East as part of creating an unchallenged and
unchallengeable global empire. Their difficulties in Iraq
and the region have only heightened the prospect of war with Iran.
Attacking
Iran
would not only cause massive destruction, its political fall-out would be
catastrophic. It would pour gasoline on the very negative global dynamic in
which U.S.
aggression fuels reactionary Islamic fundamentalism — which in turn is used by
the Bush regime to justify further aggression. The flames of this dynamic are
consuming the oxygen secular and progressive forces need to get a hearing and a
following and if it continues, nothing and no one on this planet will be
untouched.
Yet all
the “viable” democratic presidential candidates are on record saying
they would take no option, including nuclear weapons, off the table in dealing
with Iran.
Listen
again:
Hillary:
“In dealing with this threat — no option can be taken off the
table.”
Obama:
“We should take no option, including military action, off the table.”
Edwards:
“We need to keep all options on the table.”
Bush is
not over. He is still Commander in Chief. He is still a war time president and
he still has a plan for expanding this war.
In this
country there are too many people still hoping that they can wait things out
till 08, that somehow this nightmare will run its course. But what we got in 06
is what we”ll get in 08 if we don’t do something radically different. Again, I
say: if Bush is not driven from office, if his program is not repudiated,
before the end of his term then everything he has done — from the legalization
of torture, the ripping up of the rule of law, the spying and lying and
assaults on women and gays and science and critical thought, his betrayal of
Black people in New Orleans — all this will remain no matter who becomes the
next president. It’s on us to change this.
This
brings me to the second thing I’m here to tell you tonight: I know a lot of
people are frustrated and starting to sink deep into despair, but you can’t
give up — and not just because we have to keep on keeping on but because there
is a way to stop this — to bring this fascist remaking of society and endless
war to a halt.
The most
basic lessons of huge social changes are being erased. The 8 hour day, civil
rights, the right to abortion were not handed over by Congress, they were not
the result of lobbying. They were won because millions were in motion causing
society-wide upheaval — upheaval so great that no one could ignore it.
Everyone had to take a side, and the halls of power had to respond to the terms
being set from below. This is what caused members of Nixon’s own cabinet to
refuse to lie for him. This is what caused Civil Rights legislation that had
been stalled for years to get passed. And yes, the utter and outright revolt
among soldiers was critical to ending the Vietnam war. People didn’t ask
permission from Congress, they didn’t restrict themselves to what seemed
“realistic.” They told the truth and put everything on the line for
it.
Today,
the stakes are even higher. I am not going to stand here and tell you that
stopping this regime will be easy. It will take sacrifice and it can’t be all
safe and civil. But we can affect things — if we decide that’s what we are
going to do — and we already have in important ways, which are also being
erased.
The fact
that majority is against this war today has everything to do with the massive
protests before it began. These protests changed the way millions thought and
planted doubts among many more. And as the war deteriorates, this is impacting
how people respond — including the G.I.’s in Iraq today refusing illegal orders.
The
problem has never been that protest doesn’t make a difference — it’s that
there has not been nearly enough protest!
People
across the country, much less in Iraq, cannot see the bumper
stickers or the letters to you Congress. We have to be in the streets. This is
how the world will know we oppose what is being done in our name.
And it is
only if we are in the streets that resistance can spread — which it needs to
— onto the campuses and into the professional associations like the librarians
refusing to turn over records and psychologists who are refusing to go along
with torture. This resistance has to encompass resolutions to impeach by local
government, churches and unions. We need more whistle-blowers, like Daniel
Ellsberg who published the Pentagon Papers, and Taguba who is exposing Abu
Ghraib. We need more prominent people putting their reputations on the line,
signing the World Can’t Wait Call, and refusing to shut up even if it costs
their job like Rosie O’Donnell has done. And we need to defend people when they
come under attack — so they don’t lose their jobs and so more people have the
confidence to join in this movement. This resistance needs to respond in real
time to critical turning points — for one, an attack on Iran cannot go
down the way the troop surge did, with hardly any response. Our resistance has
to take hold in in the culture and music — forging a whole different ethos, a
defiant way to live, giving people the courage of their convictions. All this
has to become an alternative legitimate moral authority that changes the way
people look at and respond to everything the regime does and says.
So that
each new outrage, instead of demoralizing and paralyzing people, spurs many who
weren’t with us yesterday to join us today because they see others resisting.
And in
this, we need to open up getting into the big questions being thrown up about the
nature of the society we live in, where these dangers came from and what kind
of future is possible. This movement needs people, and I am glad there are here
tonight, who believe firmly in the principles upon which this country was
founded, who see the Bush Regime tearing up the Republic and want to restore
the Constitution.
And we
need people, like myself and others, who see that same Constitution as a
charter for a society based on exploitation whether it be outright slavery to
today’s wage slavery, as well as a charter for oppression since it counted
Black people as only 3/5th to today where the horrific and shameful
handling of Hurricane Katrina and the racial cleansing of New Orleans have laid
bare the living legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings and segregation. We need
this whole spectrum and more — coming together because we have to learn from
each other and because none of the futures we want to see are possible if we
don’t stop this regime.
Now, I
know this regime is powerful — it gives any sensible person pause. Cindy
Sheehan described feeling like we are up against impenetrable marble. But this
marble is full of fissures, it’s riddled with contradictions: a war that can
not be won, an empire hated by people the world over, women and gays who won’t
easily go back in a box, American’s who don’t believe their lives are worth
more than Iraqis, immigrants refusing to live like slaves in the shadows,
atheists writing best sellers, scientists and students fighting for evolution.
All this latent power has to be brought together and unleashed as an
independent political force aimed at driving out the regime. This can be done
if people here throw in.
A small
grouping of highly motivated people who direct their energies to mobilizing
others, can pry open cracks and differences in the halls of power. What is an
ignored scandal today can be the stuff of proceedings if people are in the
streets and everywhere else raising hell. Would young women feel ashamed about
having an abortion if the woman’s movement was calling another march on Washington? Would the
Ninth Ward of New Orleans still look like Baghdad
if thousands had peeled themselves away from their TV’s and taken over FEMA
offices? Would impeachment be off the table if a million people went to DC and
said we’re not leaving till you start the proceedings?
We are
not there yet but that’s where we have to get and we have to plan steps that
get us there. And you are in the right place tonight.
The
full-page New York Times ad WCW did on June 22 was part of seizing the
national stage, wielding the voices of conscience, and telling people the truth
about the turning point we are at in history. It is attracting those who
recognize the stakes and are ready to move. In meetings like this one tonight
we are gathering people across the country. On July 4th we’ll be fanning out
across the country at picnics and BBQ’s, getting out hundreds of thousands of
copies of the Call and putting the crimes of this regime and our responsibility
to stop them front and center. We are launching a “Declare Yourself”
campaign to bring to the surface the disgust that so many are holding on the
inside.
All
summer long, “Truth Squads” will confront the candidates about
torture and war crimes. And there are plans being developed for a Bush Crimes
Commission II — War Crimes Testimony from military resisters, experts,
whistle-blowers, and prominent people who together have the facts and the moral
authority to shifts terms in society.
And then,
yes — we will be planning for major mobilizations of protest and resistance in
the streets, manifesting powerful so we cannot be ignored, with the specific
aim of creating a political situation where this regime cannot remain in power.
In
thinking about how this is possible, I want to end with an analogy. Imagine
that me and a handful of you were playing basketball up against a team of NBA
all stars. What future we will get is riding on this game, but we’re falling
further and further behind, nearing the end of the third quarter. We can’t get
our hands on the ball, when we do we just get fouled, and the refs, we
discover, won’t ever call it.
We look
out at the stadium. There’s millions and millions of fans and we can see in
their faces that they are rooting for us, they want us to win, they don’t want
Bush’s future. But at the same time, their faces reveal that they are beginning
to give up hope.
We here
tonight have to decide we are no longer playing this game by these rules. This
game is not set up for us and we’re never going to win this way. We need to
look to the stadium, to those millions of fans and we have to struggle with
them and say, “Get your butt down here. Get on the floor. We’re going to
overwhelm the other team. We’re not playing by these rules anymore. Everybody out
of the stands, everybody up. No more passive observers.”
This is
going to be controversial — people came to watch a game, they didn’t come to
play a game. And maybe some of them who come down on the court will get dragged
off by security. But that’s how it goes in this country. People are trained
that you just watch politics go by and you hope your guy does something good —
and when you get out and resist they try to stop you. But this is what it is
going to take. And I don’t care if you are 14, or 40, or 94, everyone needs to
leave here tonight determined to pull people out of the stands. Do it like the
future depends on it, because it does.