SAN FRANCISCO
Anti-war teach-in: All out for June 5
By Nancy
Mitchell
and Brenda Sandberg
San Francisco
Eight hundred people packed the Mission High School
Auditorium on May 22 for an anti-war teach-in, the largest yet
in the Bay Area. The teach-in, organized by the Emergency
Mobilization to Stop the War, included a diverse and
multinational group of speakers.
The program featured the International Action Center's
Ramsey Clark and Gloria La Riva, who had just returned from
their second fact-finding trip to Yugoslavia. By the end of the
afternoon, the teach-in became an organizers' meeting as a
flood of people took outreach and education materials to build
for mass anti-war rallies in Washington and San Francisco on
June 5. Hundreds of organizers' packets, posters, buttons,
pamphlets, "NATO in the Balkans" books, and 15,000 flyers were
distributed.
In an opening talk, Richard Becker emphasized that the
present moment is critical for organizers. "We're at a
crossroads in this war. You can see that there's one side in
the U.S. and NATO that wants to come to a negotiated
settlement--a negotiated victory. And another side that feels
this is unacceptable.... This disagreement makes our
opportunity to intervene in order to stop the war even
stronger. Our work here can send a message to people all over
the world and give them heart." He urged every person in the
audience to leave the meeting as an organizer.
IAC videographer Gloria La Riva gave a solemn and moving
account of what she and Clark had seen in Yugoslavia during
their latest trip. She screened video footage to be used in the
upcoming documentary, "NATO's Targets." The raw footage
included emotional interviews with victims of cluster bombs, in
contrast to the U.S. mainstream media's clean and tidy war
propaganda relayed from the Pentagon.
"Only a fraction of what is happening is shown in the media
here," said La Riva. "The U.S. media is feeding people a diet
of fascistic ideas--one of them being that only U.S. propaganda
is valid, that even Yugoslav media workers are a legitimate
target."
La Riva described photos and evidence from NATO's bombing of
the television station in Belgrade. "There was a picture of
media workers hanging from the rafters. But all we saw here was
Pentagon spokes person Ken Bacon saying they had finally
knocked out Serbia's propaganda machine."
Local radio journalist Dennis Bernstein from Berkeley's KPFA
introduced Ramsey Clark. Bernstein was greeted with a standing
ovation, showing the crowd's solidarity with KPFA workers who
are currently in a major battle with parent Pacifica over
community control of the station.
"I don't want to be a stenographer for the Pentagon!"
Bernstein declared. "NATO says it's not attacking civilians.
They've bombed buses, schools, trains, bridges, nurseries,
hotels, libraries, embassies, prisons, children in their beds.
Are they attacking civilians, yes or no? You bet they are."
Not the first criminal U.S. war
Ramsey Clark, setting the war in the context of a long
history of U.S. foreign policy, challenged any claims that this
could be a humanitarian war. He cited U.S. crimes against
humanity in Turkey, Chile, Iran, Vietnam, Guatemala,
Afghanistan, Eastern Europe, the Sudan and Iraq. He explained
that the Rambouillet "agreement" was really a declaration of
war.
"We gave them an ultimatum: `You'll be occupied by our
troops or you'll be bombed.' No people occupied by a foreign
military force are free. And then we started bombing. Same
pattern as done in Iraq in January and February of 1991.
Designed to destroy facilities necessary for human life, to
drive them down to serfdom. There could be no question that the
targets were civilian. In violation of international law, and
as a war crime, we are deliberately targeting civilian life,"
said the former U.S. attorney general.
Shani Rifati, from the Voice of the Roma in Kosovo,
admonished the U.S. media for claiming that Kosovo was 90
percent ethnic Albanian. "There are 24 ethnic groups from the
former Yugoslavia that don't get coverage." He noted that of
the 2 million in prison in the U.S., a majority are African
American and Latino. "Why doesn't the U.S. address the
oppression of ethnic minorities in this country?" he asked.
Statement from Chinese Consul
Introducing a statement from the Consul General of the
People's Republic of China, IAC activist Stephanie Chin said,
"I heard someone on the radio say that China was using the
bombing [of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade] as an excuse to
deflect attention from human rights abuses." She said she was
shocked at this hypocrisy. "The U.S. is one of the most
egregious abusers of human rights. The May 8th bombing of the
embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a gross
encroachment of China's sovereignty."
The Chinese Consul's statement concluded: "The precondition
for solving the Kosovo crisis is that NATO must immediately
stop the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan activist Alicia Jrapko, who
read Cuba's statement against the war, said, "One voice has
stood out loud and clear against the bombing and that's been
the Cuban government and the Cuban people. Who knows more about
being portrayed as tyrants and villains than Cuba?"
She appealed to those in the Cuba solidarity movement who
may be confused about the war: "If we don't believe the lies of
our government about Cuba, why should we believe they are
telling the truth when it comes to Kosovo and the Serbian
people?"
Joseph Wanzala, an IAC activist from Uganda, gave the
audience a perspective on the relationship between U.S.
intervention in Africa and the war against Yugoslavia. He drew
connections between the bloody counter-insurgencies across
Latin America and Africa and the Pentagon's hand in Eastern
Europe by chanting the words from a revolutionary Nigerian
song, "Sorrow, Tears and Blood": "Everybody run run run,
Everybody's gotta gotta..., Someone's lost their leg! Someone
nearly died! Someone just died! Police they come. Army they
come! Confusion everywhere!
"These words," said Wanzala, "could be describing the Latin
Amer ican death squads ... or the U.S. Marines."
Lyerka Stimec, a Yugoslav American activist, pointed out the
bitter irony in the use of Tomahawk missiles and Apache
helicopters, "named after Native Americans who were subjected
to the brutal genocide of the U.S. government."
Tahnee Stair, a youth activist from Workers World Party,
gave a motivational pitch to get everyone in the audience
involved in organizing for June 5. She urged people to go to
their workplaces, schools, churches and hang-outs to get out
the word with leaflets and posters.
"We need to go everywhere. We need to go to all those people
in line for `Star Wars' and let them know there's a REAL war
and they need to get involved to stop it."
The Emergency Mobilization to Stop the War will be doing
mass outreach every day to build for the June 5 mass march,
including an action on the Golden Gate Bridge on May 29. To get
involved to stop the war and build for June 5, call (415)
821-6545.
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