Source: itstimetoresist
October 7, 2017
For decades, determined activists around the world have been resisting occupation, militarism, and foreign military bases on their lands. Their struggles have been courageous and persistent. Uniting our resistance into a global action for peace and justice will make our voices louder, our power stronger and more radiant.
This fall, during the first week of October, we invite your organization to plan an anti-militarism action in your community as part of the first annual Global Action Against Military Bases. As we resist together to abolish war and stop the desecration of Mother Earth, we create a world where every human life has equal value and a safe environment in which to live. This is the beginning of an annual effort that will better unite our work and make our connections with each other stronger.
Will you join us in this global effort?
Background:
On October 7, 2001, in response to the events on September 11, the United States and Great Britain launched the “Enduring Freedom” mission against Afghanistan. These military forces began their assault on a country already battered by the Soviet invasion and years of a devastating civil war. Following 9/11, a new doctrine of Permanent Global Warfare was established, and its destabilizing impacts have drastically worsened since that fateful day.
We live in an increasingly more volatile world with ever expanding global wars. Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan are just some of the hot spots. War has become a strategy for global domination. This perpetual state of war is having a devastating impact on our planet, impoverishing communities and forcing massive movements of people fleeing from war and environmental degradation.
Today, in the Trump era, global warfare is intensifying rapidly.
The US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreements accompanies a destructive energy policy that ignores science and eliminates environmental protections, with consequences that will fall heavily on the future of the planet and all who live on it.
The use of such weapons as the MOAB, “the mother of all bombs,” clearly shows the ever more brutal course of the White House. In this framework, the richest and most powerful country, which possesses 95% of the world’s foreign military bases, regularly threatens military intervention against other major powers. This pushes Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other countries to grotesquely expand their own militaries, leading to worsening global tensions and instability.
It is time to unify all those around the world who oppose war.
We must build a network of resistance to US bases, in solidarity with the many years of active resistance movements in Okinawa, South Korea, Italy, the Philippines, Guam, Germany, England, and elsewhere.
On October 7, 2001, the world’s richest country began its perpetual military assault and occupation of Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest nations. We propose the week of October 7, 2017 as the first annual GLOBAL ACTION AGAINST MILITARY BASES.
We invite all communities to organize solidarity actions and events sometime during the first or second week of October. Each community can independently organize a resistance that meets their own community’s needs. We encourage community organizing meetings, debates, public speaking events, vigils, prayer groups, signature gathering, and direct actions. Each community can choose its own methods and locations of resistance: at military bases, embassies, government buildings, schools, libraries, public squares, etc. To make this possible, we need to work together as a united front, giving strength and visibility to every initiative. Together we ARE more powerful.
As Albert Einstein said: “War cannot be humanized. It can only be abolished.”
Will you join us? Let’s make this possible, together.
With the deepest respect,
First signatories
NoDalMolin (Vicenza – Italy)
NoMuos (Niscemi – Italy)
SF Bay Area CODEPINK (S. Francisco – USA)
World Beyond War (USA)
CODEPINK (USA)
Hambastagi (Solidarity Party of Afghanistan)
STOP the War Coalition (Phiilippines)
Environmentalists against War (USA)
Cosponsored by Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space A FORAS – contra a s’ocupatzione militare de sa Sardigna CISDA (Coordinamento Italiano di Sostegno alle Donne Afghane)