Announcing: March on the Pentagon -- March 17

March on the Pentagon

Saturday, March 17, 2007 

~ 40th anniversary of the historic 1967 march on the Pentagon ~
~ 4th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war ~

In the coming days and weeks, thousands of organizations and individuals will begin mobilizing for the upcoming March on the Pentagon. Organizing committees and transportation centers are being established to bring people to the March on the Pentagon.

The March 17 demonstration will assemble at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Constitution Gardens) at 12 noon in Washington, D.C.and march to the Pentagon.

Endorse the March on the Pentagon.
Organize transportation
Donate to help make the March on the Pentagon a powerful success.
Sign up for email updates 

Initial endorsers include:

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General
Alice Walker, Pulitzer prize winning author
Cynthia McKinney, Congresswoman
Ron Kovic, Vietnam Veteran, author, Born on the 4th of July
Malik Rahim, Founder, Common Ground Collective, New Orleans
Paul Haggis, Director of Crash, 2005 Academy Award for Best Picture
Chaplain James Yee, former Army chaplain, Guantánamo Detention Center
Howard Zinn, Author, A People's History of the United States
Rev. Luis Barrios, Iglesia de San Romero - UCC
Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild
Elias Rashmawi, National Coordinator, National Council of Arab Americans (NCA)
Mahdi Bray, Executive Director, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
Roy Bourgeois, Founder, School of the Americas Watch
Eric LeCompte, National Office, School of the Americas Watch
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Co-founder, Partnership for Civil Justice
Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition
Mounzer Sleiman, TV commentator and Vice Chair, National Council of Arab Americans
Ben Dupuy, Co-Director, Haiti Progres
Juan Jose Gutierrez, Executive Director, Latino Movement USA
Calvin Gipson, Former President, San Francisco LGBT Pride Committee
Rev. Graylan Hagler, Senior Pastor, Plymouth Congregational Church, Washington D.C
Kay Lucas, Director, Crawford Peace House, Crawford, TX
Chuck Kaufman, Co-coordinator of the Nicaragua Network
Macrina Cardenas, Mexico Solidarity Network
Eugene Puryear, Howard University, student leader
Gloria LaRiva, Coordinator, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
Mimi Kennedy, Actor (Dharma & Greg)
Ed Asner, Actor
Shirley Knight, Actor

Statement from the ANSWER Coalition
on the March 17-18 Global Days of Action

The people of the United States want an end to the war in Iraq. The elections in November were a clear repudiation of the Bush administration's war of aggression. The new Congress, however, has no intention of ending the war. Bush and the Pentagon generals are determined to prolong the war. Tens of thousands of more troops will be sent to Iraq. We are building a massive antiwar movement on the national and local level. Only the action of the people will stop the war.

We are returning to the Pentagon because the Iraq war has resulted in more than 655,000 Iraqi deaths (Lancet), on top of more than 1 million killed by sanctions between 1990-2003. This is genocide. 

We are returning to the Pentagon because U.S. military deaths will soon exceed 3,000. But that doesn't begin to tell the story. There have been 21,921 wounded as of Nov. 30 and another 17,835 evacuated due to serious injury or illness as of Sept. 30, 2005 when the Pentagon stopped releasing these statistics.  

We are returning to the Pentagon because it is U.S. missiles and bombs, including hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs that have been sent to Israel to kill and maim the people of Palestine and Lebanon. These weapons are a war crime. The estimate is that between 2 million and 3 million cluster bomblets were dropped on Lebanon, and more than a million remain unexploded -- posing a danger to civilians for years to come. The war in Iraq is one front in the U.S. plan for domination of the Middle East. Colonial occupation is a crime whether it be in Iraq or Palestine or Lebanon.

The Global Military Machine 

We are returning to the Pentagon because it maintains 714 military bases in 130 countries to extend the influence of US transnational corporations, oil giants and banks. The slogan of national security and the war on terror stands exposed as a pretext for a global empire enforced by military might and limitless violence. 

While the focus of the recent years has been to use military power and violence against the Arab people, the Pentagon has been targeting peoples and nations all over the world. U.S. troops occupy South Korea. U.S. nuclear weapons target North Korea. Interventionist actions are already taking place in the Philippines, and are planned against Cuba, Venezuela, and throughout South and Central Asia. 

The Warfare State: Spying, Surveillance, Secret Prisons and Torture Facilities 

We are returning to the Pentagon to demand the immediate closure of Guantánamo and all other torture facilities. The grotesque revelations of torture and abuse in Abu Ghraib were the tip of the iceberg. Punishing a few rank and file soldiers and counting on the mass media to tire of the story, the Pentagon has tried to conceal the reality that it engages in arbitrary detention and torture of those it identifies as “enemies.” 

We are returning to the Pentagon to demand an end to the surveillance and other spy programs conducted against the people of this country by the Pentagon and other agencies. 

Militarism: The Social Costs of the Warfare State 

We are returning to the Pentagon because the military budget of this country is a dagger in the heart of programs that meet peoples' needs. More than 47 million people in the U.S. are without health care coverage and one out of every four children is born into extreme poverty. Fifty percent of all bankruptcies in the last year were filed by people who couldn't pay their hospital and doctor's bills. Factories are closing and whole communities and neighborhoods are being turned into ghost towns. Skyrocketing tuition is and will continue to make the dream of a college education harder to realize for working class youth. In the last year, Bush and Congress cut money for education, food aid and veterans' benefits while the Senate voted almost unanimously to rubber stamp the new “war” budget of $590 billion (the official budget number of $443 billion conceals at least $150 billion in expenditures.)  

We are returning to the Pentagon to challenge the system that is addicted to war and global domination. The Iraq war is a criminal endeavor based on lies. It was always about conquering the entire Middle East with its vast repositories of oil. While the Iraq war has been an absolute catastrophe for the entire people of Iraq and for tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, it must be remembered that many U.S. corporations are benefiting. They are the recipients of new Pentagon orders for weapons, supplies and contracts. The Iraq war costs approximately $279 million each day. That breaks down to more than $11 million every hour of every day of the year. The total cost of the Iraq war will be $2 trillion, according to the Iraq Study Group report.  

Unless the people act now, the human and economic costs of the war will only increase. For more information go to http://www.answercoalition.org/.

Let's unite and stand together at the Pentagon on March 17. Take a moment and take action now:

Endorse the March on the Pentagon.
Organize transportation
Donate to help make the March on the Pentagon a powerful success. 
Sign up for email updates