MOMENTUM BUILDS FOR WASHINGTON DC AND SAN FRANCISCO DEMONSTRATIONS

May 11, 1999

U.S. Political Prisoner and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal endorsed national demonstrations against the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in Washington DC and San Francisco. The demonstrations were called by the Emergency Mobilization to Stop the War, a newly formed coalition of hundreds of anti-war, civil rights, student and religious organizations and leaders.

Other endorsers include former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; Rev. Lucius Walker, the Exe. Dir. of IFCO/Pastors for Peace; Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt); author Leslie Feinberg; Yuri Kochiyama; Pam Africa of Int’l Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; United American Indians of New England; Manning Marable, Editor in Chief, Souls at Columbia; United Serbs of America; Bishop Thomas Gumbleton; Edith Villastrigo, the Leg. Dir. of Women Strike for Peace; International Action Center; John Dear, the Exec Dir. of Fellowship of Reconciliation; historian Howard Zinn; and Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom.

"Not only is the U.S./NATO bombing causing the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people throughout Yugoslavia, it steals money from social services right here at home. The war, its targets and the weapons used by the U.S. threaten environmental devastation throughout Europe," said Sara Flounders, Co-coordinator of the Emergency Mobilization to Stop the War.

Flounders continued, "Every missile, each aircraft, every bomb, all of the money that is spent for this war is money that might have been spent on jobs, education, healthcare and other urgent social needs.

"Mobilizing centers are being set up all over the country to organize people to get on the bus and come to the demonstrations. Thousands of people will come together to say, ‘Stop the Bombing of Yugoslavia. Money for jobs, healthcare and education—not war. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.’"

YUGOSLAVIA issued April 1999

As a deadly rain of high-tech bombs falls on Yugoslavia, a deadening rain of propaganda falls on Americans, media-manipulated lies designed to prime the populace into supporting harsher military measures against a sovereign nation, in the name of protecting human rights.

NATO is but a fig leaf for American "interests," and the bombing of Yugoslavia is but a global demonstration of the ruthlessness of the American empire. A demonstration? The monstrous atomic bombing of Japan, after it was virtually beaten in World War II, was not a military necessity, but a political one, designed to demonstrate to the Russians that the U.S. was, and would ever be, boss. It was a massive, deadly demonstration.

So too, the Yugoslavia bombing treats Serbs as the U.S. treated Japanese during the war—as props to demonstrate the power of the empire.

Let us consider the claims that the U.S. is concerned about "human rights" or about the "rights of ethnic minorities," as the corporate press projects hourly. What of America’s largest national minority—African Americans? The world-respected Amnesty International group, speaking through its secretary general, Pierre Sane, announced just days before the bombing, "Human-rights violations in the United States of America are persistent, widespread and appear to disproportionately affect people of racial or ethnic minority backgrounds."

Sane was critical of police violence and executions in the U.S. Further, internationally, let’s see how the U.S. responds to "liberation movements" of the oppressed. When fighters for Puerto Rican independence began to raise their voices, the U.S. didn’t support this "ethnic minority," they sought (and continue) to crush, incarcerate and silence them.

Consider the case of the Palestinians, the Kurds, the East Timorese, the Colombian rebels—who has the U.S. consistently supported, the oppressed or the U.S.-armed governments?

This isn’t about "human rights." It isn’t about "ethnic minorities." And it also isn’t about "genocide." It’s about establishing who’s "boss" in the next century. It’s about keeping Russia in its place. It’s about keeping the European Union under the thumb of Wall Street.

The bombing of Serbia is an echo of the bombing of three other countries in the past six months—of Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan. And for precisely the same reason—to show that it can be done, no matter what so-called "international law" states. It is to instill terror throughout the world, in order for U.S. capital to institute what former president George Bush tried to do, but failed: to establish a New World Order.

Days before the bombing, NATO signed up Poland, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) as its newest members, thereby virtually isolating Russia. Only Serbia and the Yugoslav states have refused to join NATO— their bombing is their punishment.

Our brilliant, revered nationalist leader, Malcolm X, taught us to examine history. If we look at history, the bombing of Yugoslavia becomes clear.

Empires are maintained, not by reason, but by ruthless terror. It was so in Rome. It is so in the U.S. The brilliant revolutionary, Dr. Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, explained, "The United States was no longer a nation. We called it an empire. An empire is a nation-state that has transformed itself into a power controlling all the world’s lands and people." (1973)

Huey was right then, and our response then was to oppose the empire. We must do that now.

Down with imperialism! Stop the bombing! NATO/U.S. out of Yugoslavia!

This statement may be used for publication. Please site source.

 Emergency Mobilization to Stop the War
39 West 14th Street, #206, New York, NY 10011
212-633-6646 fax: 212-633-2889
Email: iacenter@iacenter.org
Web Page: www.iacenter.org
For Immediate Release
Attention: Assignment Editor
Press Contacts: Brian Becker/Deirdre Sinnott
212-633-6646

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