"That which you do not resist and mobilize to stop you will learn – or be forced – to accept.”
To the Anti-War Movement in the United States:
Barack Obama is sending a surge of 20,000 troops to Afghanistan.
An antiwar movement that does not move immediately to oppose the Obama doctrine of shifting the central front of the war on terror to Afghanistan, no longer deserves to be called an anti-war movement.read more...
The World Can’t Wait organizes people living in the United States to repudiate and stop the fascist direction initiated by the Bush Regime, including: the murderous, unjust and illegitimate occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; the global “war of terror” of torture, rendition and spying; and the culture of bigotry, intolerance and greed. This direction cannot and will not be reversed by leaders who tell us to seek common ground with fascists, religious fanatics, and empire. It can only be possible by the people building a community of resistance - an independent mass movement of people - acting in the interests of humanity to stop, and demand prosecution, of these crimes.
This article originally appeared on the Revolution website.
On September 12, several tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Washington, D.C. ostensibly against the Democratic Party healthcare proposal in Congress. In fact, this march represented a major political statement by a fascist movement.
To give a flavor of this, one reporter noted that “a burly Pennsylvania correction officer named David McElwee held up a poster of Obama photoshopped as a half-naked African native in a hut with a grass skirt and a bone in his nose.”
Two days earlier, in Scranton, Pennsylvania: “All around were satanic representations of President Barack Obama in whiteface, as a Nazi, an African witch doctor; a Marxist; a Muslim....” Signs depicted Obama as Osama Bin Laden. A woman in the crowd told a reporter that Obama was putting himself at a godly level, and that she was praying “for his conversion.” Was Obama a Muslim she was asked? “Only he knows.” Adding to her fury: she heard that Michelle Obama had a six hundred dollar pair of shoes. (Descriptions from “Who Is Barack Obama? And why do people say such loopy, ugly things about him? The enduring rot in American politics,” by Philip Weiss, New York Magazine, September 28, 2009)
World Can’t Wait proudly endorses the LGBT Equality March on WashingtonD.C. on October 10/11. We support the just demand for marriage equality for gay and lesbian partners and repeal of the “Defense of Marriage Act.”
We further support the right to adopt children and an end to work place discrimination; strengthening hate crime legislation; and demand an end to ripping families apart due to ICE’s (Immigration Control & Enforcement) refusal to recognize gay couples.
"In an ideal world, there would be no faith-based office," says the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "But if we must have this office, certain steps must be taken to bring it into line with the commands of the Constitution."
I agree that churches should finance their own social service programs and the government should fund secular groups doing service work to those in special need.
The office Lynn refers to is President Barack Obama’s Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, greatly expanded and strangely Bush-like in certain aspects. The most contentious is whether religious organizations will be allowed to discriminate in hiring people with whose lifestyle they disagree, as was the case under George W. Bush.
During his campaign in Ohio last July Obama said that “if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion.” To fulfill that promise Obama would have to reverse Bush’s 2002 executive order allowing employment discrimination by religious organizations which receive federal funds under the program. As of this date, Obama has not done so. Whether he will remains in question, but until he does his campaign promise remains pure electoral posturing.
Darwin Day, February 12, 2009, marks the 200th anniversary of the Birth of Charles Darwin and this year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of his path breaking work “The Origin of Species by Natural Selection.” This year we hope that all readers of this site will find ways to celebrate Darwin Day and honor the enormous contribution Darwin made to our knowledge of how the world actually works.
This upholding of the evolutionary understanding of the world and of the scientific method is especially important now as fundamentalist religious groups try to get Intelligent Design/Creationism into public school science curricula. In Texas, for example, there has been a long fought battle by right wing religious people on the State Board of Education to get textbooks to include Intelligent Design as an alternative theory to evolution or at least to include discussion of the supposed “weaknesses” of evolutionary theory.
However, the National Center for Science Education has reported that “in a close vote on January 23, 2009, the Texas State Board Of Education approved a revision of the state's science standards lacking the controversial "strengths and weaknesses" language, which in 2003 was selectively applied by members of the board attempting to dilute the treatment of evolution in the biology textbooks then under consideration.”
Nevertheless this in no way indicates that the religious creationists will not continue their fight against reason in Texas, and anti-evolution legislation is pending in both Iowa and New Mexico. Continued vigilance is certainly called for.
“Rick Warren is a bigot! No ‘common ground’ with bigot Rick Warren!” shouted Sunsara Taylor as Rick Warren began his keynote address at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. She unfurled a banner that read “NO ‘Common Ground’ with Bigot Rick Warren!” and then was taken out by the ushers. The banner included the website, revcom.us, the revolutionary communist newspaper Sunsara writes for.
Following Sunsara, several other people turned their backs on Warren and were also forced to leave the church. Earlier in the day, about 100 people protested outside the church in a demonstration initiated by Black LGBT coalition and joined by GBLT Atlanta, TILLT, World Can't Wait, and others. The protest was spirited and attracted a lot of media.
“It is hard to think of anyone more antithetical to the legacy of the Civil Rights movement,” explained Sunsara Taylor. “Rick Warren is a bigot. He has dedicated himself to taking away people’s rights – the rights of gay people, the rights of women to abortion and birth control. He preaches unthinking obedience to biblical literalism and denies evolution. He is aggressively involved in efforts that are causing untold numbers of African people to suffer and die from AIDS by promoting ‘abstinence-only’ and disparaging condoms.”