At a time when the danger of cataclysmic war is greater than ever the US peace movement is in tatters. Please join and support Cindy’s efforts to inject some life into this supremely important campaign.
On October 21, 1967, 50,000 people marched on the Pentagon in opposition to the escalation of US imperialist aggression in Vietnam. An anti-war rally was held at West Potomac park near the Lincoln Memorial where 70,000 people had gathered for a concert by musician and peace activist Phil Ochs. Both groups joined together and marched; this action was to be known as the March on the Pentagon.
During 1967 there were numerous anti-war marches across the nation in all major cities including New York, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, DC.
These actions and the protests and demos of the 1968 presidential elections would lead to the call for a general strike which culminated in the mobilization of 500,000 protestors in another march on the Pentagon known as the Vietnam Moratorium which took place on October 15, 1969. A month later, due to the success of the first march, another rally was held.
On October 7th, 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan under the pretext of apprehending those behind the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001. US forces have remained in active occupation, making the illegal and immoral war in Afghanistan the longest foreign occupation in US history. In response to ongoing US military aggression across the globe and the continuing bi-partisan increases in Pentagon funding we are calling for a 21st century March on the Pentagon on the 51st anniversary of the massive 1967 march and all the subsequent marches. The bloated military budget is draining our communities and families dry of precious blood and treasure while decimating nations and peoples who have done nothing to us.
The working title, “Women’s March on the Pentagon” is in direct response to a leader in the recent women’s march who said, “I appreciate that war is YOUR issue Cindy, but the Women’s March will NEVER address the war issue as long as women aren’t free.”
It is the belief of many of us that NO woman is free while the US spends trillions of dollars bombing millions and militarily occupying over 150 countries around the world.
Our demands are simple: The complete end to the wars abroad; closure of foreign bases; dramatically slash the Pentagon budget to fund healthy social programs here at home: the only good empire is a gone empire.
The antiwar/peace, anti-Imperialist voice has been shut out of, or marginalized by many protests and movements especially since Trump was inaugurated. We are in solidarity with most social and environmental movements, yet many refuse to address war and the preparations for war. War affects us all in one way or another. War destroys the natural environment. This March will not degenerate into a Get out the Vote Rally for the complicit Democrats.
The “nuclear clock” is at two minutes to midnight, and with the threat of nuclear annihilation becoming an incomprehensible reality, WE MUST MARCH FOR PEACE AND AGAINST THE WAR MACHINE.
To create a space in which to connect the dots of US Militarism back to the liberation and emancipation of all people around the world and to reverse the effects that the US War Machine has on the degradation of the environment we call for endorsement of this action. Although the working title is “Women’s March on the Pentagon” we invite all participation. At the moment our only web presence is on Facebook at: Women’s March on the Pentagon. We are furiously catching up with the excitement generated by the initial proposal.
We are also planning on calling for solidarity marches around the world to march, or rally in front of military installations, US embassies, or war profiteers for those who cannot make it to the March on the Pentagon.
If you’d like to be an initial endorser/supporter of this call, please email Cindy Sheehan at:
CindySheehansSoapbox@gmail.com and give her your name and way you’d like to be identified.
We will be opening the call to everyone soon and will actively begin to organize in March 2018 with a national call in meeting and tentative meetings with Cindy Sheehan in:
Washington DC: April 5
Boston: April 9
NYC: April 10
SF: (TBD)
LA: (TBD)
Chicago: (TBD)
Hoping to hear from you soon and looking forward to working with you on this important issue, once again.
—Cindy.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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2 comments
The radical identification of a nation’s fascist oppression was measured by the amount of power white men held and that category was small enough to concentrate one’s awareness on the rule of capitalism.
But that is by now a rather recidivist notion because the power has shifted measurably to the inchoate and milling masses. In fact, the defined and very strict class identifications have become blurred to the extent that the pressure of groups such as the #metoo movement have become powerful enough to shift attention away from the hierarchy that existed till now in a materialist and expansionist society.
The infinitesimally small caste differences within each level are still there in a classist society like the US (in contrast to the crude class differences that linger on in Europe), but it is now being overlaid by the dissolving power difference between men and women.
The sweep of the #metoo women’s movement so feared by the Trotskyist WSWS Internet publication, where males and their co-thinkers try to dam the irresistible stream of women’s rise to power as being a fascist phenomenon, has put paid to the regular identification of class hierarchies.
Successful women in the capitalist structure exert more of their social and economic power even if seen as part of the problem, much like successful blacks because both function in fact in the offensive. To see them as collaborators of the system is wrong radical thinking. They are the spooks that sit by the door even if they support and accept their protection from the system.
That practice of invasion of the capitalist bastion is indicative of what is happening in the US, the most advanced system of class oppression where official propaganda is geared towards the conditioned emotions of humans. The cry of “I am a nasty woman” is not a battle cry, it is the assertion that all the pre-chewed notions are of the past and that nothing can any longer be assumed as a given.
And that goes for the traditional liberation slogans as well as the underlying hypotheses for cataloguing and categorizing oppression and how to combat it. Marxist theory is being tested for its grounding in a historical division of labor, which means a conceptual reduction in the stark rule of extortion of surplus value. With the gradual shifts of power to some of the previously underprivileged, the strict division by exploitation extends now in the US to successful women, Hispanics and blacks. That means a breakdown in interpretation of radical theories.
The whole underpinnings of human society are being re-thought in the women’s and black’s movements and the focus has shifted despite groans about identity politics to a basic disruption of white men’s rule. It has not yet been fully recognized while the intrusion of the underprivileged into the capitalist system will shatter it from within, weakening gradually hierarchical powers. It is a slow attrition but very strong. Future struggles for equality, justice and economic fairness are not fought as ideological theories, but as gender differences, in a manner more destructive to unjust economic systems than political revolutions.
Terrific call to action by Cindy. It should meet with widespread support! Can anyone suggest an issue as important and urgent as avoiding nuclear war and the constant criminal wars that kill millions of people around the world on the most transparently hypocritical reasons? The military glorification and war bullshit by the prestitutes and politicians has gone way too far in this country. Enough is enough.