By Debra Sweet
Over the past week, in actions small and large, as many of you reading this were rightly disgusted by the 9/11 propaganda machine in overdrive, the work of World Can’t Wait has centered around the idea that American lives are NOT worth more than other people’s lives.
In New York City, as war criminals make the rounds, still claiming 9/11 gives them license to murder and torture anyone they want, we were in the streets and at their forums, speaking the truth and denouncing their crimes, exposed to the whole world for years now. Read more about the encounters with John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld, Michael Mukasey, Ari Fleischer, and Michael Chertoff.
On September 11th itself, just a few blocks from Bush and Obama’s event, the World Can’t Wait Memorial to the Victims of the Global War on Terror was set up.
With art, poetry, creative dance, and much spirit, we commemorated those killed in our names, and re-dedicated ourselves to resisting these crimes with creativity, passion and resilience.
View artwork, read poetry and see photos of the display of boots and shoes representing the voiceless victims of the past ten years. Watch Press TV’s coverage. All of this was seen by thousands of people walking by, attracted by the simple displays. Probably 1000 people took photos; we gave out all the flyers we had, and signed people up to hear from World Can’t Wait.
Nancy van Ness, with American Creative Dance, performed her piece "I Do Not Resign Myself" which you can watch in its entirety on Facebook.
Over the weekend, Los Angeles artists came together at The Vortex Gallery in downtown LA this weekend to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 911 and to collectively speak out for an end to never ending war. World Can’t Wait was there with a striking image in bold performance-art mode…wearing white masks and with signs hung on our necks "Our Grief Was Not a Cry for War" and "Stop the Crimes of Your Government." As we entered the gallery slowly, people would turn to look at the haunting image. Some gasped and touched their friends. Others just quietly contemplated the sight and then got their cell phone cameras out to take pictures.
On the morning of the 9-11 anniversary, about 200 people gathered at the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge to hold a very different commemoration of the date. People came together representing many anti-war, religious, and community groups for this event organized principally by Code Pink and World Can’t Wait, endorsed by many more. Gathering at both ends of the bridge, after brief rallies we marched to meet at the middle of the bridge for a short but dramatic ceremonial action, joining hands and first silently facing our signs and selves to look to the east (facing the country) and then turning to face west (toward the ocean, out toward the rest of the world) shouting over and over: “These Are Not Our Wars! The People Declare Peace!”
The Examiner quotes an Afghan-American woman at the rally:
She noted that this was a largely impoverished country with the world’s third-highest infant mortality rate and is so isolated that when the NATO invasion began, most Afghans didn’t even know the 9-11 attacks had occurred or why their country was suddenly under attack.
“The Afghan people had nothing to do with 9-11 yet they paid quite a heavy price for it, from kill teams collecting Afghan body parts to the death of Afghan civilians,” she said. “… I have to ask. Did these people really have to be punished like this? Why did they pay the price for something they had nothing to do with?"
Stephanie Tang, of the SF Chapter of World Can’t Wait, spoke, saying: "We live in a country that TALKS freedom and democracy but WALKS empire and occupation, and commits grave crimes against humanity everywhere its troops and power can go… We say: NOT IN OUR NAME and we say NO MORE, American lives are not more important than the lives of anyone else on the planet! This is a basic and moral truth we have to work hard to spread throughout this whole society. We who live here cannot allow the government (whether under Bush or Obama) to commit crimes against humanity behind the rotten-ass excuse that these wars and occupations and torture and imperial arrogance are about keeping Americans safe." Watch video. View more photos.
Activists in Seattle held a vigil with signs evoking the statement made by NY artists in the days right after September 11: Our grief was not a cry for endless war!
Chris Hedges: A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe
Debra Sweet: What We Should Remember from 9/11
Jill McLaughlin: Towering Lies and Hypocrisy: The White House’s 9/11 Approach to “Remembering and Recovering”
Emma Kaplan: The Bush Doctrine Is Not Over: War Crimes Continue
Sunsara Taylor: The Nation Institute Reflects On September 11th, A Tutorial in Liberal National Chauvinism
Revolution Newspaper: The Juggernaut of Empire and the Need for a Whole New World …
Revolution Newspaper: 10 BIG LIES in the U.S. “War on Terror”
Noam Chomsky: Looking Back on 9/11 a Decade Later
TIME Surprises with 9/11 Victims Not Usually Seen (video)
Margaret Kimberley: Freedom Rider: How to Remember 9/11
All this was made possible by people like you!
We are in the midst of a sustainer drive, in case you hadn’t noticed. Won’t you join us today, and sustain this movement?
Adela on Facebook writes:
And to think that while we and much of the world stood in shock as they watched the towers go down, that the Bush Regime was surmising how best they could use this to invade and carry out their global war of terror. They say 3000 died that day, what about all those that we have killed, tortured, maimed and raped in our name?
Stop the Crimes of Your Government – The World Can’t Wait! – Join me in committing an important political act – Sustain World Can’t Wait which is our collective conscience in action.
More on the history of World Can’t Wait:
Stopping torture as a key expression of
the Bush program
Spreading a culture of resistance through
the Declare It Now: Wear Orange campaign and wearing orange jumpsuits
World Can’t Wait has led the fight against torture, making it something that people nationally and internationally associate with US government policies: the Bush Regime and Obama’s refusal to bring the Bush gang of torturers to justice and his refusal to put an end to torture under his administration. As one sign of this, pictures of our waterboarding demonstrations are almost as well known as Abu Ghraib’s iconic photograph of the black-hooded prisoner on a box with electrical wires dangling from his arms.
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