From: Lessons of the January 18 Mobilization
By Elias A. Rashmawi
January 28, 2003
Elias A. Rashmawi is vice president of the International Campaign Against US War on Iraq that was established in Cairo in December 2002 and Member of the national steering committee of International A.N.S.W.E.R. He is with the Free Palestine Alliance - USA.
The war speech of George W. Bush tonight makes it abundantly clear that halting the march to war is a must. This is a task that falls squarely on the shoulders of the people of the US. In this context, January 18, 2003, will be recorded in history as a paradigm-making event of significant ramifications for the US peace movement. It was a defining day for political discourse, and a reverberating global rejection of imperial domination and militarism. The makers of that day recognized that the final triumph of peace starts with small gains of justice.
The challenge is now the very task of maintaining the march ahead while building a fully united movement during the difficult days to come. The world has its eyes on the US, and we must be equal to the task as we have demonstrated so far.
After all, despite systematic and multi-faceted attempts to destroy the rapidly expanding opposition to war, global hegemony, and renewed programs of direct colonialism, the National Mall in Washington, DC, busted at the seams as no less than half a million people from across all backgrounds gathered to give birth to a new day in US history -- to the frustration of Bush and company, by far the largest pre-war rally ever.
Simultaneously, in a bi-coastal choreographed movement organized by the International A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition, an unprecedented two hundred thousands also marched in San Francisco, California, as many hundreds of thousands others heeded the A.N.S.W.E.R call and took to the streets of countless cities around the world swelling in unison into millions globally.
January 18 showed that the call to peace should in fact be a call for justice and not simply for the absence of war.
Click on the below link to read "Lessons of the January 18 Mobilization" in full: http://www.internationalanswer.org/news/update/j18lessons.html
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