Brooklyn Asks - "Which Way Afghanistan?"

Feb 9, 2010

A large crowd of Brooklyn residents filled the Park Slope United Methodist Church last night. It was one of the city's coldest winters in recent memory but that didn't stop people from turning out to discuss the escalating war in Afghanistan and its impact on the world, the country and, more immediately, on life in their own city and neighborhoods.

A large crowd of Brooklyn residents filled the sanctuary at the Park Slope United Methodist Church.

Initiated by the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats (CBID) and supported by Brooklyn For Peace along with a dozen or so of the borough's peace and justice organizations, the forum featured Congress member Jerrold Nadler and reporter Anand Gopal who had been embedded with the Taliban and had dispatched many reports from that beleaguered country.

The flyer for the meeting.

The meeting was opened by CBID chair, Lucy Koteen, who welcomed people and described the work of her organization, which is one of Brooklyn's most active Democratic reform clubs with a long history of progressive activism. She then turned the meeting over to Brooklyn For Peace's Vice Chair, Rusti Eisenberg, who introduced the two speakers. Eisenberg is one of the founders of Brooklyn For Peace and a professor of history at Hofstra University.

CBID Chair, Lucy Koteen, opens the Afghan forum meeting. Seated, left to right, Rusti Eisenberg, journalist, Anand Gopal, Congress member Jerrold Nadler.

BFP Chair, Rusti Eisenberg, introduces the speakers.

Representative Nadler read the statement he had made to Congress in opposing President Obama's announcement of escalation and took to task the notion that our country should use massive military occupation of foreign lands in order to deal with what even the CIA has said is "a hundred or so Al Queyda" remaining in Afghanistan. He deplored the fabulous expense of dependence on military solutions which, he said, is wreaking havoc on our ability to solve the huge problems we confront at home. In the long run, he pointed out, using military occupation of countries produces the opposite of what we hope to accomplish since it inspires hatred of the U.S. and helps to fill the ranks of extremist organizations aimed at doing harm to the United States.

Nadler -- these endless, expensive military adventures make it impossible to solve pressing problems at home.

As if to prove Nadler's point, the next speaker, journalist Anand Gopal, related an experience he reported on when he was embedded with the Taliban as a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. He had interviewed a young, teenage Afghan boy imprisoned for an attempted suicide bombing. The boy's experience, as related by Gopal, horrified the audience and was symbolic of the problems resulting from the massive U.S. military presence in Afghanistan ---

Walking home one day, the young man witnessed a crowd in front of his house or what used to be his house. It had been reduced to rubble from a U.S. bomb attack. Sifting through the rubble for a trace of his family of sixteen (all sixteen innocents had perished in the attack) he came across the severed head of his mother.

This propelled the young man into a traumatized, almost catatonic state, and for days he wandered the town aimlessly, clutching his mother's head in his arms. No one could persuade him to let loose of the head and permit it to be buried. Finally, a village elder convinced him to relent and to take up arms with the insurgents in order to avenge his horrific loss.

The young man was thus thrust into the arms of the Taliban -- he was recruited to the bombing attempt only to land up in a Afghan government dungeon.

This tale, which Gopal said is not uncommon, dramatically brought home the counter-productive results of the U.S. war. While the administration says its war is fighting terrorism and terrorists to make American safer, the horrific civilian casualties (the drone attacks that are glorified by the Pentagon are said to have a civilian-to-terrorist kill ration of 55 to 1!) are actually driving Innocent victims into the hands of the Taliban and other extremists and thereby making us more endangered.

Gopal - Massive U.S. military action in Afghanistan only serves to build hatred of America and fill the ranks of the terrorists.

A dramatic high point of the evening was the presence of large numbers of guests from Brooklyn's South Asian community. Bobby Khan, activist and director of the Coney Island Avenue Project spoke, and while attacking the extremist elements in the Taliban, he also opposed the war for the misery and devastation it is bringing to the people of Afghanistan. U.S. bombs dropped from pilotless planes will not solve the problems of the Afghan people he said and said it is the Pakistani authorities and intelligence agents who are largely to blame for the spread of the Taliban's insurgency. He introduced one guest who had lost his young son to the Taliban's murderous attacks.

Bobby Khan (left) of the Coney Island Avenue Project brought guests from Brooklyn's South Asian community.

Guests from Brooklyn's South Asian community.

After the speakers, Lucy Koteen turned the meeting over to questions from the audience. Nadler, in answer to one question, made a passionate defense of civil liberties which, he said, are very endangered by the war atmosphere. Throughout American history, he said, whenver there has been war, civil liberties has been brushed aside and he said the same thing is happening today. A leading Democrat, he nevertheless decried the current administration's continuation of some of the more onerous authoritarian practices inherited from the Bush regime and said the Bill of Rights could well become a "dead letter" unless Americans stand up to defend it right now.

Doug Biviano, a candidate for City Council in Brooklyn's 33rd district in the last election, asks Congress member Nadler a question.

As the meeting adjourned, both Koteen and Eisenberg said that discussion is good but not enough. Right now, they said, it's only action and pressure from the grass roots that can save the day and end the war. Esienberg asked people to involve themselves in the peace movement, to join protests against the war and to continue pressure on Congress which will soon be asked for even more money to continue that war. Only that can help bring a quick end to the war in Afghanistan she said.

To get active visit the Brooklyn For Peace Website. or write to info@brooklynpeace.org

Patterson Annointed Gillibrand ... But Now We Have A Real Choice - Jonathan Tasini!

Jonathan Tasini for U.S. Senate in 2010.
Click photo for a larger view.

Sep 28, 2009

We had an interesting gathering at our house last Tuesday night. Some 22 folks gathered for a fundraiser and meet and greet. The object of our interest was Jonathan Tasini, an advocate for labor's rights, single-payer health care (aka Medicare for all), gender equality and peace in the Middle East. Tasini, you might remember, challenged a hawkish Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary when she ran for U.S. Senate from New York. He was the only one to call her on her unbending support for Bush's war on Iraq. It wasn't until she ran for President that she began to read the handwriting on the wall and shifted her position - still never apologizing (as many other Senators finally did) for her initial vote giving Bush permission to launch that hideous aggression against an innocent people. She was quoted then that voting for the war was one of the hardest decisions of her political career. But I wrote back to Clinton because I believed she had it backwards --

"Quite frankly, it was probably the easiest because you cast principle and honesty aside in favor of opportunism and cheap politics. It’s difficult to stand on principle in the face of pressure from the opposition. It’s easy to cave in to that pressure from the media and the warmongers."

Interestingly, in the debate taking place now inside the Obama administration over expanding our latest endless war (in Afghanistan) Clinton, true to her self, is reportedly on the side favoring escalation. Some people never learn. But back to Jonathan Tasini.

Brooklyn folks turn out for a fundraiser at our house last Tuesday.
Click photo for a larger view.

When voters increasingly started to understand the true nature of the Bush regime they began to punish the Republican party by defeating long-standing incumbents in Congress. This was the 2006 election and that vote presaged the coming victory of Barack Obama and a Democratic majority in Congress two years later. Kirsten Gillibrand was one of those candidates, elected in 2006 in upstate New York's 20th congressional district. She was propelled into office, defeating right-wing Republican incumbent John Sweeney, a veteran of four terms in the House. on what had become a broad wave of disgust with the Bush policies, even among many Republican and increasing popular opposition to the war in Iraq as well as anger stemming from a deteriorating economy.

But despite her victory over right-winger Sweeney, Gillibrand is no liberal --

• The daughter of a politically connected father, a lobbyist with strong ties to powerful Republicans, she was a member of the blue dog coalition of conservative Democratas during her tenure in the House. (Yes, those are the same bloc of right-wind Dems who, along with Republicans, are preventing the American people from obtaining real health care reform).
• A strong supporter of gun-rights, she has the backing of the gun lobby and received a 100% rating from the National Rifle Association.
• In the late 90's, working as an attorney for the firm of at Davis Polk and Wardwell, she represented Phillip Morris and was involved in major litigation battles brought against the tobacco industry in civil lawsuits and by FBI probes of criminal activity. She has accepted contributions from that pernicious industry, money that many Democrats refuse.
• On immigration issues, Gillibrand has had a distinctly conservative position, opposing the granting of amnesty to undocumented immigrants and supporting English as the official language of the United States.

For all these reasons and more, many New Yorkers expressed anger, shock and dismay when Governor Patterson, himself an unelected official, appointed Gillibrand to fill Hillary Clinton's vacated Senate seat. They believed she was decidedly not representative of mainstream values throughout the state. Patterson has become increasingly unpopular with New York's voters not only for his appointment of Gillibrand but also for other conservative leanings: when faced with huge state deficits, he posited that a fair tax program - that is, letting the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes - would not be on his agenda. He would opt, instead, for a Republican style program of cutbacks and layoffs.

The election for U.S. Senator is in 2010 and the pressure is on, led by New York's other Senator, Charles Schumer (aka "the senator from Wall Street" for his close ties to the banking and financial industry), to continue with the coronation of Gillibrand by the state's ruling elite. One by one, Democrats who thought about challenging the appointment with a primary run in 2010 have dropped by the wayside. Jonathan Tasini, not part of that party apparatus, is the exception. A dyed-in-the-wool progressive, Tasini comes out of the labor movement and takes strong positions in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act which would finally level the playing field for workers trying to organize against the wishes of multi-national corporations with unlimited deep pockets to fight unionization.

He calls for democracy to be realized, not merely in platitudes, but in the very real world around us, particularly in the economy where it's "time for the people to make the rules." Tasini says "We’ve let corporations set the rules for too long-—and they’ve been helped by politicians, in both major political parties, who put special interests ahead of the interests of Main Street" and working people.

In the Middle East, an issue that has politicians tripping over each other in their eagerness to express fealty to Israel without regard for right or wrong, Tasini stands almost alone, and unequivocally "supports the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip, consequently ending Israeli occupation of these areas because such a solution is the only way to ensure Israeli security. The current situation in Gaza is intolerable and unconscionable" he states. With a nod to justice for all who inhabit the region, Muslims, Jews and Christians, he says, "The final peace settlement has to accommodate Israel’s security requirements but it also has to ensure a viable, thriving, independent Palestinian State which has territorial contiguity and is not broken into cantons."

And so on. On every issue of concern to progressives, I believe you will find Tasini to be a candidate worthy of support with strong principled and progressive positions. He'll make a great United States Senator and he will inject issues into next year's campaign that must be raised but that won't be raised in his absence.

Can he win? Tasini says he can! And, after hearing him speak, I believe it. But at the very least he'll give Gillibrand a damned good fight to the finish and speak out on the issues we want discussed. The only obstacle will be, as always, money. Which is why we had folks over last week and raised over a thousand dollars for Jonathan's campaign. We'll need thousands of dollars more to guarantee the people of New York state are given an opportunity to vote next year for a candidate who truly represents their best interests and not those of the corporations that have wreaked such terrible damage to our economy, our state, our country and our world.

You can check out Jonathan Tasini's website where you can learn more about the man and his positions and where you can make a generous contribution. These are terrible times but they are also times of great promise and potential for progressive change. The Tasini campaign for U.S. senate is about making that promise come true.

Go to www.jonathantasini.com for more information or to contribute. Thanks.

The End Of America Comes To Flatbush

Some 60 Brooklynites filed into the cavernous auditorium of P.S. 139 in Flatbush to see an important new film, The End Of America. The film paints a detailed and chilling picture of the Bush gang's assault on our constitutional rights and liberties.

The story of the film showing in Brooklyn is a tale in and of itself. In the planning for the event the NYC Department of Education (DOE) refused to issue a permit citing the "controversial" nature of the film. (One may well ask what is controversial about our Constitution and the protections it offers our citizens.) However, a request for help, made to the NYCLU's Legal Director, Arthur Eisenberg, resulted in a quick retreat by the DOE and the permit was issued.

The film showing was initiated by a new group that is establishing itself in the Flatbush neighborhoods surrounding Cortelyou Road and Coney Island Avenue: Flatbush For Peace. Co-sponsors included a representation of the diverse neighborhood: the Council Of People's Organizations (COPO), which serves the South Asian community and the Haitian Enlightenment Literacy Project (HELP) as well as Brooklyn's large and active peace organization, Brooklyn For Peace.

Sam Koprak, active in organizing Flatbush For Peace, introduced the film. The End Of America claims that under Bush our country was headed for dictatorship and draws strong parallels with Nazi Germany by documenting the ten steps that have been used by authoritarian regimes throughout history to erode and eventually destroy civil liberties.

In the film, Wolf examines each of these ten steps, One comes away with a realization that democracy and human rights are frail things indeed and when methodically abused can quickly disappear. This is particularly true when you have a citizenry that is purposely kept uninformed and uneducated (think Fox News, CNN, the networks, our schools, etc.) about the history, the significance and the life and death struggles that ensued to win independence from the British monarchy and that forged our constitution and its enshrining of human rights and liberties.

Sam Koprak, of the newly-formed Flatbush For Peace, convenes the meeting at PS 139.

The ten points, documented in the film, are --

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create a prison system outside the rule of law.
3. Set up an internal surveillance system.
4. Develop a thug caste.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Equate dissent with treason.
10.Suspend the rule of law.

Within each of these points, Wolf discusses the similarities between events that transpired in Nazi Germany and elsewhere with what Bush and Cheney were conniving at here. Thus is her book and the film an urgent wake-up call to those who cherish and would maintain our hard-fought civil liberties.

Naomi Wolf - ten easy steps to fascism.

Naomi Wolf taking questions after the film showing.

After the film, the author was joined by Arthur Eisenberg, Legal Director of the NYCLU, (who, as I mentioned earlier was instrumental in persuading the DOE to issue its permit for use of the school), to field questions from the audience. Eisenberg gave an informative history of the use of repression in our country during the Civil War and Word War I and then discussed the case of Jose Padilla. Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was declared an enemy combatant by Bush who cited his powers as Commander In Chief. This was a drastic departure from an established American legal precedent called the Milligan decision which decreed civilian supremacy over military authority. By using the Commander In Chief title to justify his action stripping citizen Padilla of his constitutional rights, Eisenberg said, Bush was declaring that his military authority allowed him to be above the law, thus setting a very dangerous precedent.

Arthur Eisenberg, Legal Director of the NYCLU, gave a chilling description of the government's abuse of U.S. citizen, José Padilla.

The meeting ended after 9:00 pm and we came away with a new appreciation of the dangers that had been brought to our country by eight long years of Bush's contempt for democracy and the rule of law. There was, I thought, a new determination to ensure that these actions be rolled back and a further awareness that unless those responsible for the heinous crimes committed, such as torture, kidnapping and wiretapping, be brought to justice. How else would we be able to prevent them from being enacted all over again in the future? Some in the present administration have asked us "not to look backward but to concentrate on the future." To which we must answer that we cannot go forward in peace and freedom without learning from and dealing with the past. After the Nazi crimes of the 30's and 40's, U.S. policy and indeed, all of human kind, decreed that those responsible for crimes against humanity must be brought to justice and punished. Why have we abandoned that outlook now?

Naomi Wolf's book is available for purchase here.
Naomi Wolf's website can be visted here.
And the film on DVD can be purchased here.

Naomi Wolf's book - The End Of America.

To see a SLIDE SHOW of all my photos from last night's event click here.

Or for a PHOTO GALLERY instead, click here.

Five Years of War in Iraq And New Yorkers Say Enough!

Mar 22, 2008

Thousands marched today in New York City and in many hundreds of locations across this land. These are the true patriots of our land - the ones who refuse to be silent in the face of the atrocity that is the brutal occupation of Iraq.

In this historic election year, when the fate of our country and the entire world hangs in the balance, we must not and cannot be silent. Up against a rigidly controlled corporate media that keeps the real and hideously ugly truth of this war from the American people, we must redouble our efforts to raise the issue of the war and its connection to the failing economy. The war and its effects must be the central and overarching question of this election. We must thrust it to the center stage of this election year.

As a people and as a nation we cannot move forward until this war has ended. Questions of health care, education, the environment, loss of homes and jobs cannot be solved as long as trillions of dollars are diverted to Iraq and Afghanistan (and, perhaps, Iran?)and as long as spending for arms and the bloated Pentagon budget are allowed to suffocate expenditures for human needs.

Even though two-thirds of the American people are opposed to the war and 70 percent believe the war has hurt the economy, the opinion of U.S. citizens matters not to King George and the power behind his throne, Dick Cheney. Like two swaggering bullies, they brag that their wars are bringing democracy to the world. But when asked recently, on ABC TV, abut the majority of Americans who are opposed to the war, Cheney snapped back arrogantly: "So?"

"CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.

ABC-TV's RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

With five years of war as the backdrop and under the banner of United For Peace and Justice, New Yorkers lined 14th Street with a human chain, linking arms and holding signs aloft demanding peace and a change in national priorites. The streets echoed with chants of "peace now" and "money for schools, not for war" as the marchers headed inwards from both ends of 14th Street for Union Square where a brief and solemn commemoration of those who have fallen victim to the Bush war and occupaton was held.

Thousands of New Yorkers lined 14th Street demanding an end to the war.

Brooklyn For Peace was well represented.

The two folks flew in from London and joined us on 14th Street.

We reached Union Square along with thousands of others.

This sign said it all.

Not one more death. Not one more dollar.

Speakers urged the assembly to follow up today's demonstration with a pledge to reach out to new people in their communities and broaden the peace movement. A larger peace movement could force Congress to cut the funding and finally end this brual war. To which I say -- Amen!

People want peace!

Brooklyn Said NO To War Last Night

Mar 20, 2008

We've learned how to deal with the weather - ignore it! And that's just what hundreds of Brooklynites did last night as they joined together for a march and vigil to protest the 5-year nightmare of George Bush's war and occupation of Iraq. Beginning at Grand Army Plaza with a press conference attended by CBS, NBC, NY1 and others, speakers, including Brooklyn For Peace's Diane Lent, LIU Student Government President, Ty. Christian Joseph, Deanna Bitetti representing Congressmember Yvette Clarke and Vern Bergelin of MoveOn.org-Brooklyn, took on George Bush's demand that the U.S. must remain in Iraq.

Then the hundreds marched up Flatbush Avenue to the U.S. Army recruiting station. Motorists honked in solidarity and flashed the V-sign as the peace marchers trekked through Brooklyn's rain-soaked streets. They chanted demands for slashing the war budget and transferring those monies to fund urgent human needs instead. A drummer and trumpet led the procession.

Arriving at Flatbush Avenue and Livingston Street, the marchers were greeted by rousing speeches including that of Reverend Clinton Miller of the Brown Memorial Baptist Church who led the crowd in repeated cries of "peace now." Then the marchers broke into small circles of 10 or 12 and, holding candles aloft, they read, one at a time, stories from Iraqi veterans and their families.

The stories told of the hardships endured by soldiers who have been sent back to Iraq again and again; of the stress caused to the families by the return of wounded sons or husbands or even worse, the horror of having lost loved ones to a war based on lies. Mothers and wives demanded a shift in priorities - to end spending for war, death and destruction and to begin funding the urgent needs here at home: for health care, education, jobs training and to take care of an increasingly endangered environment.

Here's a sample of one of the stories -- Mary in Kentucky. Her husband is a Sergeant in the army, currently deployed in Iraq.

"For the second time, my husband is serving a 15 month tour in Iraq. I am now - for all intents and purposes - a single mom to four little kids, ages 7, 5, 4 and 2.

They need their dad in their life. The oldest has been most adversely affected by these repeat deployments. He's big enough now to know that Dad could end up dead.

The emotionall and physical stress of being the spouse of a deployed soldier is more than just "hard work." It's intense and traumatic.

Even if my husband comes out of Iraq physically unscathed, as a medic he has seen things that will leave him emotionally scarred. I worry not only about his physical health but his mental health every waking hour.

Instead of spending billions in Iraq we should invest in education, veteran's benefits and health care."

This was a moving and dramatic outpouring of anger at Congress and the Bush Administration, who prattle on about democracy but then ignore the overwhelming sentiment of the people they were elected to serve. Seventy percent of Americans are opposed to the war but after five years of this disaster there is still no end in sight. Four thousand lives and trillions of dollars later, we're neck deep in the big muddy and the big fool says to push on (as Pete Seeger wrote about another war - Vietnam - many years ago).

Click the PLAY button
to hear Pete Seeger sing Wait Deep In The Big Muddy


Saturday is the citywide culmination of the week of protests against five years too many. Please come out with family and friends to show the world that NYC says NO to war! Details at Five Years Too Many. The human chain, along Manhattan's 14th Street from river to river begins at noon on Saturday, March 22nd. Brooklynites will gather at 10th Avenue and 14th Street. See you there. Deanna Bitetti, speaking on behalf of Congressmember Yvette Clarke, decried the expenditures on war and told how it leaves her district without the funds urgently neeeded by her constituents.

Vern Bergelin of MoveOn.org-Brooklyn, speaks to the press. The cooperation of MoveOn and Brooklyn For Peace played a large part in bringing out hundreds of Brooklyn residents and set a good precedent for future work together.

Diane Lent, co-chair of Brooklyn For Peace's Iraq Committee, reads a statement to the press.

Christian Joseph, President of the LIU Student Government, reads his statement.

Brooklyn's El Puente turned out in force and lent a youthful, exuberant spirit to the march and vigil.

Brooklyn For Peace led the march up Flatbush Avenue .

Marching up Flatbush in the rain - motorists honked and flashed the V-sign. Shopkeepers and strollers waved in support.

The rain could not dampen the high spirits of Brooklynites marching for peace.

A vigil was held at march's end, across from the U.S. Army Recruiting Station. Reverend Clinton Miller of the Brown Memorial Baptist Church gave an impassioned speech denouncing the war and the impact it has on Brooklyn's communities.

Listening to speeches at the vigil.

Holding a candle aloft for peace in Iraq.

Reading the stories of Iraqi vets and their families.

Reading the stories.

This march and vigil marks the beginning of a new, revitalized peace movement in Brooklyn. Bringing together a diverse collection of organizations and individuals, Brooklyn For Peace is making a unique contribution in reaching out and helping to build what can be a new coalition for progressive change in the borough.

Bay Ridge Tells Vito Fossella - Stop Supporting This War!

Mar 19, 2008

There are six members of Congress from Brooklyn. Five of six voted against the last Supplemental spending bill for Iraq. The Supplemental is a separate bill that President Bush annually sends to Congress to fund the occupation in Iraq. He then pressures Congress (and too easily do they cave in) to give him the money or else be accused of undermining his war and the soldiers he has sent there to fight it.

The one member of Congress to obediently and blindly follow Bush is the notorious war-hawk and right wing Congressman from Bay Ridge and Staten Island, Vito Fossella. But opposition is growing to Fossella among his constituents. As he ignores their problems while voting for war and tax cuts for the rich, people are demanding to know why.

In 2004, labor champion, former NY State Assemblyman and Supreme Court judge, Frank Barbaro gave Fossella a run for his money, garnering 41% of the vote. Frank's campaign was grossly underfunded compared to the well-heeled Fossella but nevertheless, came close to unseating him in what used to be a district taken for granted as a Republican fiefdom. The next time around, Steve Harrison, another progressive Democrat, challenged Fossella and won 43% of the vote. Harrison's campaign was also underfunded compared to the money lavished on Fossella by his wealthy corporate supporters. Harrison is running again this year and is already attracting wide support throughout Brooklyn, Staten Island and New York.

For Fossella, the handwriting is on the wall. Five years of war and five years of Fossella support for the war may spell the end of his Congressional reign.

It was with this in mind that dozens of anti-war protestors marched outside Fossella's Brooklyn office in Bay Ridge today. Joined by members of El Puente, the community and youth leadership group, Bay Ridge and Staten Island constituents picketed Fossella's office and rocked the neighborhood with chants like -

"Hey Fossela, can't you hear? Health care! Not warfare!"

The demonstration was part of this week's commemoration of Five Years of War...Five Years Too Many! In thousands of communities around the country, citizen patriots are demonstrating their love for this country and their opposition to five more years of war.

Diane and Jane of Brooklyn For Peace protest Vito Fossella's pro-war policies.

The protest was called by Bay Ridge Peace Action.

Young people from El Puente helped fill the picket line. Beautiful!

Hey Vito -- get the message?

Vicki McFadyen of Military Families For Peace, addresses the crowd.

The next protest is tonight at 6pm in Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza. Brooklyn Says No to the War, called by Brooklyn For Peace, will march to the U.S. Army Recruiting Station at Flatbush Avenue and Livinsgston Street. Join them - rain or shine!

Then, this Saturday, a citywide action. Thousands will join hands and form a human chain from river to river along Manhattan's 14th Street. That starts at noon on Saturday, March 22nd. More information at FIVE YEARS TOO MANY. See you there.....Matt

Five Awful Years Too Many

Mar 19, 2008

Here we are --

Five years of war and occupation.

Four thousand American lives taken. Tens of thousands of our soldiers terribly wounded.

A country flattened - utterly destroyed.

A million of that country's citizens ... dead. Four million of them refugees - homeless.

Our democracy and constitutional rights in tatters.

Our standard of living; our economy - poised on the edge of a cliff.

According to the Pew Research firm: in November, 28 percent of news stories were about the war. Today - just 3 percent! It's the war that has disappeared from the front pages of our papers and the screens of our televisions.

The endlessly chattering experts on our op ed pages and TV screens have now pronounced "the economy" as the new problem. It has replaced the war, we are told, as the main concern of Americans. "The surge is working," is repeated over and over and Republican candidate John McBush says "I told you so."

But it's not just the economy, is it? No, it's the WAR economy!

It's not just a recession. It's the WAR recession!

Is that so difficult for the so-called experts to comprehend? Somehow they just can't find a connection between spending a half-trillion dollars for war in Iraq and the huge, gaping hole in our economy that it has produced.

The media and their well-paid talking heads, complicit in selling this war-based-on-lies in the first place will never connect the two: the war and the economy, in the second place. Not now. Not ever. That will be up to us.

A week after Bush rejected the charge that the war has damaged the economy, Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard economist, Linda Bilmes published a new book that exposed the President and his gang for the house-wreckers that they are. Their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, The True Cost of the Iraq War, concludes that the true cost, so far, has been a breathtaking three trillion dollars!

Sixty-seven percent of the American people want the war to end now and feel it was a huge mistake. This, despite the surge and the propagandist spin to make it seem the success that it's not. This, despite the prattle that would have us forget the war or detach it from the very serious problems that are piling up at home: jobs disappearing, homes being lost to shady mortgages, lack of affordable health care for tens of millions of Americans, an environment that is in a state of toxic shock.

There's a big job to be done on this the fifth anniversary of Bush's war and occupation of Iraq. Nobody will raise the question of the war and the need to end it now - nobody except us: the peace movement, the activists, those who can see clearly the source of the problems hovering over our country and the world.

So this week, in thousands of communities across our country, thousands of us have been out in the streets, talking to people, handing out fliers, taking a moral and patriotic stand by sitting in and getting arrested, demonstrating and marching. Our mantra -- Five Years of War...Five Years Too Many!

In one of the most amazing actions of this run-up to the fifth anniversary, veterans of the Iraq war held Winter Soldier hearings in Maryland on the 40th anniversary of the My Lai massacre. In gut wrenching and terrifying testimony, these veterans gave eyewitness indictments of atrocities committed by US troops during the ongoing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers spoke of free-fire zones, the shootings and beatings of innocent civilians, racism at the highest levels of the military, sexual harassment and assault within the military, and the torturing of prisoners. It is something you must watch and share with others.


Flier from Brooklyn For Peace distributed and posted in Brooklyn neighborhoods. Click on the image above for a pdf file you can print and distribute or forward to friends.

Here, in Brooklyn, we've been preparing for this week's actions against the war. Last night, at a big beautiful book store/performance space in Brooklyn's DUMBO, dubbed the Powerhouse Arena. activists and others gathered to hear speakers from peace, veterans and military families organizations.


The Brooklyn For Peace table at Powerhouse Arena yesterday.
Many other organizations were represented.


An Iraqi veteran addresses the crowd in DUMBO.


Code Pink and the War Resistors League were there.


Leslie Kielson of UFPJ prepares her speech.


A dramatic exhibition on the real cost of war: soldier's boots representing the 175 soldiers from New York state lost to Bush's lies.

After the Speak Out at Powerhouse we walked up the block to St. Anne's Warehouse. This was the scene of a fundraiser for United for Peace and Justice. Musicians and dancers put on a fabulous concert filled with powerful performances against the war. Emceed by author/activist Laura Flanders and TV star Richard Belzer, the performers included Lou Reed, Damien Rice, Nora Jones, Bill T. Jones, David Byrne and Laurie Anderson. Over a thousand New Yorkers packed in to this DUMBO space on Water Street and responded to the artists' pleas to turn up the heat for peace.


Lou Reed and his band crank out a jarring and bitter version of the Star Spangled Banner.


Nora Jones sang sweetly and softly ... about elections.


In perhaps the most stirring performance of the night, Bill T. Jones, sang the old Irish anti-war folk song, Mrs. McGrath, and then interpreted the pain and agony of war through dance.


David Byrne performed, backed up by Nora Jones and Damien Rice (at right)

And finally, performance artist Laurie Anderson sang her devastating composition, "Only An Expert." You can listen to it on You Tube, (click below). In it she brilliantly takes on the spinmeisters and propagandists of government and media who sugar coat the ghastly violence of this nation's war machine.


Laurie Anderson ... she blew me away!


Listen to the song that Laurie Anderson performed: "It Takes An Expert."

Being out on my neighborhood's streets, I see that people are demoralized. After all, the war has continued for five years. This, despite the overwhelming opposition to it - here at home and around the world. "Protest doesn't accomplish anything so why bother?" But, even if it doesn't succeed in ending the war (and I firmly believe that, in the end, it will be the pressure of the American people that will still hand or the war makers) we must not be silent. Martin Luther King uttered these words many years ago:

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

This Saturday, March 22nd at noon, New Yorkers will form a human chain from river to river along Manhattan's 14th Street to protest five years of Bush's horrible war. Thinking of Martin's words, we should all be there. Click here for details of Saturday's action.