Chicago World Can't Wait Chapter | Septemeber 16, 2016

“Snowden,” Oliver Stone’s latest film opening this week, is about a young man’s journey of discovery and his courage in going where the evidence took him until, finally, he felt compelled to take action he would never have imagined, let alone considered, at that journey’s start. And Stone succeeds in showing and bringing alive what Snowden discovers, despite the fact that most of us might find the technology involved mind-numbing on its own.

We mourn the death of George Homanich last week in Binghamton, New York.  George and his wife Judy have protested many times at Hancock AFB, the Syracuse NY drone base.  They frequently made the trip to NYC to join protests to stop US wars, against killing by police, "stop & frisk," and for the rights of Palestians and many others.  He was arrested numerous times, and did some jail time, for protesting drones, Guantanamo, and the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning.

Michael Ratner, who died of cancer last week, had distinct responsibility for calling for, doing legal work to bring about, and organizing, the team of more than 600 attorneys who defended the prisoners at Guantanamo. No one else was doing that — and the government certainly did not expect anyone would.  It took winning a decision in the Supreme Court for the prisoners to get habeas corpus rights, and then winning it repeatedly. Thanks to the Center for Constitutional Rights, of which Michael was President and then President Emeritus.

Thanks to Sandy Davies for speaking with some of us last week on the matter of how many people have been killed by the U.S. wars in the Middle East since 2001. His sobering conclusion is that it's likely the U.S. initiated wars have killed 2 million people... a figure which shocks the conscience, but is unrecognized by those who launched and led the war of terror.

Labor Day weekend will mark ten years since our founding conference which launched World Can't Wait. Tens of thousands responded to our ambitious yet profoundly necessary call to action to drive out the Bush regime. In the years after Bush I was proud to be a leader of World Can't Wait, an organization that decided to stay in existence and take on the important challenge of exposing and acting on the understanding that crimes are crimes no matter who does them.

We know World Can't Wait supporters are vitally interested in the role of religion and changing the world.  You're invited:

Saturday, November 15
Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion.
A Dialogue between Cornel West & Bob Avakian, live and in person.
The Riverside Church
490 Riverside Drive New York City
3:00 – 7:00 pm Doors open 1:30 pm