Hi. My 'to go' file has over a thousand emails I've saved and not sent, out of 5 times that many sent to me. Every aspect of war, economy, Bush, et al is examined from every angle and field, enough to fill the curriculum of a major university. I think that aside from the length, the horror and futility of our war on Iraq, the energies of people against the war haven't been actively and communily engaged. That is, as yet, no genuinely mass movement has emerged to capture the clear mood of the American people, so we think, write and hope.
I've not been engaged in direct organizing against this war, primarily because of discomfort with the top-down atmosphere and sense of a closed group and process, choosing instead to program and send these emails. That's just changed, as has the terrain. Even the elected rep's are shifting and can be moved along by mass pressure. I was invited to but missed the first meeting of the January 27th Coalition, but went to last Saturday's. People were serious and respectful and the process democratic. All the major demo organizations represented and many others. I was actually the only person there who wasn't a rep. I'd noted a significant absence of organizations of people of color in the first endorsers list and mentioned it, but people (and I) are working to improve that. People on the list who can help in that should email me. That's enough. Today's NY Times lead article, below, provides just the touch of comedic-tragic spark we need to kick off a new, hopeful era. Click on the Times website for the full monty, check out the Coalition's, save that date and pass this on to your own list, please. Ed http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/world/middleeast/15baghdad.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin US and Iraqis Wrangle over War Plans BAGHDAD, Jan. 14 - Just days after President Bush unveiled a new war plan calling for more than 20,000 additional American troops in Iraq, the heart of the effort - a major push to secure the capital - faces some of its fiercest resistance from the very people it depends on for success: Iraqi government officials. American military officials have spent days huddled in meetings with Iraqi officers in a race to turn blueprints drawn up in Washington into a plan that will work on the ground in Baghdad. With the first American and Iraqi units dedicated to the plan due to be in place within weeks, time is short for setting details of what American officers view as the decisive battle of the war. But the signs so far have unnerved some Americans working on the plan, who have described a web of problems - ranging from a contested chain of command to how to protect American troops deployed in some of Baghdad's most dangerous districts - that some fear could hobble the effort before it begins. First among the American concerns is a Shiite-led government that has been so dogmatic in its attitude that the Americans worry that they will be frustrated in their aim of cracking down equally on Shiite and Sunni extremists, a strategy President Bush has declared central to the plan. "We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually part of the problem," said an American military official in Baghdad involved in talks over the plan. "We are being played like a pawn." === January 27th Action Coalition [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://linuxbeach.net/jan27action/ Join Los Angeles March and Rally on Jan 27th to Send Message to Bush and Congress: Bring the Troops Home Now and Stop Funding the War Large Diverse Coalition of So-Cal Groups Organizing Event Who: January 27 Action Coalition (See below - list of endorsers from across So -Cal) What: Rally at Democratic Party Office (888 S. Figueroa St., LA, CA 90017) and March to Federal Building (300 N. Los Angeles, CA 90012) Where: Downtown Los Angeles When: NOON Saturday, January 27th (Timed to coincide with march in Washington, DC) Why: Troops Home Now! Stop Funding the War! Endorsers: Alliance for Democracy - San Fernando Valley · American Friends Service Committee · ANSWER-LA · Burbank Neighbors for Peace and Justice · CISPES · Coalition Against Militarism in the Schools · Coalition for World Peace · Codepink, L.A. · Committee of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism · Freedom Socialist Party · Glendale Education/Social Justice Advocates · Glendale Peace Vigil · Green Party of Orange County · Green Party of Riverside County · Healing Bear Medical Service · International Action Center · International Socialist Organization · LA County Green Party · LA Cuba Solidarity Coalition· Los Angeles Greens · LA LGBT Greens · LA-US Labor Against the War · Military Families Speak Out, Orange County · Montrose Peace Vigil · Office of the Americas · Out Against War: LGBT & Friends Coalition for Peace & Justice · Palisadians for Peace ·Political Poster Collective · Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles · Riverside Area Peace and Justice Action (RAPJA) · San Fernando Valley Greens · San Gabriel Valley Progressives · San Gabriel Valley Neighbors for Peace & Justice · Solidarity ·United Teachers Los Angeles · U.S. Citizens for A Safer Foreign Policy · Veterans for Peace-LA · West LA Democratic Club ·Whittier Area Peace and Justice Coalition · Women in Black - LA · World Can't Wait http://linuxbeach.net/jan27action/ is our central address. From it people can get the latest info on the rally & protest, endorse the action, download flyers and join the maillist (link coming soon). FLYER available at http://linuxbeach.net/jan27action/ ### >From Dr. King, a Reminder on Iraq By Colbert I. King Washington Post January 13, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/12/AR2007011201745_2.html Forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom the nation will honor on Monday, took to the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City at a meeting organized by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The date was April 4, 1967, one year before his assassination in Memphis. King said he was in New York because his conscience had left him no choice. In his speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," King declared: "That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam." King acknowledged the reluctance of some people to speak out on Vietnam -- the same hesitation some Americans may have today over voicing their concerns about Iraq. People, he explained, "do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war." But King concluded that too much was at stake. He and the other religious and lay leaders were moved by what the conflict in Vietnam was doing to the United States. Vietnam, King said, was consuming American troops and money like "some demonic, destructive suction tube" even as that war was laying waste to the Vietnamese people and to America's standing in the world. And on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in 2007? More than 3,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq, while 22,000 others have been wounded. Billions of dollars that could have been invested here at home have been spent there, a lot of it wasted, some of it stolen, plenty of it unaccounted for. And Iraqis in Baghdad, who cowered for decades under a brutal dictator, have been living in the midst of violence almost continuously since Saddam Hussein was deposed. "We are creating enemies faster than we can kill them" read a bumper sticker in Washington this week. Now enter George W. Bush -- the president who got America into this debacle through a series of misjudgments that would make Alfred E. Neuman look brilliant. This week Bush announced plans to plop down thousands of additional troops in the middle of a sectarian war and to shell out billions of additional dollars to pacify a war-weary Iraqi population that, truth be told, wants America gone. Why trust this administration? Contrary to what Bush and his allies said: · There were no weapons of mass destruction poised to strike America and her allies. · A quick defeat of Hussein did not lead to chocolates and flowers in the streets of Baghdad. · An American invasion did not produce a unified, nonsectarian and Western-oriented Iraq or spark a desire for U.S.-style governance throughout the Arab world. · De-Baathification and the imposition of a market economy at gunpoint did not usher in a period of tranquility or the flowering of capitalism. The Bush administration struck first because it had the power to strike and the arrogance to think, foolishly, that it could win and dominate the conquered on the cheap. King spoke in '67 about "the Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them." Witness the Bush team in Iraq. Today they have a bloodbath on their hands to show for their labors, and Iran is on the verge of getting an Iraqi neighbor beyond its wildest dreams. Yet even now, neoconservatives inside and outside of government are counseling Bush to remain in Iraq for years to prevent the Shiite-dominated regime from collapsing. They also are encouraging him to prepare for battle with Iran and Syria if those countries start meddling in Iraq -- as if they aren't now. With what exactly and for how long we are supposed to do battle with Tehran and Damascus, the militaristic neocon noncombatants in Washington don't say. But then again, they have a tolerance for risk and cost that exceeds that of those who actually do the fighting and dying. Forty years ago at Riverside Church, people of conscience declared that "a time comes when silence is betrayal." They went beyond using their voices and votes when they agreed to break their silence. They responded, as King had urged, by matching their words with actions. "We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest," King preached that day. Yes, this is a different time and a different world. Global terrorism is a sobering reality. And America is on the right side in that war. To not fight back is tantamount to indulging a death wish. But the first blow in Iraq, which was not a battleground for terrorism, was struck by Bush. He now, stubbornly and in the face of legitimate opposition, proposes to make matters worse. Remember King and the words: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." 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