A Sound of Distant Thunder (regarding the September DC protest)

WilliamPitt

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Tue Aug-02-05 02:37 PM
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A Sound of Distant Thunder (regarding the September DC protest)

Edited on Tue Aug-02-05 02:50 PM by WilliamPitt

“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”

--Thomas Paine

It seems a million years hence that I stood upon the steps of the Capitol Building in May of 2001 with thousands of other activists to protest the illegitimate delivery of the presidency to George W. Bush. This was the first significant demonstration against the Bush administration to take place in Washington DC, but it was not the last. I remember listening to the words of Ronnie Dugger, founder of the Alliance for Democracy, as he raged into the microphone. “We will label these four years of Bush illegitimacy as the Lawless Years,” declared Dugger, “the tyranny in American history, the Tyrannical Interlude.”

It is difficult to quantify, now that more than 1,500 days of lawlessness have passed, how correct Dugger was when he spoke those words. History will place these days of darkness we have endured among the most corrupt, base, senseless, blood-soaked passages of time ever endured since the birth of this republic. Beyond the brazen smash-and-grab robbery of our tax dollars that has taken place in the Treasury Department, beyond the rising smiley-faced fascism we have watched rising in every corner of the nation, beyond the lies repeated daily without fear of accountability, there is the body count.

Three thousand souls on a bright Tuesday morning, who would be alive but for the negligence and staggering ineptitude of those tasked to stand the watch, have been used deliberately and with intent as an excuse to deliver tens and tens and tens of thousands more innocents to the dust of an early grave in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two thousand soldiers, almost all of them young American boys and girls, have had the life blasted out of them because they were sent by their commander in chief to find weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Those soldiers who remain, those soldiers who have been redeployed into the war zone two or three times already, wait with grim resolve to be brought home to their families whole and sane and safe.

The occupation of Iraq is almost a thousand days old now, and as the self-serving justifications for invasion wither in the desert sun, as the neo-conservative “Bush Doctrine” collapses in a swelling flood of blood and total failure, as more and more people see impeachment as a moral necessity, as those who stand in opposition wonder what they can do to thwart a corrupt and crazed administration that exists entirely without checks and balances, there remains one act of defiance and strength and solidarity which cannot be ignored.

We take it to the streets. All of us.

On Saturday, September 24th, there will be a protest in Washington DC. This gathering must dwarf all previous demonstrations against this administration, must be larger than all previous protests combined, must fill every street and every avenue and every inch of space, until the city itself and the nation entire is forced to stop, and turn its face to our faces, and hear the truth. You must be there. You must bring your friends, your family, your neighbors. It is a moral imperative.

That weekend will see far more than a protest. On the 25th, Progressive Democrats of America will host a wide-ranging strategy session at the David A. Clarke School of Law on Connecticut Avenue. The purpose of this gathering will be to prepare progressive legislative and electoral strategies for the 2006 midterm elections. PDA activists from all across the country will be in attendance. Speakers at this event will include long-time activist Tom Hayden and voting rights advocate John Bonifaz.

On Monday the 26th, Progressive Democrats of America, working in concert with United for Peace and Justice, will send a battalion of activists up and down the halls of the House of Representatives to lobby congresspeople to demand a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. We will, quite simply, not take no for an answer, and we will have the wind of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of protestors at our backs.

Let the word go forth from this time and place that the progressive movement in America does not accept failure as an option, that the streets of Washington DC will be ours come the close of September, that we are the ones we have been waiting for, and that our time is now. Be there with us. Stand and be true.