I just got an e-mail from an old comrade and occasional ZNet commentator: "All out October 27 to end this fucking war. Please watch and distribute widely. http://youtube.com/watch?v=76lZC_o95gE."
Here’s a direct hyperlink of the video – it rocks.
Main Demo Site: http://www.oct27.org/
You know, people, there comes a time you have to ask yourself a rather critical question: which side are you really on at the end of the day? Are you willing to go beyond merely private alienation and personal opinion and fatalism and despair and academic reflection and cross on over into the realm of committed and collective public action against the combined and interrelated forces of Empire, Inequality, Racism, Sexism, Corporate Rule, the Military-Industrial-Academic-Media-and-Thought-Control-Complex and the many-headed Masters of Permanent War…or Not?
Are you willing to step out for peace and justice and to confront the mass murderous, hyper-putocratic war mongers or not? Will you stop waiting for false Saviors, electoral or otherwise, and take personal and collective repsonsbility now (not in 2008 or in 2012 or 2016) for ending the monstrous crimes being inflicted in your "American" name at home and abroad or… Not?
Will you reclaim and put the risk back in the democratic tradition or Not?
Are you sick enough yet of this "War President" and his many and bipartisan Enablers across the corporate-imperial power structure…are you finally once and for all sufficiently pissed off and enraged enough and shocked enough to step out of the private neoliberal shell and take some relatively mild (in the U.S. compared to other nations) risks and go public and march and resist and not give up until major victories are one for and by the people…or Not?
Are you ready to say, "that’s it, I’m just too sick of this shit…I’m going to do what it makes to make these bastards end this fucking criminal war…to make them understand that the costs of continuing it are greater than costs of ending it" or Not?
Will you fight back, or Not?
We need to fight back. You need to fight back.
Nobody’s going to fix this mess for us from on high: the people in power have their own very different agendas and we’ve got to do it ourselves.
No marching isn’t the revolution or even a major reform. Yes, we need to go beyond protest to resistance and yes we need to build and expand stronger long-haul institutions of resistance and couterveiling people’s power. Yes, the Iraq "war" (funny word for one-sided imperial aggression…a U.S-imposed Holocaust that has killed 1 million Iraqis and caused the exodus of 2-3 million) is just one part of a broader imperial syndrome. But marching, especially in large numbers, is damn important…it’s one part of how big change occurs. It’s a start. Things happen in good big marches, including seeing that you are NOT ALONE in your anger and alienation and idealism and hope and making connections with groups and people who want and need to fight back against the imperial and authoritarian peril that is stalking the land. And protest and resistance around distinct issues feeds into and models and inspires protest and resistance around bigger and bigger questions.
Sorry to sound like a high school football coach but my fellow Americans, really: its time to put up or shut up. We are running out of excuses for letting our "leaders" get away with what they are doing in our names.
Like my correspondent says: "All out October 27 to end this fucking war."
Main Demo Site: http://www.oct27.org/
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