Call to Action! June 30: The Day America hands Iraq over to America

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Call to Action! June 30th: The Day America hands Iraq over to America

During the past year and a half, millions of people across the world have demonstrated their opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, yet tanks and troops continue to devastate the country.

Meanwhile, many corporations partner with the Coalition Provisional Authority to make millions from the "reconstruction" of the country, and to ensure that Iraqi "liberation" translates into Western privatization, open markets, and economic subservience. While registering our moral outrage at these crimes is important, it is time to take our responsibility for ending this occupation more seriously.

On June 30th, the day the U.S.-led coalition claims they will transfer power to the Iraqis, we call for a day of action to illuminate the emptiness of their promise and press our demand that they get their troops and their dirty contracts out of Iraq.

Demonstrations and actions are being planned in Toronto, for which we need to organize for maximum attendance. Further, we call on people in cities across North America to organize actions of their own. It is time to bring anti-occupation demands to those corporations benefitting from the colonization of Iraq, and to keep up pressure on all governments complicit in the killing of more than 10,000 Iraqis since March 2003. We have come together to fight capitalist globalization before. With the horror of this globalization so blatant in Iraq, we need to target and expose those responsible (whose offices, we would do well to remember, can be found in cities across Canada and the U.S.).

Recent decades have seen millions of Iraqis die as a result of Western aggression, and now Iraq has been added to a growing list of countries subject to naked military occupation along colonial lines - Afghanistan, Palestine, Haiti, and so on.

The Canadian government is not an innocent bystander in Bush's vision for the world, and as people living in Canada we must demand an end to Canadian cooperation with U.S. imperial policy. In countries such as ours, built upon the theft of native lands and economically sustained by exploitation abroad, those of us demanding justice and peace are forced to contend with a wall of lies. The corporate media characterizes resistance to occupation as "terrorism", and the violent maintenance of occupation as defense of "freedom" - but it has become impossible to believe them. The courage with which Iraqi people are resisting the occupation and demanding their self-determination is inspiring. It is our responsibility to look past state and media misinformation and appreciate the legitimacy of Iraqi rage.

Our movements must build on themselves, resisting with the sort of commitment that will persist year after year. The stakes in this struggle could hardly be higher, and this is no time for complacency. We want to encourage creative forms of resistance to the war on Iraq, and use a range of tactics in working to end the occupation. We stand in defence of human rights and justice, and in solidarity with the people of Iraq. On June 30th, let's show our determination to escalate our opposition to this empire.