National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance Members Will Protest the Trump Agenda at the Inauguration

National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance Members Will Protest the Trump Agenda at the Inauguration

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 18, 2017
Contacts: Max Obuszewski 727-543-3227 or mobuszewski at verizon.net; Joy First 608 239-4327 or joyfirst5 at gmail.com; or Malachy Kilbride 301-283-7627 or malachykilbride at yahoo.com

WHO:  Members of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance [NCNR] have long been protesting U.S. war-making, including killer drone strikes, income inequality and climate chaos.  NCNR citizen activists have been arrested at the White House, in the halls of Congress, at the Pentagon, the Supreme Court, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency.  For example, on January 12, 2016 NCNR activists marched to the U.S. Capitol, and representatives asked a Capitol Police officer to deliver to the office of the vice-president a petition calling on President Obama to give a Real State of the Union that evening.  However, the police representative refused to accept the petition, and thirteen citizen activists were arrested on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and charged with “incommoding and obstructing.”

WHAT:   More recently, NCNR decided to engage in a protest at the Inauguration.  It was recognized that whoever won the election would probably continue the policies of the past, and thus militarism, income inequality and climate chaos would persist.  While Donald Trump surprisingly won the election, his cabinet selections are an indication that injustice would surely get worse.  

It was decided to gather signatures on a petition to President Trump urging him to understand our concerns and to change course and policy.  This petition/leaflet will be distributed in Washington, D.C. during the Inauguration as part of a protest.  The idea will be to find a sympathetic police officer who would be willing to get the petition to the president.  NCNR realized some time ago that those in charge—presidents, members of Congress and executives in government agencies--do not respond to our letters. 

  As part of the protest, it is imagined that NCNR members will engage in a die-in simulating all of the innocents killed by drone strikes authorized by Presidents Bush and Obama.  And it is expected that President Trump will continue to use killer drones to assassinate those on the Kill List, those who unfortunately happened to be in the area of the strike and those who were mistakenly targeted.  The protest will be timed to occur just as the crowds are leaving when the Inauguration concludes.

WHEN and WHERE: Meet on January 20, 2017 at 10 AM in the Union Station food court, lower level, 50 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, D.C. 20002. The protest will take place just as the Inauguration concludes.

WHY:  Members of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance are so concerned that they feel obligated to petition President Donald Trump for a redress of grievances--income inequality, climate chaos, racism, militarism and the effects of killer drone strikes.  This was written in the petition:

  “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.”

Our government is involved in war-making in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Libya without any authorization from Congress. Where are the diplomatic solutions?  What about severely cutting the military budget and then using the money for rebuilding our decrepit infrastructure?  Killer drone strikes have even targeted U.S. citizens.  Where is the debate about the morality and constitutionality of this assassination program?  Why are there more terrorists today than when Obama entered the White House? The list of NCNR grievances is endless.

    This was pointed out in the petition:

  “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.”

  Finally, this is the concluding paragraph in the petition: 

“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.”

“One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better" - Daniel Berrigan