Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Join NCNR at the Inauguration!

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 Magaizine, 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 deliver a letter 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 joyfirst55@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 letter/petition we will be attempting to deliver to Donald Trump on January 20.  If you would like to sign your name to this letter/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


Protesters hold signs during a protest against the election of President-elect Donald Trump in downtown Seattle, Wednesday, November 9, 2016. (photo: AP)
Protesters hold signs during a protest against the election of President-elect Donald Trump in downtown Seattle, Wednesday, November 9, 2016. (photo: AP)

Anti-Trump Organizers Plan Massive 'J20' Event to Mark Inauguration Day

By Joe Catron, MintPress News
27 December 16

Organizers of inauguration protests speak to MintPress News about Jan. 20 and the prospects for mobilization under the Trump administration.

  Thousands of protesters who have mobilized nationally since the election of Donald Trump are planning a massive convergence in Washington against the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.

   “We believe that we are entering a new period of mass mobilization in the United States,” Walter Smolarek, a spokesperson for the ANSWER Coalition, told MintPress News.

    ANSWER, which organized a number of major anti-war protests since its founding 15 years ago, is one of many groups mobilizing against the inauguration.

   “In some cities, attendance at mass meetings focused on mobilizing for the inauguration protest has been in the hundreds,” Smolarek said.

   Other groups planning inauguration protests range from anarchist collectives to networks of immigrants and women.

   Online organizers, including some associated with Occupy Wall Street, have also floated proposals for a nationwide general strike.

‘A shift in awareness, concern and fear’

   Organizers and observers expect events to swell with the thousands of demonstrators drawn into the streets since Nov. 8.

   After the election, a weekly meeting of one protest group in New York City, the People’s Power Assemblies, grew to over 200 participants.

   While the meeting’s one to two dozen regular participants normally fit comfortably around a conference table, newcomers the week after the election spilled out of a Midtown office, with some standing in a hallway to hear the discussion inside.

  Many spoke of their participation in the protests that have taken place almost daily since the election, some of them for the first time.

   The outpouring “indicate[s] a shift in awareness, concern, and fear,” Colin Ashley, a PPA organizer, told MintPress.

  “They indicate the possibility of a larger, more radical movement, aligned with more left policies.”

‘They feel betrayed’

   As new waves of protesters have joined gatherings across the country, their different perspectives have come into sharp contrast.

    The night after the election, tension erupted at a demonstration outside Manhattan’s Trump Tower, as some participants chanted slogans against the New York Police Department while others tried to discourage them.

   Stark differences between disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters and more radical Trump opponents persisted at demonstrations over the following weeks, and may even continue through the inauguration protests.

   “The protests have marginalized long-time activists and people of color,” Ashley said.
“These protesters speak a language of peace and love, often not realizing that they are telling the most oppressed that they should love their oppressors.”

   Others find cause for hope in the uneasy mix of ideas.

   “Many people are newly entering the movement and engaging in protest for the first time,” Smolarek said.

   “The more people stay engaged in the struggle and are welcomed and mentored by long-time activists, the more exposure they will have to radical ideas.”
And in the aftermath of stinging losses at every level, attempts by Democrats to steer reactions may produce few results.

    “There is an effort by Clinton supporters and the Democratic Party machine to keep the message safe,” Sara Flounders, co-coordinator of the International Action Center, which plans to protest on Jan. 20, told MintPress.

   “But people who believed in the current electoral system just days ago are changing. They feel betrayed.”

‘A very positive sign’

  Organizers agree that the massive outpouring of post-election opposition, the scale of which is unprecedented in U.S. history, bodes well for both protests on Jan. 20 and the prospects for grassroots mobilization during the Trump administration.

   The gatherings have dwarfed much smaller protests against the contested election of George W. Bush in 2000, while Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 saw little public opposition.

  “These actions are overwhelmingly composed of young people who are completely fed up with the injustice and bigotry that Trump represents,” Smolarek said.

   “Many have been organized spontaneously on very short notice. We consider this a very positive sign.”

   “People who have never been in the streets before suddenly feel compelled to act,” Flounders said.

   “They hated both choices. The election campaign exposed the corruption and decay of all political institutions in the U.S.”

   The inauguration is only the beginning of what promises to be a tumultuous administration.

  “We have tentatively started to plan a nationwide 100 days of action that would start with ‘J20,’” Ashley said.

   “Pressure from people’s movements must be kept alive and continue to grow in an effort to produce real, systemic and lasting change.”

‘A radical shift’

  The scale of resistance under Trump may depend on his actions in office, whether they continue the bellicose, often offensive rhetoric of his campaign or settle into a more predictable presidential routine.

  But his initial steps toward a transition into the Oval Office — particularly his unexpected appointments to key roles — indicate that his administration may prove less conventional than many had anticipated.

  “As the Trump administration begins to take shape, it is becoming more and more clear that he has no intention of ‘draining the swamp’ and will fail to live up to the hopes of those who supported him under the impression that he was the ‘change candidate,’” Smolarek said.

 The election itself, an unusually toxic one that left most voters without a nominee they felt they could actually support, may render the prospects of demobilization unlikely.

“There has been a radical shift in the thinking of millions of people and a shift in what they are willing to do,” Flounders said.

“There is motion that cannot be channeled into the corrupt electoral system.”

C 2015 Reader Supported News

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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