12 reasons to protest Bush's inauguration
From a statement issued by the International
Action Center:
On Jan. 20, thousands of people will march and rally to
protest at George W. Bush's inauguration in Washington and
San Francisco. We will be demonstrating against the incoming
Bush administration and its racist, sexist, anti-gay,
militaristic, anti-labor and pro-big business policies. Bush
claims to be a "compassionate conservative," but his real
"compassion" is reserved for the giant pharmaceutical, oil,
banking and other corporations.
We call for a profound social transformation, to a society
where people's needs come before profits, where every person
has the right to a good-paying job, decent housing, health
care, education, childcare and a clean environment.
We call for freedom for death-row activist, author and
prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, Native leader Leonard Peltier and
all political prisoners.
We cannot rely on the Democratic Party--Clinton led the
charge in demolishing social welfare programs, bombing
Yugoslavia and keeping the deadly sanctions against Iraq--or
on the corrupt corporate elections.
Only a mass people's movement can bring real change, as
has always been true. Jan. 20 can be an important step in
building this movement, one which links together workers,
students, people of all nationalities, women, lesbian, gay,
bi and trans people, immigrants, the disabled, seniors and
youths.
There are many reasons to join the Jan. 20
counter-inaugural protests.
Here are a few:
1 Bush will become president only due to massive racist
dis en franchise ment and voting fraud. Not only in
Florida, but across the country, African American votes were
disproportionately thrown out. Hundreds of thousands of
potential voters, especially in Black, Latino, Native
American and poor white communities, have been permanently
disenfranchised (forbidden to vote) for having been convicted
of a felony. In predominantly African American neighborhoods
from Atlanta to Chicago to Miami, outmoded technology and
intimidation led to votes being disqualified 20-25 times as
often as in adjoining white suburbs. Afraid to be accused of
rocking the boat, the pro-system Democratic Party leadership
refused to raise the issue of racism during the re-count
process.
2 Gov. Death is moving to Washington. As governor
of Texas, Bush presided over more executions--152--than took
place in the other 49 states combined during that time. The
death penalty is racist and anti-poor. It must be abolished.
Bush and his chief law enforcement official, Attorney
General-designate John Ashcroft, are rabidly
pro-execution.
3 We must mobilize now to defend women's right to
choose. The new Bush administration is anti-women and
anti-choice. Women's right to abortion and birth control was
won in the streets and it must be defended in the streets.
Bush and Ashcroft are both on record as favoring a
constitutional amendment banning women's right to choose.
Ashcroft is opposed to abortion even in cases of rape, incest
or where a woman's life is in danger.
4 We need funding for universal health care, free
education, afford able housing, heat and light, childcare and
union jobs, not for the Pentagon. In the richest economy
that has ever existed, the basic needs of the entire
population could easily be met. Instead of going to meet
human needs, how ever, hundreds of billions of dollars
annually are spent on destructive and wasteful militarism.
The U.S. already has a bigger military budget than the rest
of the United Nations Security Council combined.
Now Bush wants to vastly increase military spending,
including building the so-called "National Missile Defense
System." The NMDS is really an offen sive rather than
defensive system, and is an essential element in a
first-strike nuclear war strategy. The Pentagon, which has
spent a mind-boggling $4 trillion on nuclear weapons to date,
has always refused to renounce the first-strike use of
nuclear weapons. Both Bush and his new Secretary of Defense
(War) Donald Rumsfeld are ardent supporters of NMDS.
5 The genocidal sanctions on Iraq must end. In his
first speech as Secretary of State-design ate, Colin Powell
talked of "re-energizing the sanctions on Iraq." The
sanctions-blockade has already taken more than 1.5 million
Iraqi lives, half of them children under the age of 5.
Powell, Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, James Baker and
other George W. advisors launched the Gulf War 10 years ago
during the regime of George Bush I. Clinton carried on the
sanctions and bombing throughout his eight-year term, and now
the new Bush team wants to further step up the war against
Iraq.
6 Stop U.S. intervention in
Col om bia and all of Latin America. The incoming Bush
national security team wants to escalate U.S. intervention in
Colombia beyond even Clinton's Plan Colombia. And it's not
just Colombia--there is also the threat of wider inter
vention in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico and
Argentina, where people are rising up against the dom ination
of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and U.S.
corporate domination. We must act now to stop a new Vietnam
War in Latin America.
7 The incoming Bush admin is tration is filled with
vicious bigots who want to turn back the clock on gains won
by lesbian, gay, bi and trans people. Bush is allied with
the bigoted religious and non-religious extreme right who
want to deny equal rights to lesbian,gay, bi and transpeople
and force them back into the closet.
8 The 40-year war against Cuba must end. Bush, like
the nine presidents before him, wants to turn Cuba back into
a colony of the U.S. as it was before the 1959 revolution. It
is time to end the blockade and aggression against a small
neighboring country and let Cuba live in peace.
9 The Bush administration wants to speed up
environmental destruction for the sake of corporate
profits. Under Gov. Bush, Texas ranked 50th among states
in air quality and first in toxic polluters, toxic releases,
carcinogens in the air and 13 other polluting cate gor ies.
Bush put polluting industry repre sen tatives in charge of
the state's Natural Resources Conservation Council (Texas'
version of the EPA). Bush and his nominee for Interior
Secretary Gale Norton want to open the Arctic National
Wildlife Preserve to oil drilling, just a hint of what is to
come unless we mobilize now.
10 Support an independent home land for the Palestinian
people. The U.S. has given Israel hundreds of billions of
dollars in aid over the past 50 years, aid used to repress
the Palestin ians. The U.S. gov ernment and Israel are acting
as a team against the Pales tinians. There will be no peace
in the Middle East until there is justice for the Palestinian
people.
11 End U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico--U.S. Navy out
of Vieques! The Bush administration's plan for military
expansion includes keeping the island of Vieques as a bomb
ing range. Many Puerto Rican people have been killed or
injured, and the environment and economy of Vieques have
suffered much destruction. Now is the time to support the
Puerto Rican people in their struggle to get the Pentagon
out.
12 Shut down the prison-industrial complex! The
U.S. has 5 percent if the world's population and 25 percent
of the world's prison pop ulation. This amounts to over 2
million people, a majority of them African American, Native
and Latino. Prisons are all about brutal repression and
super-exploitation against the poor and people of color, not
rehabilitation.
The economic basis for all of this repression is profits.
Wall Street firms and banks invested an estimated $41 billion
into the expansion of private prisons last year. Prisoners
are forced to work for slave wages for high tech,
manufacturing and service companies. Under the Clinton/ Gore
administration, more prisons were built than universities.
The Bush administration plans to continue this trend. A
national movement must be built to shut down these
concentration camps. Our youths need union jobs and good
schools, not incarceration.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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