What's Next for the Peace Movement: The Launch of the Bring the Troops Home Now! Committees

October 25th Report Backs; What's Next for the Peace Movement: The Launch of the Bring the Troops Home Now! Committees

posted: November 9, 2003

Dear VoteNoWar Member,

There are now two colliding realities. On the ground in Iraq there is a mounting number of causalities at an alarming rate -- for both US soldiers and Iraqis. The administration has been forced to announce that 43,000 more reservists and national guard troops are being called up and that they will be deployed to Iraq for a year long tour of duty (New York Times, 11/6/03), in addition to another 42,000 active duty servicemembers (“85,000 GIs Told They’re Heading to Iraq,” AP, 11/6/03). Rather than heeding the call to end the occupation, the administration is actually threatening to expand the conflict to other countries in the region, particularly Syria and Iran. This is the reality of endless war and occupation.

The other reality showed its growing power on October 25. October 25th was a day of optimism. A day of hope. And as the media speculated, it was a rude political awakening for a White House that is becoming increasingly reviled by the people of this country. Thousands of VoteNoWar members joined the demonstration, others couldn't attend but made generous donations to show their support for this historic undertaking. The feedback in the past week indicated that this mass action has given a big shot in the arm to those organizing to end the Bush administration's criminal foreign and domestic policies.

100,000 people marched through the streets of Washington, D.C. on October 25th in the largest anti-war protest since George W. Bush's May 1 speech on the U.S.S. Lincoln aircraft carrier where he proclaimed "Mission Accomplished." The demonstration continued to grow throughout the day, reaching its peak only around 2:30 p.m., when the last busses arrived in the area of the Washington Monument grounds. By the time the front of the march reached the Justice Department the last demonstrators were only leaving the assembly area. The march stretched more than 20 city blocks filling them curb to curb including Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington's eight lane boulevard.

More than 500 newspapers and media outlets ran articles about the demonstration. The three-hour long rally was broadcast live on C-Span and re-broadcast several times since. CNN ran the story about the demonstration for nearly 24 hours. The White House was peppered by the media about the political significance of the re-emergence of the peace movement and was even compelled to issue a feeble official response to the appearance of 100,000 demonstrators surrounding the White House to demand Bring the Troops Home.

It is particularly noteworthy that so many military families and veterans joined the October 25th demonstration. Many active duty soldiers were also participants. That is a true barometer of how the soldiers and their loved ones are reacting as they learn with each passing day that the war and occupation are entirely premised on lies and deceit. It is also a good measure of the politically troubled waters that Bush and company are sailing into as the criminal war and occupation is rapidly evolving from quagmire to outright debacle. Soldiers are willing to endure great hardship and sacrifice. But the thought of killing or being killed for a lie, or in the case of this war many lies, is leading a growing number of military personnel and their families to become the most vocal critics of Iraq war. They want to come home now.

More than 145 cities participated in organizing transportation, bringing busses and car caravans to the demonstration. Interestingly the largest number of people came from medium and small cities. A sister action in San Francisco drew 20,000 people into the streets. There were also demonstrations in many local areas throughout the US on October. Similar demonstrations on October 25 took place in 40 other countries around the world.

The protest on October 25 focused on the Iraq occupation but it had another central focus. Coming as it did on the second anniversary of the passage of the so-called Patriot Act, the protestors exposed Bush and Ashcroft's full scale assault on civil rights and civil liberties. After the march went past the White House the streets filled up around the Justice Department in what was the largest mass mobilization in opposition to the Patriot Act to date.

- - - What's Next for the Anti-War Movement: Bring the Troops Home Now! Committees Forming

The next initiative for the antiwar movement was launched on October 25th with the announcement of the Bring the Troops Home Now! campaign.

Please help launch this new campaign in everyway that you can. Form a Bring the Troops Home Now! Committee in your town or school - in the coming days we will be providing a coordinating calendar on the VoteNoWar website so that interested people can get in touch with each other locally, as well as action kits for new committees. We need your help to make this vision a powerful reality - your financial contributions help us continue this important work. Please visit http://www.VoteNoWar.org and use our secure server to donate online, or to get address information to send a check.

The goal is to form local Bring the Troop Home Now! committees in hundreds of cities, college campuses, high schools, unions, and religious institutions. This is an exercise in classic grassroots democracy and it will help to continue the dramatic re-shaping of the political climate. Around the country, local Bring the Troops Home Now Committees are already meeting and heading out into their communities.

By engaging the broader population with the Bring the Troops Home petition, by collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures, by confronting all elected officials and candidates with the simple demand that the occupation be brought to end -- this grassroots movement will become an irresistible force impacting the political scene in a way similar to that of the peace movement during the Vietnam war.

We will continue to demonstrate, rally and intervene everywhere, but the Bring the Troops Home Referendum, available at the VoteNoWar.org site, is a simple method of engaging in a country-wide dialogue with people in their communities, workplaces and schools. Millions of people are at the beginning of their own political process. They have become convinced that Bush lied and that thousands died. They are frustrated and angry with a government that is transferring the social wealth of society from programs that meet human need in order to finance a ghoulish vision of endless war, a vision which benefits only the corporations that make super-profits from the production of ever more lethal weapons. And an ever-growing number of people are fearful that cherished rights are being ripped to shreds under the banner of national security.

We have an opportunity, a challenge and an obligation to reach out to this growing section of the population and help bring them into the movement for peace, social justice and civil liberties.

Sincerely,

All of Us at VoteNoWar.org