Dear Friends,
As we move towards January 20, we are all
thinking about what we can do to speak out and act in resistance to
Trump. According to Forbes Magazine, Nov. 9, 2016, "President Trump
is likely to boost US military spending by $500 billion to $1 trillion."
We need a strong presence on January 20 to call for an end to all
warfare, including drone warfare.
The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance is planning
an action in DC for the Inauguration. Here are three ways to get
involved.
1 - Join us in DC on January 20 for our action. We
will be meeting at 10:00 am in the lower level food court at Union Station for
a final planning meeting.
Some of us will be risking arrest, but we need more who are
willing to join us in solidarity, holding signs and banners, handing out
literature, and joining us in witness.
We will have to keep things fluid that day and make
decisions as we move along, but the plan will be to process from Union Station
towards the Capitol with signs, banners, model drones, coffins, and leaflets to
distribute.
We will go as far as we can to then ask the Capitol Police
to deliver our petition to Donald Trump, and likely do a die-in.
If you are considering risking arrest or would like to talk
more about it, contact joyfirst5@gmail.com
2 - If you live in the DC area and can offer housing, please
contact joyfirst5@gmail.com
If you need housing, please contact joyfirst5@gmail.com. It is particularly
important for this action because hotels are filling up.
3 - Below is the petition we will be carrying on January
20. If you would like to sign your name to this petition, please contact
mobuszewski at verizon.net with your name,
city, and/or organizational affiliation and Max will add your name.
Please share this information widely
In peace and resistance,
Joy First
Dear President Trump:
We are
writing on behalf of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance as people
committed to nonviolent social change to urge you to renounce most of your boastful
campaign promises and instead to commit to a program which ends U.S.
militarism, income inequality and climate chaos. We presume some of your
acrimonious statements during the campaign –Mexicans are rapists, Muslims will
be banned and the U.S. military must be rebuilt—were just bombastic attempts to
garner votes and media attention. If you are to be the President of the
people of the United States, you must publicly and strongly repudiate these
statements of hatefulness towards others. As president, you must deal with so
many critical issues, but unfortunately your rhetoric and cabinet choices
suggest a future with death, destruction, racism, turmoil and unrest.
As members of peace and justice organizations opposed to our government’s
failed domestic and foreign policies, we are speaking on behalf of the poor and
those who suffer from a system which is designed to benefit a wealthy and
privileged elite. At home, our economic system has been a bust for most
everyone but the one percent. Overseas, U.S. warmongering has had a
devastating effect, most especially in the Middle East and Africa. For example,
the government is using militarized unmanned aerial vehicles (or drones) to
kill people, mostly civilians, in at least seven countries. The use of armed
drones is wrong on many levels: the illegality of assassinations, the violation
of international law and the Constitutional protection of due process, the lack
of Congressional approval and the disregard of sovereignty. Instead of
militarism, your administration should emphasize diplomacy and humanitarian
aid.
Disregard
of the scientific research for the causes of climate chaos is leading to the
destruction of the planet. According to the November 17, 2016 edition of
the Health and Environment News of the World Health Organization’s Department
of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health, this
was reported: "Ministers and senior officials responsible for health and
environment today committed to reducing the annual 12.6 million deaths caused
by environmental pollution. Gathering at the COP22 climate meeting in
Marrakech, over two dozen high level officials from both sectors signed up to
the Declaration for Health, Environment and Climate Change. The goal is to
reduce pollution-related deaths via a new global initiative to promote better
management of environmental and climate risks to health." We believe that
another way is possible and that there are alternatives to the life threatening
policies that our government has promoted and that have been so destructive to
the people of the world. Of course, your administration must be supportive of
the decisions reached at COP22.
NCNR
members have vigorously protested the belligerency of the Bush and the Obama
administrations. This belligerency is a tremendous waste of precious tax
dollars and other resources. Currently our government spends more than 50% of
the discretionary federal budget on militarism. This is one of the
leading causes of income instability.
Poverty is adversely affecting the quality of life for too many citizens.
The people are suffering from lack of food, health care, education, a living
wage, adequate housing, and the list goes on. It is unconscionable that
we have children in the United States going to bed hungry. Just a portion
of the bloated Pentagon budget redirected towards human needs could alleviate
this suffering.
Unending war and imperialism is damaging both our country and the world.
Within the last 14 years we have experienced how the United States has
responded to international crisis with violence. Our government has waged
wars in violation of international law with a failed Middle East policy that
leaves a whole region mired in violence and instability, launched an illegal
drone war, tortured and illegally detained individuals, and refused to get rid
of nuclear weapons capable of annihilation of all life on the planet.
You
have been elected president, as the people are seeking change. Previous
administrations have failed to listen to the people, but you now have the
chance to change course. These changes would only be a beginning, but
would provide a good start:
1. End
all drone warfare. It is illegal and immoral.
2. Establish
a living wage for all workers.
3.
Take a real and meaningful role in the abolition of all
nuclear weapons of all countries.
4.
Initiate and work for an international treaty for swift
verifiable action to reverse climate change. Listen to the scientific
community and not the fossil fuel industry.
We have not had access to the decision-making process like the oil lobby, the
financial and corporate sector, or the arms industry have had over the
decades. If people and groups such as ours had this same kind of access
we very well may not have rushed to war and occupation on false pretense,
tortured people, continued to operate the criminally complicit Western
Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, had the
devastating and destructive oil spills in addition to still considering a
pipeline through sacred grounds, or had civil unrest caused by society's
structural violence, unresolved racism, and failed economic policies.
A new approach to leadership is required to address the problems and crises we
all face. We have the audacity to petition you to give serious
consideration to the demands stated here. Failure to do so will cause so
many of us to nonviolently resist an administration bent on continuing policies
which will lead to more war, more inequality and ecocide.
In
peace,
Joy First, Malachy
Kilbride, Max Obuszewski and Janice Sevre-Duszynska
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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