3 Things You Can Do Today

[Independent_Liberal]

The latest from the World Can't Wait campaign.

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Dear World Can't Wait Supporter,

Today, we’re asking you to do 3 simple things:

1) Send the announcement of the October 5 mobilization out to ten of your friends, and ask them to join World Can’t Wait’s e-list and be part of building for what needs to be a day of massive resistance throughout society. (You can use this form to email the annoucement to your friends.)

2) Donate $5 online today. This summer we are planning a range of activities aimed at stirring up society and reaching out to the millions who need to be mobilized, from a Drive Out the Bush Regime national bus tour, to student training sessions, tabling at summer concert tours, a national media campaign, forums, and more (see below). If everyone donates $5 today, this will put us in a position to get these summer plans underway.

3) World Can’t Wait’s national steering committee has developed a plan for now until the mobilization called for October 5, reaching into all corners of society and finding the ways to break people out of the paralysis that still grips too much of American political life. Read through this plan, send us your feedback, and let us know how you would like to be involved (email [e-mail]).


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Plan To Make October 5, 2006 the day the whole world comes to know there is a Force in this Country Determined to Drive Out the Bush Regime

The mission of World Can't Wait:

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.

The plan: Thursday, OCTOBER 5, 2006:

All day and into the night, across the country, we must decidedly break the paralysis that still grips too much of American political life.

Taking off work, taking off school, shutting down campuses and coming together in mass gatherings, we must let the country and the world know that:

— millions of us reject this illegitimate regime that is as criminal as it is dangerous to humanity & the existence of this planet.

— we refuse to grow accustomed to a political climate that is becoming everyday more frightening & reactionary.

— we will not stop until the regime has been driven out.

The outpouring on October 5 will give hope to the people of this country and the world that there is a movement in this country of sufficient size, strength, scope and determination to not stop until the Bush administration is driven from office, and its program decisively repudiated by massive protest across the country.

In the midst of the hot midterm election season, it will be decisive that the will of the people - the demand to stop the whole course that Bush has set the country on -- be unequivocally expressed through mass independent political action in the streets. Anything less will lead to hopes and energies squandered and betrayed. If, in the name of electing a new Congress, people are funneled into the fatal logic of supporting whatever is deemed “electable” by the Democratic Party leadership and powerful interests in society, compromising principle and just demands, then the people’s interests and initiative will be consumed by slavish “realisms” that are actually contributing to a sweeping remaking of legal, political and moral norms that are sliding in a fascist direction.

To this end, this summer, World Can’t Wait has a comprehensive plan to announce to all of society the existence of this movement to drive out the regime and to draw in the thousands who can make October 5th a resounding success. Through a national media campaign, which includes a high-profile bus tour, fielding of prominent signers to do interviews, and paid ads, we will reach millions and set new terms of debate that do not compromise with torture, theocracy, or unjust wars. Through the training of organizers and raising funds we will expand WCW’s capacity to reach and influence millions. And through being on the ground at hundreds of concerts, festivals and speaking events all summer we will be reaching and harvesting organizers nation-wide. Through our improving website we will cohere this movement, provide essential analysis and exposure of the crimes of this regime, and organize millions.

Taken as a whole, these efforts will reach those who are ready to act, and wake-up those who are not yet, making the WCW Call come alive for millions, creating a national buzz that we don't have to accept this hated direction, that there is a way out.

Beginning this spring, running through the summer and reaching a crescendo in the early Fall culminating on October 5, the sentiments of hundreds of thousands will be cohered into an unmistakably powerful movement to which every social force in society has to respond.

Synopsis:

The World Can’t Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime will set out across the country to give people a way to change all this. The core of our message is concentrated in the combination of our Call and in the vision and organizing for October 5.

Millions of copies of the Call must go hand to hand, spreading knowledge and organization. Deeply engaging people about how they’re seeing the situation, sharpening up and addressing the huge political questions confronting people: war, torture, civil liberties, the danger of theocracy, the suppression of science, women’s right to abortion and birth control, and the culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance - drawing a vibrant picture that this whole program points to a direction that is even more ominous than the sum of its parts. As the Call says: “the Bush regime is out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.” Organizers will address why it is that the future of the world really does depend on us; digging into and making clear through our actions, why and how it is that only by taking independent action will we be able to actually bring about change.

Giving a bold focal point to the summer, we are proposing an audacious Drive Out the Bush Regime Bus Tour that heads to places that capture the disaster of the Bush Regime's program, vividly drawing a line of demarcation. Imagine the impact of a bus with one side painted with the slogan: “The World Can’t Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime,” the other with “October 5” traveling from still-devastated New Orleans to the militarized border with Mexico, through Kansas where evolution is under attack, and on to South Dakota where abortion has been banned, and then going back to join Cindy Sheehan at Camp Casey during Bush’s vacation. Experts and celebrities will join the bus tour at key stops, making news, spreading the word, leaving behind organization.

Starting on April 29th, a striking poster appeared with the earth in flames, sharply opposing Bush’s planning for war on Iran, the first in a series of artistically sophisticated graphics to appear in cities across the country making the visual case why this regime must go.

Throughout the summer youth will travel with music festivals and tours getting out the word and materials to hundreds of thousands.

Forums will be held, large and small. There are plans underway for a major Town Hall Forum titled: “Could it Happen Here?” to open a society wide serious discussion of the fascist trajectory of the Bush Regime. DVD’s and materials will be produced for “do it yourself programs” and a World Can’t Wait Speakers Bureau is now available to send speakers far and wide.

This process will be launched by a movement of house parties in the month of May to begin raising the millions of dollars that it will take to mobilize a nation to demand regime change.

At the end of Spring Semester, a training session will be held for student organizers in NYC to lead various fronts of struggle throughout the summer and into the fall. By the end of the summer, a larger training session will be held to train the hundreds of new organizers needed for October 5th.

September will be a high-voltage build up to October 5, with forums, concerts, activities in the High Schools and Colleges.

Then, on Thursday, October 5, hundreds of thousands of people will transform the political landscape

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These are essential elements that must under-gird all that World Can’t Wait does leading up to October 5:

1) Conducting "active investigation" and engagement with people across the country, learning how they understand the dangers and nature of this regime’s program and drawing on their ideas as to how to grow this movement. WCW will be educating and learning, struggling with people to deeply understand the deep changes and long lasting impact of the Bush program, and why only mass political action that steps outside the box can stop them. This is a big part of how WCW will create more favorable terms for driving out the regime.

2) Get out the Call in the millions. This Call is central to cohering the whole movement, crystallizing the challenge we face and the way forward. Making the WCW Call a reference point for all who want to stop Bush will change the terms of discussion and how people measure their actions throughout society.

3) Raising money for this movement is perhaps the most decisive thing to be done. There will be no removing a regime without raising funds commensurate to that challenge. The Bush regime and politics as usual have the full force of the media behind them. We cannot let it be said that people failed to stop this slide into theocracy and permanent war for want of money, in this, the wealthiest country in the world.

Donating and raising money matters. It concentrates a commitment. Huge funds will make it possible to reach, inspire, and organize the millions across the country who are aching for a way to oppose this regime. Fund raising for WCW will be approached both as a mass movement of small donations and through significant fund raising by those with significant resources.

4) Youth and students always set the pace and influence the rest of society to move. World Can’t Wait has core organizers on the campuses - but must devote the necessary attention, resources, and expertise of our movement overall to aiding these cores to grow, spread to other campuses, and transform the mood and level of activity on the campuses - turning them into strongholds in the struggle to drive out the regime - energetically infused with the spirit of seeking the truth and then mobilizing to act on it.

5) The institutions and social organizations to which people belong must be challenged to join in driving out the Bush Regime, helping millions of people to act: religious leaders and congregations; unions & professional organizations (librarians, etc); veterans & military families; political & social movements of women, oppressed nationalities, gay people, as well as immigrants. All must be invited and enlisted in this historic battle.

6) Worldcantwait.org, the movement’s web site, must lead millions in why the Bush Regime must be driven out, organizing them to do so with expanded reach, online teach-ins, the capability of organizing meet-ups and more interaction. It must be the go-to site for everyone opposed to the Bush program to learn what to do and why.

7) The infrastructure and capacity of the World Can't Wait itself must rapidly expand to involve many new people in ways that well utilize volunteers and paid staff. National teams for: Public relations; Fund-raising; Press; Youth & Students; Major signers; organizational outreach; Website; National office & chapter development.

8) Prominent “voices of conscience” (those who have signed the Call, and those who haven't yet signed) need to be mobilized to write, speak for, make appearances for, and more fully represent for the movement to drive out the regime. People are hungry for real truth-telling, and to be connected with something bigger than themselves. What well known people say and represent for is an entry point for many people to get involved.

9) The national media must increasingly be covering World Can’t Wait, in their news coverage and in through paid advertising. People need to SEE this movement, contending in prime time, to inspire and shift the terms.


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Reason of the Day to Drive Out the Bush Regime, 5/1:

If you thought warrantless wiretapping and a signing statement proclaiming the right to torture were bad, you’ll be shocked to learn the full scope of Bush's power grab, in which he has claimed the authority to disobey over 750 laws passed while he has been president. An article in Sunday's Boston Globe documented the extent to which Bush has usurped power for the executive branch and shredded the rule of law in the process. While you might be aware of the most egregious examples, what makes this all the more ominous is the degree to which this has become systematic under the Bush regime.

In his more than 5 years in office, Bush has never vetoed a single law passed by Congress (which hasn’t happened since Thomas Jefferson was president). The reason: vetoing a law would allow Congress to challenge the president and bring the contention into the light of day. To get around this, Bush routinely issues signing statements attached to new laws, declaring his right to ignore certain provisions or even the whole law, and giving his own interpretation to them (which often is in stark contradiction to the intent of the law being passed). These signing statements are ultimately what set government policy. To cite one recent example, when the Patriot Act was recently made permanent, as fascistic as that was in its own right, Bush decided that he would not abide by provisions for oversight by Congress.

This practice of directly going against laws passed by Congress runs the gamut, including: