Tell Obama “No You Can’t!”: Saturday, December 12th

Tell Obama “No You Can’t!”
http://www.enduswars.org/spreadtheword

Help us get the word out for the Dec. 12 rally against President Obama’s troop escalation plans for Afghanistan!

This is an emergency protest rally, to take place on Saturday, December 12, from 11 am to 4 pm in Lafayette Park (across from the White House) in Washington, DC. It’s being organized by the End US Wars coalition (http://www.enduswars.org). The speakers list includes Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, Sen. Mike Gravel, David Swanson, Rev. Graylan Hagler, and many others, and musicians will perform. Along with the rally on December 12, the film “Rethink Afghanistan” will be shown Friday, December 11, from 6 to 8 pm at Busboys & Poets, 14th & V Streets NW.

Because to the short amount of time between President Obama’s Afghanistan speech and the rally, we need lots of help getting the word out far and wide about the Dec. 12 rally. We need to do some ‘guerrilla media’ work to publicize the event and encourage people to attend — or if they can’t attend the rally, to speak out against the deployment of more US troops to Afghanistan.

Here’s what you can do:

• Notify friends, neighbors, family, and anyone else you know who might be outraged at the escalation plans. Send them the announcement appended below by e-mail, make phone calls, paste the announcement on your Facebook page.

• Post the announcement on e-mail discussion lists, community bulletin boards, and blog pages. If you read a news article online about the Afghanistan War, paste the announcement into the ‘comments’ section below the article text.

• Download and print the 2-per-page flyer, cut it in half, and pass it out: http://www.enduswars.org/Dec12Rally-2.pdf

• Make a phone call to a call-in radio talk show and tell listeners about the rally. Be sure to mention the web site: End US Wars dot org

• Write a letter to the editor about your opposition to the Afghanistan War and mention the rally.

There are lots more people who are outraged by the President’s escalation plans — people of every political stripe. Some people support Obama, but oppose his current policies.

Let’s reach them, tell them they aren’t alone, and encourage them to join us on December 12 when we send a message to President Obama to “do the right thing”!

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Tell President Obama “No You Can’t!” send more US troops to Afghanistan

Emergency Anti-War Rally at the White House against President Obama’s planned military escalation in Afghanistan
• When: Saturday, December 12, 11 am to 4 pm
• Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, across from the White House, near the Farragut West Metro Station
• Organized by End US Wars http://www.enduswars.org

Speakers for the rally will include Rep. Dennis Kucinich, former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, former Sen. Mike Gravel, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, author David Swanson, Rev. Graylan Hagler, Capt. Ron Fisher, Gael Murphy (CODEPINK), Debra Sweet (World Can’t Wait), Elaine Brower (Military Families Speak Out), Brian Becker (ANSWER), Mathis Chiroux (Iraq Veterans Against the War), among many other national peace leaders. Musicians Jordan Page, Head-Roc and others will perform. (Go to the website for current list of rally speakers.)

Join us in our demand that President Obama must announce an immediate ceasefire in Iraq and Afghanistan to end the wars and order our troops home. He must stop Predator drone attacks and covert operations in Pakistan, and he must begin immediate reconstruction and recovery in war torn regions.

If the President does not meet these demands, he will face intensified opposition, with anti-war candidates prepared to defeat his war policy politically.

Along with the rally on December 12, the film ‘Rethink Afghanistan’ will be shown Friday December 11, from 8 to 10 pm at Busboys & Poets, 14th and V Streets NW in Washington, DC.

More information: email contact at enduswars. org or visit http://www.enduswars.org
For press inquiries, phone: Laurie Dobson, Director, End US Wars (207)604.8988

No Escalation Protests across the U.S. last week

A small group of people braved the bitter cold in Salt Lake City, Utah on December 3, 2009 to protest the surge of troops to Afghanistan, joining 100 cities across the nation last week in the common message:  No Escalation!

Afghanistan: No Escalation! Vigil this Thursday, December 3!

Afghanistan: No Escalation!

Vigil, Thursday, December 3, 2009
5:30-6:30pm
125 South State Street, Salt Lake City, UT
Bring signs!

Rethinking Afghanistan: Sign the Petition

Sign the petition online

Community Coat Exchange attended by many in need

KSL TV coverage

More coverage

Father Roy Bourgeois and SOA Watch Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

Father Roy Bourgeois and SOA Watch Nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize

Father Roy Bourgeois, MM, and School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch) have been nominated for one of the most prestigious
awards in the world – the Nobel Peace Prize – for their sustained faithful nonviolent witness against the disappearances, torture, and
murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians (peasants, community and union organizers, clerics, missionaries, educators, and health
workers) by foreign military personnel trained by the U.S. military at U.S. taxpayer expense at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning,
Georgia.

The candidacy of Father Roy and SOA Watch for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize has been officially submitted to the Nobel Committee in Oslo,
Norway by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. The official announcement was made by AFSC
representative John Meyer on Sunday, November 22 at 9am at the gates of Fort Benning (home of the School of the Americas) during the annual
November vigil to close the SOA.

“We are deeply honored, and deeply humbled, to be nominated for this prize for peace,” commented Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran,
Purple Heart recipient and a Catholic priest, who helped found SOA Watch.  ”This nomination is a recognition of the work of the thousands struggling against militarism across the Americas.”

SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works through creative protest and resistance, legislative and grassroots media work
to stand in solidarity with the people of Latin America, to close the School of the Americas (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation) and to change oppressive U.S. foreign policy that institutions like the SOA/ WHINSEC represent.

This weekend, SOA Watch is gathering by the thousands at the gates of Ft. Benning to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the killings of
14-year-old Celia Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos, and the six Jesuit priests she worked with at the Central American University in San
Salvador in November 1989. Human rights defenders from Colombia and Bertha Oliva, founder of human rights organization COFADEH, Committee
of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras, which has been actively resisting the SOA graduate-led coup as part of the
resistance front.

Buy Nothing Day – November 27, 2009 – Recycle and Warm a Heart

There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less.

Buy Nothing Day is a long time project of Adbusters, a Canadian organization comprised of “artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entreprenuers” dedicated to “topple exisiting power structures and forge a major shift in the way we live in the 21st century”

Every year people around the globe engage in Buy Nothing Day, a day dedicated to alternatives to shopping,  in various ways (visit the site to see!).

Utah will host the 4th Annual Community Coat Exchange on Buy Nothing Day at the Salt Lake Downtown Library Plaza from 10am – 2pm.  The aim is to proivde a community service while educating people on reducing, reusing, recycling and consuming less.

So….on Friday, November 27, 2009:

If you need a coat, come get one.  If you have a coat, we know someone who can use it.

FIVE TORTURE PROTESTERS ARRESTED AT FORT HUACHUCA

 

More than 150 people rallied against torture on Sunday, November 15,
at Len Roberts Park in Sierra Vista, Arizona. After listening to
speakers and music, the group carried signs and candles remembering
the victims of torture in a one mile procession to the main gate of
Ft. Huachuca, home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center where
interrogators are trained.  Along the way, names of people killed as a
result of torture were called out, and the group responded with
³Presente!².  The procession stopped at the office of CACI, a private
military contractor implicated in the abuse of Iraqi detainees.

Soon after the protesters arrived at the gate, five people, including
two Roman Catholic priests, crossed the street and entered the base
with a message for military personnel and civilian employees.  They
carried a statement (below) opposing the cruel treatment and abuse of
detainees from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and calling for the
civilian oversight of all military interrogation practices.  The
statement also condemned the use of armed drones in warfare.

Gaza 2009: We Will Never Forget

PROTEST THE SIEGE OF GAZA!

Nationwide Emergency Actions

READ HERE