A Response To The Agreement Between Bush And Congressional Leaders On A Joint Resolution For War
CONGRESS MAY RUBBER-STAMP BUSH'S WAR FOR OIL BUT THE PEOPLE HAVEN'T SPOKEN YET
Organizers of the October 26 March on Washington to Stop the War Before It Starts -- when hundreds of thousands of people will march in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and cities around the world -- condemned the war resolution agreed on Tuesday by members of Congress.
"The authors of this resolution have let down the people of this country, and the people of the world, with their apparent willingness to rubber-stamp President Bush's war on Iraq," said Larry Holmes, a spokesperson for the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. "President Bush's shameful press conference with Congressional leaders on the steps of the White House yesterday is profound evidence of just how much Congress is out of touch, or worse, hostile to the popular anti-war mood in country that is about to reach a fever pitch."
"There has never before been a war with such massive organized opposition taking place before it started," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice and a member of A.N.S.W.E.R.'S national steering committee. "Everywhere Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld go, they have been met with demonstrations and disruptions, a phenomenon that only began to occur at the height of the Vietnam War."
More than 100 organizing centers from all over the country are sending buses to the October 26 demonstration, with students arranging free bus transportation as a wave of anti-war organizing sweeps campuses nationally.
"Elected officials are reporting that phone calls against the war are running 300 to 1," Verheyden Hilliard said. "That anti-war sentiment is now crystallizing into mass action with demonstrations, protests and sit-ins."
"This much is certain," Holmes continued. "Congress doesn't speak for the people. It doesn't speak for the young people who will be sent to die for oil, and it doesn't speak for the working people who need their tax dollars to be spent on jobs, healthcare, education and social security, not war. The real public referendum is taking place now in the sit-ins; the October 6 demonstrations around the country; and ultimately in Washington D.C. on October 26, when a sea of humanity floods the streets of the capital to say 'Stop the war against Iraq before it starts!' That day you won't be able to charter a bus, or find an empty seat on any public transportation headed for Washington D.C. The little people who are a mighty ocean when they come together will speak with their presence and extraordinary numbers at the anti-war rally in Oct. 26th."
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 3, 2002
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