NYCLAW Speech at NYC RNC Demo

NYCLAW Speech at NYC RNC Demo
September 2, 2004
Presented by Michael Letwin
NYCLAW Co-Convener

**To tell George Bush and the Republicans to get out and stay out of our city. **To get the U.S. get out of Iraq, Afghanistan and everywhere else – and to Bring the Troops Home Now! And we’re proud that this call has been endorsed by the largest U.S. labor unions, including: SEIU, AFSCME, APWU and CWA.

**To end U.S. support for the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine and denial of Palestinians’ right to return to their country.

**To fight for jobs, health care, education, housing, racial and economic justice – not war.

Ever since 9/11, the Bush administration has exploited our pain its gain: oil, empire, and plunder by companies like Haliburton and Bechtel. It has lied shamelessly: about phoney “WMD” and about bring “democracy” to Iraq.  But the world knows that this “war on terror” is no more than a war of terror; another Vietnam – and just as wrong.

So:

**We know that the brutal U.S. wars and occupations haven’t brought “democracy,” but rather death and injury to thousands of Afghans and Iraqis; that the true face of U.S. occupation can be seen in the systematic torture and murder practiced in the gulags of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

**We know that the same lies have killed more than 1,000 G.I.s and seriously wounded thousands more — most of whom are workers and people of color.

**We know that the war has already cost hundreds of billions of dollars, while workers and the poor at home suffer from mass unemployment, poverty, homelessness; from the lack of health care, education.

**And we know that the administration has exploited 9/11 to inflict sweeping attacks on our hard-won civil liberties, immigrant and labor rights.

And we also know that the Bush administration could not have committed these crimes without enthusiastic support from their accomplices in the Democratic Party and the media.

But this week, New Yorkers – including thousands of union members and other working people – have turned out in record numbers to say Enough!: