HURRICANE CARE, NOT WARFARE! Press Release: Fri Sept 23 Oakland Action

For Immediate Release
Friday September 23, 2005

Military Families, Religious Leaders, Veterans, and Students
Rally to Demand an End to the War and Resources for People’s Needs at Home
SPEAK OUT WITH THEATER, SPOKEN WORD, DANCE AND MUSIC

Actions highlight broad-based movement against military recruitment; momentum builds for weekend mass marches against the war in San Francisco, Washington, DC, and other cities across the nation.

OAKLAND, 9/21/05 – This Friday a coalition of people from all walks of life will demand money for hurricane care, not warfare at a vibrant rally featuring hip hop, samba and spoken-word performances from bay area youth and arts activists.
The rally is being held at a Chevron station to highlight the organizer’s demand that taxpayer dollars be spent on education, social services and the reconstruction of New Orleans and Iraq, instead of going to a racist war waged to protect the nation’s oil supply.

After the rally, participants will march on an Armed Forces Recruiting Center and stage a non-violent direct action to highlight the growing movement against military recruitment, and show support for war resisters, conscientious objectors, military families and troops who are against the war.

"We’re working to uproot the system behind the Iraq war in the Persian Gulf and the government made disaster in the Gulf Coast. It is time to replace racism and poverty with economic and racial justice!" says Clare Bayard, a member of the People Power Can End the War Collective. "We believe our ongoing people-powered strategy based on counter-recruitment and support for war resisters will help end the war in Iraq, and will undermine the ability of our nation to wage wars in pursuit of corporate profits and empire."

"I know from personal experience as an Army recruit and later as a counter-recruiter that military recruiters are making dishonest promises of money for job training and college. Recruiter access to our young people from Jr. high to college is at an all-time high even as recruitment numbers are at an all-time low," says Aimee Allison, a Gulf War I Conscientious Objector who was recruited at the center on Broadway, and who will be present at the action. "Standing in the way of aggressive recruitment tactics is an important way to stop the war machine in its tracks and to demand that our tax dollars be invested in education, jobs, healthcare - our own communities - and not an illegal, immoral war abroad."

Dr. Michael Kozart will be speaking about the deliberate lack of government resources in New Orleans: "Working as a healthcare professional in New Orleans until several days ago, I witnessed the failure of our government to meet the needs of its people. We need health care, not warfare, from Algiers, Lousiana to Baghdad, Iraq. As a nation we reap what we sow: when we divert money to fund senseless bloody wars abroad, we impoverish communities and people at home, rendering them all the more vulnerable to disasters like Katrina. The military industrial complex stands to profit richly from the Iraq war and the Hurricane relief effort, and this reflects a government beholden to the interests of corporations rather than communities. Halliburton is already poised to be the number one beneficiary of relief aid, adding to the blood money that it has already reaped from Iraq."

The People Power Can End the War Collective is an Oakland-based, ad hoc group of youth, students, people of faith, veterans, military families, counter recruitment and military resistance support organizations working to build a people-powered movement to end the war and occupation in Iraq.

Endorsers of the Action include Veterans for Peace-Chapter 69, Heads Up Collective, Central Committee of Conscientious Objectors, Courage to Resist, Art in Action, Naked Souls Artist Alliance, Mother Speak, Fr. Louie Vitale.

For more information, visit http://www.CourageToResist.org