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March 19, 2006 is the 3rd anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for
Peace, and hurricane survivors' organizations (Save Ourselves, the
Peple's Hurricane Relief Fund, Common Ground Collective, Bayou Liberty
Relief, the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, C3, and others) are
organizing a five-day march and caravan along Gulf Coast Highway 90 to
demand:
(1) the immediate return of our troops from Iraq, and to call for U.S.
tax dollars to be spent on human priorities and
(2) rebuilding of the devastated Gulf Coast, under the democratic
direction of the residents of the Gulf Coast, instead of further
spending for the illegal occupation of Iraq.
We will begin in Mobile, Alabama on March 14th and end in New Orleans
on March 19th, the war's anniversay.
Hurricane Katrina is in the news again, as thousands of hurricane
survivors who were housed at hotels in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast
cities are now being summarily evicted. In New Orleans, evictees were
not even allowed to collect their belongings. The National Guard,
which was sent in at night almost as a surprise attack in conjunction
with police, was tasked to collect people's meager possessions, as
these serially-displaced residents were herded aboard buses to be
shipped off to overcrowded shelters in other cities, or left to fend
for themselves as homeless people. This looks for all the world not
like reconstruction, but a military occupation.
Concurrently, those who advise the Bush administration are not only
stubbornly adhering to the disastrous course of militarily occupying
Iraq, the same clique is now advocating military action against Iran,
and publishing enemies lists of antiwar activists even in the midst of
a domestic spying scandal.
The colonial treatment being meted out to poor people and people of
color on the Gulf Coast is mirrored in the war the same administration
is continuing against Arabs and Muslims, and vice versa.
Thousands of over-priced FEMA trailers sit unused, while residents are
refused entry into their own homes by police. The US government can
guarantee the absentee voting of a few Iraqi expatriates in a highly
questionable election in a militarily occupied nation, but make little
effort to ensure that displaced hurricane survivors can vote in
upcoming elections. Some of the same contractors who have repeatedly
been caught stealling publicly appropriated funds in Iraq were almost
immediately offered no-bid crony contracts to rebuild the Gulf Coast,
while local firms and contractors were frozen out, unless they had ties
to the admnistration. Just as camps were prepared for "detainees" who
were never given a chance at trial in Guantanamo Bay, there are now
camps being constructed for hurricane surviviors around the country.
Veterans and military families are uniting their call for peace with
the hurricane surviviors' call for justice.
If we can build cities in the desert to wage war, why can't we rebuild
cities on the Gulf Coast to deliver justice?
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