Community Forum: One War, Many Fronts: The U.S. Role
in the Middle East and in Central and South America
(Simultaneous translation in Spanish to be provided)

7:30 p.m., Friday, December 14, 2001

St. Stephen’s Church Parish Hall
1525 Newton St., N.W.

Five blocks north of the Columbia Heights Metro Station (Green Line)
(Entrance is at the left rear of the church off the small
parking lot near the northeast corner of 16th and Newton)

Presenters:

Hussein Ibish, Communications Director, the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee
Philip Wheaton, Episcopalian Priest, Founder of Central and South America
Solidarity Networks, Writer on Social Justice Issues in Central and South
America and on Liberation Theology
Sonia Umanzor, Nurse and Human Rights Activist, U.S. Latino/a Community
Stephanie Reich, Middle East Researcher, Co-coordinator, D.C. Coalition to
Stop the War against Iraq

Sponsored by the D.C. Coalition to Stop the War against Iraq (202-452-7454)

Endorsers (list in formation): All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party;
Conversion for Reclaiming Earth in the Americas (CREA); Black Radical
Congress; D.C. Anti-War Network (DAWN); Education for Peace in Iraq Center
(EPIC); Gray Panthers of Washington, D.C.; Guatemala Human Rights
Commission; Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee; International Socialists
Organization (ISO); Jon Liss, Tenants and Workers Support Committee (org.
for purposes of identification only); Middle East Solidarity Group (MSG);
National Welfare Rights Union; Network in Solidarity with the People of
Guatemala (NISGUA); Nicaragua Network (NicaNet); Peoples Tribune Newspaper;
Peter Maurin Center, a Catholic Worker Project; Social Action and Leadership
School for Activism (SALSA) of the Institute for Policy Studies; Washington
Peace Center


As those who have lost family, friends, and fellow human beings in the
plane-bombings of Sept. 11, 2001, we share in mourning those tragic deaths.
To best honor those who have died and are dying, we must act to prevent
more loss of life, both of civilians and soldiers, both here in the U.S. and
around the world. We must examine critically the present and historical
relationship of US policy to the causes and patterns of violent conflict.
Globally-coordinated grassroots struggles for economic and social justice
will create the conditions for lasting peace. Awareness of the common
features in our varied struggles will help us to forge unity.

This forum will examine some of the direct connections and parallels
between the conditions of exploitation and resistance in the Middle East and
in South and Central America. U.S. military invasions and sanctions
campaigns, driven by the quest for corporate profit and waged under the
guise of wars against communism, terrorism and/or drugs, have cost millions
of lives in these areas of the world in recent decades. In return for
critical subsidization of its military and economy ($4.5 billion a year/$13
million a day) Israel has supplied arms and training as a military proxy for
the U.S. in the Americas as well as in other areas of the world. As
revealed during the Contragate scandals, arms sales to the Middle East have
helped the US fund counterinsurgency against popular movements in Central
America, while control of Middle Eastern oil generally enables the US to
repress movements for democracy and economic justice in the Americas as
elsewhere. The U.S. arguably used the invasion of Panama as a dress
rehearsal for the 1991 Gulf War. While training state terrorists and
torturers in the School of the Americas and funding the notorious Israeli
security forces and repressive forces of Arab client states, the U.S.
denounces all impoverished Arabs and Latinos/as who resist as “terrorists”
who despise “American democracy”! The U.S. persists in testing weapons
coated with depleted uranium in Vieques, while DU contamination causes
cancer and birth defects in Iraq. Sanctions hurt Cubans and Iraqis
severely.

Latino/a residents of the U.S., as well as Middle Eastern and South Asian
residents, are facing increasing brutality and repression in the wake of
Sept. 11th. Poor and working people here are being mobilized for a “war”
that will go on “everywhere,” “for many years,” our heralded civil liberties
are vanishing, the global environment faces destruction, and our tax dollars
are flowing into “security” and military coffers instead of into urgently
needed programs for full employment, healthcare, housing, education, and
social services.

Peace through social justice! US Out of the Middle East! Stop the
Bombings, Sanctions, and aid to Israel! No to Plan Colombia! US Out of
Vieques! No Blockade on Cuba! No to U.S. racism and exploitation from the
Americas to the Middle East!