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New California Anti-War Coalition
by Mark Ostapiak / January 2006 issue of Socialist Action
newspaper
As
moods deepen against the war in Iraq, a new Northern California antiwar
coalition has organized several successful meetings to give the most
far-reaching expression to the growing antiwar sentiment among U.S. troops
and the majority antiwar sentiment in the United States.
The
“Stop the War Now Coalition“ has a steering committee that includes
individuals representing 107 local and regional organizations and leading
activists.
Stop
the War activists come from many organizations that support human rights,
peace and justice, the labor movement, and civil liberties. They include
groups that back the causes of Arab-American, Muslim, Latino, and Black
rights, Military Families Against the War, Gold Star Mothers, and Iraq
Veterans Against War.
The
coalition’s adopted Statement of Purpose focuses on the demand, “End the
War in Iraq and Bring the Troops Home Now!” Additional demands call for
ending the “war at home” and express opposition to “U.S. wars and
occupations from Palestine to Haiti, from Iran to Cuba, from Afghanistan to
Venezuela.”
At
a Feb. 25 meeting, a body of almost 100 groups and leading activists voted
to endorse all national antiwar protests on March 15-22 as well as several
Northern California regional actions organized by peace and justice groups
that work with the coalition.
The
coalition’s first major event will be an antiwar conference on May 13,
tentatively at Oakland’s Laney College.
Some
50 workshops are in preparation as well as entertainment, prominent
speakers, a mass rally, and a plenary session where decisions about the
future of the coalition and proposals for future activities would be
democratically (one person, one vote) discussed and decided. Proposals
would include a mass mobilization against the war in the fall. One thousand
are expected to attend the May 13 conference.
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