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Monday, 28 April 2008 10:55 |
CHICAGO
World Can't Wait Chicago returned to "the scene of the crime" on Friday.
This time the recruiters were there going in and out.
However, our plans were to be symbolic in our resistance and not engage
in an act of resistance such as chaining ourselves, etc. We wanted this
action be about challenging people on the election. (And in the
video you will see exactly how we did that.)
The group worked its way through Winter Soldier testimony. Two people
spoke before the police asked us to move. Breaking the agreement we had
with the police, the police all of a sudden decided they wanted us to be
within sight & sound of the recruitment center in a spot that was not in
front of the recruitment center.
We challenged the police, then kept the energy up by going on a short
parade around the block and down the street to one of Columbia College's
campus buildings. Jeff Leys spoke on torture revelations and on his trip
to Iraq with Christian Peacemakers. Whitney then stepped up to take on
the elections as the Repudiation Party candidate.
VIDEO LINKS--they are parts 1-7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspP5p5nDwQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN-lYIqGkro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEf3iT_T0gw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXBwICOh_Co
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q75Tk_qF_Vk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Caw363cDNsM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUXG5RGCvms
HAWAII
When we got to the Army Recruiting Station it was closed up tight. No
recruiters. No press. No cops.
A new "deal" from the recruiters to potential recruits was posted on the
door. $110,000 in benefits and bonuses! 1,000 a
month for up to 14 months before training even begins (i.e. you can finish
high school before you begin). An enlistment bonus. College payments of
up to $72,000. A great employment opportunity!
Protesters immediately plastered the front of the station with posters:
"Closed by the People". A coffin with "Your Name Here" on it was propped
up against the front window. Yellow caution tape was run across the
front. A "prisoner" in orange jumpsuit sat in front of the door.
Soon two recruiters (out of uniform) showed up and angrily tore down the
posters and called the cops. Reporters from a mainstream TV station
showed up. Within 15 minutes the busy street was lined with cop cars with
flashing blue lights.
The recruitment station is on a major city street and soon cars were
honking and fingers were flashing - both up and down. Positive responses
overwhelmed the negative. At one point two cars paced each other: one
filled with guys with fists and shaka signs energetically supporting us;
another filled with guys with thumbs down and middle fingers competing.
Within another 15 minutes the recruiters had locked up again. The
reporters left. Posters were again plastered across the front. Yellow
tape was back up.
A guy in shorts and t-shirt showed up and angrily tore the posters from
the window, wadded them up, unlocked the recruiting station and went
inside. A security guard represented that he was a cop. The guy demanded
activists identify themselves, while refusing to show his own badge. When
protesters refused to cooperate, he began
to leave. One of the protesters chased the guy down and demanded her sign
back, threatening to press charges of theft and impersonation of a police
officer. Faced with angry protesters, the guy went back to the recruiting
station, retrieved the crumpled sign, and returned it to the protester.
By this time the cops had come in force, blocking access to the back of
the building where other recruiters were hunkered down. One recruiter
angrily blurted out that the guy the protesters had confronted was the
recruitment commander.
The small group of 25-30 protesters had made a big impact. The recruiting
station had been shut down. Hundreds of motorists had shown their
enthusiastic support. Thousands more saw coverage of the action on the
evening news. Recruiters were faced with the determination of protesters
as their commander was forced to rummage through the garbage to retrieve
the activist's sign, and then retreat. And
recruiters were put on notice that they will be hounded at schools,
job fairs, and at the recruiter stations.
BERKELEY
About 30 people showed up at the infamous
Marine recruiting station on Shattuck Ave to deliver a notice of EVICTION!
Among the offenses listed as causes for their eviction was torture--an
"unforgivable crime against humanity"--which several military veterans
actually demonstrated. Their re-enactment of the torture technique known
as waterboarding, right there on
Shattuck Avenue in front of the station, was meant to graphically depict
what it is that these recruiters are actually recruiting for. This is an
utterly criminal war that these recruiters have no right to suck young
people into.
Youtube of Berkeley action:
http://www.youtube.com/user/roboplant
UCSC action April 22
The resistance spreads to UC Santa Cruz Tuesday April 22!
After being gone for a year (because they were kicked out by the
students two years in a row!), military recruiters have decided to
return to the UC Santa Cruz career fair. Make sure they are treated as
"unwelcome intruders"!
Rally 10-11 AM at the Quarry Plaza! Protest 11-3 PM at College 9-10
Multi-purpose room.
Contact the new UCSC World Can't Wait chapter at: 510-861-2551 or
email: wcwucsc@gmail.com
LA
At 3:30pm on April 18th, there was spirited repudiation of the Bush Regime
at the East Los Angeles Military Recruiting Center. Students from nearby
Roosevelt High School came out to make their voices heard, after they had
seen some World Can't Wait presentations in their school about the truth
of the war, and what the armed forces are recruiting for. Video testimony
of Iraq war vets at the Winter Soldier Investigation, as well as the
Declare
It Now video were viewed. Bandanas were taken up with enthusiasm, as well
as several rolls of orange flagging tape, which has become a popular
political statement worn on backpacks
and wrists throughout the school.
This was the students' first WCW demonstration. They joined with other
World Can't Wait supporters in the powerful chant "What are they
recruiting for? Murder! Rape! Torture! War!" Soon students took the
bullhorn and were chanting anti-Bush Regime chants in Spanish and English.
.
Military recruiters who had been inside the open center on our arrival,
shut the lights and left by the back door soon after. We declared victory
and the front doors and windows were decorated with posters, orange
flagging tape, No Torture banners and individually signed eviction notices
in Spanish and English, to
the approving honks of traffic passing by.
A small contingent of students and others took off down the sidewalk
holding banners and chanting:
"Students United will never be defeated!"
"What are they recruiting for? Murder! Rape! Torture! War!"
"There's a killer in the White House! Time to drive his ass out!"
"Si, Se Puede!"
"We won't be your murderers! We won't be your torturers! We have our
convictions! This is an eviction!"
"Stay out of our schools! Cause this is what you get! An army of
none! An army of none!"
And one other memorable Spanish language chant that this
writer was informed refers to Bush as an assassin and a pig.
One woman who came, a social worker, had heard about this action on Jim
Lafferty's radio show on KPFK. She said she usually spent her Fridays
across town at an anti-war vigil, but thought this was an important
action. She got on the phone to call the vigil people to join us, and
said she was thinking that this might be a more important place to have
their weekly vigils from now on.
We ended the action reading an excerpt of Ron Kovic's statement of support
for the Berkeley actions, and his call for these kinds of actions
nationwide. We also invited students to the national meeting in SF and
will be connecting with them in the coming weeks to strengthen and deepen
their political activism. One
young man who had been talking with us at school about how he thought that
protest did not work, told us that this experience has changed his mind.
NEW YORK CITY
This is a report of a demonstration against Cheney on Monday, April 21.
About 50 people came together on Monday in front of building where Vice
President "Dick" Cheney was coming to a fundraiser for Republican
Congressman Vito Fossella. As World Can't Wait's call for protest put it:
"With the direct involvement of Bush and Cheney in directing torture now
documented, with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on their
hands, we must protest this war criminal!"
Joining WCW activists and friends, Code Pink and the Raging Grannies, was
a group from Staten Island (Fossella is the Congressman now from Staten
Island and part of Brooklyn) including a number dressed as "Filthy Rich
for Fossella". Steve Harrison, a candidate running against Fossella also
came. Chants called out Cheney's recently documented role in torture of
detainees and his key role in the launching of the war in Iraq.
One thing we learned was that this very building, which houses some of
NYC's "super rich", was also the site recently of a fund-raiser for Obama.
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