Call for the 2nd National Assembly of United for Peace and Justice

Because the war in Iraq represents the U.S government’s unchecked drive towards global domination, and wreaks havoc on poor and working people at home and around the world, with ramifications so drastic we can barely imagine;

Because this is a war, at home and abroad, against people of color and it must be ended in all its manifestations;

Because the majority of people in our country and throughout the world oppose the war;

Because hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been and continue to be maimed and killed; chaos and violence reign, with no end or plan in sight; because the corporate plundering of Iraqi resources must come to an end and plans for real reconstruction and meaningful reparations must be put into place;

Because thousands of U.S. soldiers are being maimed and killed and turned into killing machines; because most of them, disproportionately African American, Latino and Native American youth, were forced into the military by a poverty draft and had no other options; because they come home virtually abandoned, benefits cut, lives torn apart, bodies depleted, minds and hearts devastated;

Because the U.S. continues to support Israel’s cruel and illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and until there is a just peace between Israel and Palestine the Middle East will be volcanic; because the U.S. maintains military bases in every corner of the globe as part of the drive toward empire;

Because in this year we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hirsohima and Nagasaki and the U.S., the only nation to ever use a nuclear weapon, still leads the world’s nuclear arms race;

Because our constitution is being shredded: Arab and South Asian Muslims targeted for detention and deportation; racial profiling on the rise; people of color, young people, our elders, activists under attack; workers’ rights threatened; women and queer people scapegoated; the earth, water, air ravaged;

Because the language of reason has been kidnapped and mangled, meaning unraveled. Under the banner of a war against "terror" the U.S government practices unmitigated, multifaceted terror, with no accountability. Because Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib represent crimes against humanity, violations of the Geneva Convention and any definition of human rights;

Because our electoral system is in crisis and the very meaning of our democracy is in question...

We have come together, a vast mosaic of organizations, to resist this massive wave of destruction, to make change real for ourselves and all our children, in cooperation with similar groups throughout the world; and we have shown in a short time that we have the power to mobilize great manifestations of public determination;

Because we are living in a new time facing unprecedented challenge requiring us to work in new configurations, employing thought, risk, imagination, and understanding in ways we may not have discovered before;

Because we hold the debt and cherish the inspiration of those who carried out the idea of freedom, against great odds, before us, and walk with the weight of our particular responsibility as people living in the United States;

We call upon the groups and individuals identifying as United for Peace and Justice to come together to build the strongest, most effective, principled, creative, wide-reaching coalition to claim our democracy and create the peace with justice that history demands.

http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2675