DIRECT ACTION TO STOP THE WAR

Why wait until the war starts? That seems reactive instead of proactive. If we really want to stop the war, we should do something about it before it starts. We need to shut things down when war looks imminent, not after it has already started.

Bush is leaving little room to avert war now. He will go at it alone, without the U.N., even without Britain if necessary. Disarming is not enough for him, he wants "regime change." I honestly don't think anything will be enough for him, short of the puppet regime he wants to place in power.

Once there is a timetable for war, we need to spring into action. Maybe we need to spring into action now, demanding that Bush back off and let the international community have some say in how to handle this situation.

Why is everyone waiting until it is too late to take direct action? What is direct about an action that happens after bombing has commenced thousands of miles away? Direct action would necessitate taking action now while things can still be stopped. And breaking a few retail windows will make no dent in the war effort. Now the stock exchange, telecommunications and transportation infrastructure are a different story.

Training

Berkeley, California: Jail Solidarity Training
Saturday, March 8th 2003 2-6 PM
This training involves an in-depth explanation of strategies and practices of Legal Solidarity. Interactive role- plays let participants experience using non-cooperation tactics to bargain for fair treatment. We analyze decision-making in Solidarity and how to adjust tactics to be most effective in a given scenario. We focus on Court Solidarity as well as Jail Solidarity, stressing the different strengths and weaknesses of these strategies and how (and when) to transition from Jail to Court. Time: 4-5 hours

Berkeley, California: Legal Observer Training
Saturday, March 8th 2003 1-2p

Oakland, California: Nonviolent Direct Action for People of Color
Tuesday, March 11th 2003 6-10pm
Prepare yourself to take direct action to stop the war by attending a nonviolent direct action training.

Oakland, California: Nonviolent Direct Action
Tuesday, March 18th 2003 6-10p
Prepare yourself for Nonviolent Direct Action

Berkeley, California: Nonviolent Direct Action
Saturday, March 22nd 2003 1-5pm
Prepare yourself to take direct action to stop the war by attending a nonviolent direct action training.

Berkeley, California: Jail Solidarity
Sunday, March 23rd 2003 1-5pm
This training involves an in-depth explanation of strategies and practices of Legal Solidarity. Interactive role- plays let participants experience using non-cooperation tactics to bargain for fair treatment. We analyze decision-making in Solidarity and how to adjust tactics to be most effective in a given scenario. We focus on Court Solidarity as well as Jail Solidarity, stressing the different strengths and weaknesses of these strategies and how (and when) to transition from Jail to Court. Time: 4-5 hours

Berkeley, California: Nonviolent Direct Action
Saturday, March 29th 2003 1-5PM
Prepare yourself to take direct action to stop the war by attending a nonviolent direct action training.

Berkeley, California: Jail Solidarity
Sunday, March 30th 2003 1-5 pm
This training involves an in-depth explanation of strategies and practices of Legal Solidarity. Interactive role- plays let participants experience using non-cooperation tactics to bargain for fair treatment. We analyze decision-making in Solidarity and how to adjust tactics to be most effective in a given scenario. We focus on Court Solidarity as well as Jail Solidarity, stressing the different strengths and weaknesses of these strategies and how (and when) to transition from Jail to Court. Time: 4-5 hours

http://www.actagainstwar.org/calendar.php?caltype=3

The war started twelve years ago, and has gone on without respite ever since. At least a half million, some say two million, innocent Iraqi civilians have died already. Almost all were women and children.

And you're still waiting!?!

What you're talking about, history buff, is the everyday war. Thank you for mentioning that. We can never forget about the oppression that goes on every day.... And direct action is necessary all the time to stop that.

You can't shut down eveyrthing all the time though. For such a tactic to be effective, you have to actually offer the possibility that things will go more or less back to normal if your demands are met.

The kind of direct action that needs to happen every day is different. We can't just shut things down. It has to be the kind of action that actually seizes more power to survive, thrive, and pursue our goals from the authority structures of society, while simultaneously weakening them, or at least withdrawing support and denying them sustanance.

To stop the corporate-government-military-industrial-prison complex that carries out all these acts from being able to do so in the first place, it is necessary to seize more "operating room," a lot more autonomy. They function on two levels, one based on taxes people pay to them, and two based on the willingness of workers to carry out the tasks that are necessary to support their institutions. When massive tax resistance takes place and workers en masse refuse to carry out the tasks necessary to support the military machine, then there truly will be a major transformation -- and any move in this direction is a good move.

Of course, when you're talking about this kind of everyday bottom-up transformation of society, you're talking about the essence of revolution. It's not going to hit full on in the near future.... But just maybe we can build it in little peices, an evolution of sorts instead of outright revolution.

As an answer to concerns about our action being reactive rather than proactive, I'll point out a part of the listed goals. "We are publicly declaring and organizing mass nonviolent direct action now, before war begins, with the express intention of deterring a war against Iraq and future wars. "

We are making it very clear that, if war starts, we'll shut down the city. We've gotten a lot of press coverage, and our meetings and plans are very public. The Bush Administration knows that if war starts SF's financial district will get shut down. Our hope is that the threat of action will dter the beginning of war.

From a casual onlooker:
This approach seems quite surreal and absurd. Civil disobedience has been, in the past, a noble gesture when used to protest truly evil or oppressive authority. But the motives this movement seems to read into everything that is done in the name of the public by our elected officials and others in private or corporate positions of influence seem quite a stretch. There is no vast nationwide conspiracy to thwart your God-given freedoms, or those reaffirmed in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. To argue there is such a conspiracy is beyond absurd. And it totally ignores the simple fact that many people act in their own self-interest, but instead allegedly act in lockstep with the aforementioned conspiracy.
It's a bit laughable to the majority of our society, frankly. And the main reason that 95% of our population thinks anarchists are many times a few pickles shy of a full barrel.
Get some legitimacy by working inside the system instead of continually marginalizing yourselves with misdirected rants, and more people will listen to you. Otherwise, you are doomed to relive the futile nature of ineffective protests that only serve to further convince the rest of the American public that they are right about you.

Warren Langley, ex-president of the Pacific Stock Exchange, is joining Direct Action for war and will protest outside his own stock exchange.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm

"Get some legitimacy by working inside the system..."


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"What kind of peace do we seek?

Not a Pax Americana, enforced on the world by American weapons of war, not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men and women; not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time.

I speak of peace as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and the words of the pursuers frequently fall on deaf ears, but we have no more urgent task.

Too many of us think peace is impossible, but that is a dangerous defeatist attitude. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed! We cannot accept that view. Our problems are manmade therefore they can be solved by man. Man has often solved the seemingly unsolvable and we believe they can do it again. I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and goodwill of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution of human nature, but on a gradual evolution of human institutions.

Genuine peace must be the product of many nations. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process, a way of solving problems. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor, it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.

Peace need not be impossible and war need not be inevitable.

By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistably towards it.

Let us not be blind to our differences, but let us draw attention to our common interests, and the means by which those differences can be resolved. For our most basic common link is that
we all inhabit this small planet,
we all breathe the same air,
we all cherish our children's future,
and we are all mortal.

Nuclear powers must avoid those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy or a collective death wish for the world.

We must seek to strengthen the United Nations, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of ensuring the securtity of the large and the small and of creating conditions under which arms can be abolished.

Our primary long range goal is general and complete disarmament, designed to take place in stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace, which would take the place of arms. Is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights? The right to live out our lives without fear of devastation, the right to breathe air as nature provided it, the right of future generations to a healthy existence?

While proceeding to safeguard our national interest, let us also safeguard human interests, and the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. Confident and unafraid let us labor on - not towards a strategy of annihilation, but towards a strategy of peace."
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President of the United States System
-John Kennedy, American University: June 10, 1963

> you are doomed to relive the futile nature of ineffective protests

That's what they told us when we started demonstrating demonstrating against the war in Viet Nam. So we tried to "work within the system." We went "clean for Gene." We voted for McGovern. We got squat for our efforts. Then some of us started burning things down and blowing things up. There were three thousand bombings in 1971. That's ten a day. That got their attention. Begging for peace did not.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." -- Frederick Douglass

OK Boys and Girls, let's discuss Politics 101:

So, the deterrent to organized violence (war) is disorganized violence ("burning things down and blowing things up")???? That's just a much more extreme version of what I was referring to in the earlier post. I'll try to be more specific.

In a representative republic (technically speaking), where officials and decision makers are FREELY ELECTED by the public that actually casts votes (not those who take to the streets and merely shout slogans opposing other points of view, but those who get up off the couch and register and vote), the officials' views often match those of the electorate. Amazing how that works.

In other words: In rare instances, protests have some slight influence on policy. But for the most part, politicians' actions are consistent with the wishes of those who elected them.

So, how can you be effective in the decision process??? Elect politicians who agree with your views.

Burning down and blowing up other peoples' property will get you charged with a serious felony crime involving terrorism, not to mention being morally wrong under most circumstances. In addition, it only serves to further marginalize your movement and create suspicion amongst the general public who don't share your extreme views. Don't think you have extreme views? Then why can't you seem to elect some politicians who agree with you? Do they all belong to the same vast conspiracy? Think about it.

That's Politics 101 for today, boys and girls. And remember, your rights end when they begin to encroach on someone else's rights.

Once you go down the path of blowing things up you are a felon at least and possibly a combatant . That makes you fair game for men in black with Sub machine guns. Happen to be scratching your balls when they kick the door down and well you get the picture. Being ass raped by someone with hepatitis or the hiv is not how I'd like to spend 10 years of my life.

Blow up telecom, banks, or power grids take a rifle that way their is no question in your mind what you are doing. At least you can shoot back against your new enemy, Us federal law enforcement.