Ifind David Cortright's call useful but limiting. The most exciting aspect of the antiwar organizing has been its global reach. While in the anticorporate globalization movement we had already formed impressive ties with grassroots movements overseas, antiwar organizing has given us the opportunity to expand geographically to areas such as the Middle East, where we had less-developed contacts; to multiply our ranks with a dazzling array of new sectors, from city councils to women's and civil rights organizations such as NOW and the NAACP; and, most important, to merge the peace movement with the movement to fight corporate-dominated globalization.
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Time for a Taxpayer Revolt
Medea Benjamin & Arun Gupta: The bailout package isn't a compromise: it's an appalling transfer of wealth upward. Register your protest!
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Want Out of Iraq? Call Your Senator
Medea Benjamin: Don't just get angry about the continuing Iraq debacle. Pick up the phone.
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When Will US Women Demand Peace?
Medea Benjamin: Polls show large numbers of American women have grave doubts about the Iraq War: But where are they? A new campaign aims to mobilize American women for global protests March 8.
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Support Our Troops
Medea Benjamin & Gayle Brandeis: It's easy to slap a magnet on your SUV and feel like you're supporting American soldiers fighting a brutal, far-off war. But the way to really support them is to work to extricate us from the conflict.
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Response 3
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Afghan Victims Deserve US Support
Medea Benjamin & Jason Mark: This is a case where a small amount of money can go a long way toward helping thousands and enhancing our own security.
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Here at home, our greatest challenge is to make sure that our antiwar coalitions don't fall apart after the immediate crisis ends. This will involve linking opposition to the war to urgent domestic crises: teaming up with folks fighting service cuts to oppose the way military spending robs our schools, hospitals and housing programs; making common cause with immigrant and ethnic groups that have found themselves under attack in the wake of September 11; and working together with libertarians and conservatives to counter the erosion of our civil liberties.
And while Cortright is right that we must organize to get Bush out of power in 2004, let's realize that the two-party system is not working, that the Democratic leadership has blood on its hands for sanctioning this war and that we must build a multi-party system--opening the space for truly progressive parties such as the Greens--for democracy to take root in this country.
The past six months of frenetic organizing have taught us that we are indeed a formidable global force. It is through strengthening this global movement for peace and justice--a movement never before seen--that we can bring about sweeping changes in who makes decisions for our global community and in whose interests those decisions are made. It is through flexing the muscle of the new superpower--world public opinion--that we can, in the long term, challenge the dominant corporate and military powers that dragged us into this bloody war.
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