I received the following email from C. Clark Kissinger of
Not in our Name and am posting it here along with the announcement for all DUer's to consider and perhaps this could be something Skinner might consider being a focus for the DU Activist Group.
July 27, 2005
Friends,
As you know, we try to keep you informed of new activities that are in the spirit of the
Not In Our Name statement. A few months ago I sent you a report on actions in Washington, in which I argued that compromise over the filibuster was one more case of the Democrats capitulating. I concluded:
"Without the kind of mass upsurge that we witnessed in the 1960s, there is nothing that will prevent the current threatening dynamic from continuing. The world can't wait any longer. We need to be about the business of driving the Bush regime from power."
Hundreds of you responded, many liking the idea but asking how we could do this. I believe the answer is contained in the manifesto and movement for
The World Can't Wait -- Drive Out the Bush Regime! and its call for outpourings on the anniversary of Bush's "re-election" this November 2nd and a movement that does not stop until the regime has been driven from power and its direction reversed.
Those of us who crafted this manifesto drew inspiration from the words of the
Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience, including these:
"Millions of us worked, talked, marched, poll watched, contributed, voted, and did everything we could to defeat the Bush regime in the last election. This unprecedented effort brought forth new energy, organization, and commitment to struggle for justice. It would be a terrible mistake to let our failure to stop Bush in these ways lead to despair and inaction. On the contrary, this broad mobilization of people committed to a fairer, freer, more peaceful world must move forward. We cannot, we will not, wait until 2008. The fight against the second Bush regime has to start now."
I urge each of you to read, sign, and spread the Call for this movement today and visit their website regularly to participate in this effort. Truly, the world cannot wait.
Sincerely,
C. Clark Kissinger
The World Can't Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Mobilize for November 2, 2005
Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.
Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it.
Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.
Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.
Your government suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.
Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.
Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.
People look at all this and think of Hitler -- and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.
Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this.
There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight.
There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.
But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn -- or be forced -- to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it.
And there is a way. We are talking about something on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in the world. We need more than fighting Bush's outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history.
To that end, on November 2, the first anniversary of Bush's "re-election", we will take the first major step in this by organizing a truly massive day of resistance all over this country. People everywhere will walk out of school, they will take off work, they will come to the downtowns and town squares and set out from there, going through the streets and calling on many more to JOIN US. They will repudiate this criminal regime, making a powerful statement: "NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!"
November 2 must be a massive and public proclamation that WE REFUSE TO BE RULED IN THIS WAY. November 2 must call out to the tens of millions more who are now agonizing and disgusted. November 2 will be the beginning -- a giant first step in forcing Bush to step down, and a powerful announcement that we will not stop until he does so -- and it will join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be stopped.
This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop.
The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.
These next two months are crucial. The call you are reading has to get out to millions right away -- on the internet, passed out as flyers in communities, published as ads in newspapers.
DO NOT WAIT!! GET ORGANIZED!!
If you agree with this statement, add your name to it!!! And do more than that: send it to friends, get them to sign it, organize a meeting, take it to your church, your school, your union, your health club, your barber shop, to concerts and libraries and family gatherings, everywhere you go. Raise money, lots of money. Get people together, make plans to be there on November 2, and to build for it. www.worldcantwait.org
Peace.
www.missionnotaccomplished.us - How ever long it takes, the day must come when tens of millions of caring individuals peacefully but persistently defy the dictator, deny the corporatists their cash flow, and halt the evil being done in Iraq and in all the other places the Bu$h neoconster regime is destroying civilization and the environment in the name of "America." 
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