Joe Lombardo and Marilyn Levin / United National Antiwar Coalition – 2019-01-06 17:00:05
Special to Environmentalists Against War
ACTION ALERT: Honor MLK and Say “No to NATO”
Joe Lombardo and Marilyn Levin / United National Antiwar Coalition
(January 6, 2019) — The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) has initiated a call for a demonstration in Washington, DC on Saturday, March 30, 2019 to protest the fact that NATO leaders will be coming to DC on April 4, 2019 to hold a “celebration” of NATO’s 70th anniversary.
April 4 is also the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the date, a year earlier, of Dr. King’s famous antiwar speech delivered at the Riverside Church.
The call to action against NATO, War and Racism has now been joined by a broad section of our movement. Please see the list of steering committee members at the end of this email. If you have not already done so, we urge you to go to the website, http://no2nato2019.org and endorse the action as an organization or individually and forward the call to your own email lists to get more endorsers and to start getting the word out about the demonstration.
ACTION: Please also join and share the Facebook event for the mobilization
In peace and solidarity,
Joe Lombardo and Marilyn Levin, UNAC co-coordinators
A Call for National Mobilization to
Oppose NATO, War, and Racism
April 4, 2019, will mark the 51st anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the internationally revered leader in struggles against racism, poverty and war.
And yet, in a grotesque desecration of Rev. King’s lifelong dedication to peace, this is the date that the military leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have chosen to celebrate NATO’s 70th anniversary by holding its annual summit meeting in Washington, DC This is a deliberate insult to Rev. King and a clear message that Black lives and the lives of non-European humanity, and indeed the lives of the vast majority, really do not matter.
Since its founding, the US-led NATO has been the world’s deadliest military alliance, causing untold suffering and devastation throughout Northern Africa, the Middle East and beyond. Hundreds of thousands have died in US/NATO wars in Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yugoslavia.
Millions of refugees are now risking their lives trying to escape the carnage that these wars have brought to their homelands, while workers in the 29 NATO member-countries are told they must abandon hard-won social programs in order to meet US demands for even more military spending.
Dr. King’s words linking the three evils of American society: Militarism, Racism and Poverty, and his deeply profound remark that every bomb that falls on other countries is a bomb dropped on our inner cities, reveal the deep-rooted relationship between militarism and the social, racial, economic and environmental injustices that now impoverish whole cities and rural communities and have plagued our society and the world for a long time.
It was exactly one year before he was murdered that Rev. King gave his famous speech opposing the US war in Vietnam, calling the US government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world†and declaring that he could not be silent.
We cannot be silent either. As Rev. King taught us, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Every year NATO has held its summits, people around the world have organized massive protests against it: in Chicago (2012), Wales (2014), Warsaw (2016), Brussels (2017 & 2018) — and 2019 will be no exception.
We are calling for a peaceful mass mobilization against this year’s NATO Summit in Washington, DC, on Saturday, March 30. Additional actions will take place at the opening of the NATO meeting on April 4.
We ask you to make every effort to join with us in Washington DC, or, if not possible, organize a rally or demonstration in your area. We need to show, in the strongest possible way, our opposition to NATO’s destructive wars and its racist military policies around the world.
We also invite you to add your, and/or your organization’s name to the list of supporters of the anti-NATO, Anti-War and Anti-Racism mass actions in Washington DC. Please go to the web site at http://no2nato2019.org to add your organizational or individual endorsement of the action or to make a donation to build the action.
You can also contact us by email: Contact@No2NATO2019.org.
Thank You.
Steering Committee for the
March 30th Anti-NATO Mobilization:
Bahman Azad, Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases
Ajamu Baraka, Black Alliance for Peace
Leah Bolger, World Beyond War
Alison Bodine, Mobilization Against War and Occupation
Gerry Condon, Veterans For Peace
Miguel Figueroa, Canadian Peace Congress
Sara Flounders, International Action Center
Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance
Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ
Madelyn Hoffman, US Peace Council
Tarak Kauff, Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases, Veterans For Peace
Marilyn Levin, UNAC
Joe Lombardo, UNAC
Tamara Lorincz, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Jeff Mackler, West Coast UNAC
Alfred L. Marder, US Peace Council
Sarah Martin, Women Against Military Madness
Nancy Price, WILPF-US Section
Paul Pumphrey, Friends of the Congo
Cindy Sheehan, March on the Pentagon
Paki Wieland, CODEPINK
Phil Wilayto, Virginia Defenders
Ann Wright, Veterans For Peace, CODEPINK
Rev. Bruce Wright, Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign and Refuge Ministries
Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance
