CHOMSKY:

For your information . . .

F. Leon

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Thirteen Reasons to Protest at Bush's Inauguration On Jan. 20
<http://www.iacenter.org/j20_eleven.htm>

In Spanish <http://www.iacenter.org/j20_eleven.htm#es>

On Jan. 20, thousands of people will march and rally to protest  at George
W. Bush's inauguration in Washington and San  Francisco. We will be
demonstrating against the incoming Bush  administration and its racist,
sexist, anti-gay, militaristic, anti- labor and pro-big business policies.
Bush claims to be a  "compassionate conservative," but his real
"compassion" is  reserved for the giant pharmaceutical, oil, banking and
other  corporations.

We call for a profound social transformation, to a society  where people's
needs come before profits, where every  person has the right to a
good-paying job, decent housing,  health care, education, childcare and a
clean environment.   We call for freedom for death-row activist, author
and prisoner  Mumia Abu-Jamal, Native leader Leonard Peltier and all
political  prisoners.  We cannot rely on the Democratic Party--Clinton
led the charge in demolishing social welfare programs, bombing  Yugoslavia
and keeping the deadly sanctions against Iraq--or  on the corrupt
corporate elections.

Only a mass people's movement can bring real change, as  has always been
true. Jan. 20 can be an important step in  building this movement, one
which links together workers,  students, people of all nationalities,
women, lesbian, gay, bi  and trans people, immigrants, the disabled,
seniors and  youths.

There are many reasons to join the Jan. 20 counter-inaugural  protests.
Here are a few:

(1)  Bush will become president only due to massive racist
disenfranchisement and voting fraud. Not only in Florida, but  also across
the country, African American votes were  disproportionately thrown out.
Hundreds of thousands of  potential voters, especially in Black, Latino,
Native American  and poor white communities, have been permanently
disenfranchised (forbidden to vote) for having been convicted  of a
felony. In predominantly African American neighborhoods  from Atlanta to
Chicago to Miami, outmoded technology and intimidation led to votes being
disqualified 20-25 times as often  as in adjoining white suburbs. Afraid
to be accused of rocking  the boat, the pro-system Democratic Party
leadership refused  to raise the issue of racism during the re-count
process.

(2)  Gov. Death is moving to Washington. As governor of  Texas, Bush
presided over more executions--152--than took  place in the other 49
states combined during that time. The  death penalty is racist and
anti-poor. It must be abolished.  Bush and his chief law enforcement
official, Attorney General- designate John Ashcroft, are rabidly
pro-execution.

(3)  We must mobilize now to defend women's right to  choose. The new Bush
administration is anti-women and anti- choice. Women's right to abortion
and birth control was won in  the streets and it must be defended in the
streets. Bush and  Ashcroft are both on record as favoring a
constitutional  amendment banning women's right to choose. Ashcroft is
opposed to abortion even in cases of rape, incest or where a  woman's life
is in danger.

(4)  We need funding for universal health care, free education, afford
able housing, heat and light, childcare and union jobs, not for the
Pentagon. In the richest economy that has ever existed, the basic needs of
the entire population could easily be met. Instead of going to meet human
needs, how ever, hundreds of billions of dollars annually are spent on
destructive and wasteful militarism. The U.S. already has a bigger
military budget than the rest of the United Nations Security Council
combined.  Now Bush wants to vastly increase military spending, including
building the so-called "National Missile Defense System." The NMDS is
really an offensive rather than defensive system, and is an essential
element in a first-strike nuclear war strategy. The Pentagon, which has
spent a mind-boggling $4 trillion on nuclear weapons to date, has always
refused to renounce the first-strike use of nuclear weapons. Both Bush and
his new Secretary of Defense (War)  Donald Rumsfeld are ardent supporters
of NMDS.

(5)  The genocidal sanctions on Iraq must end. In his first speech as
Secretary of State-design ate, Colin Powell talked of "re-energizing the
sanctions on Iraq." The sanctions-blockade has already taken more than 1.5
million Iraqi lives, half of them children under the age of 5. Powell,
Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, James Baker and other George W. advisors
launched the Gulf War 10 years ago during the regime of George Bush I.
Clinton carried on the sanctions and bombing throughout his eight-year
term, and now the new Bush team wants to further step up the war against
Iraq.

(6)  Stop U.S. intervention in Colombia and all of Latin America. The
incoming Bush national security team wants to escalate U.S. intervention
in Colombia beyond even Clinton's Plan Colombia. And it's not just
Colombia--there is also the threat of wider intervention in Venezuela,
Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico and Argentina, where people are rising up
against the domination of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and
U.S. corporate domination. We must act now to stop a new Vietnam War in
Latin America.

(7)  The incoming Bush administration is filled with vicious bigots who
want to turn back the clock on gains won by lesbian, gay, bi and trans
people. Bush is allied with the bigoted religious and non-religious
extreme right who want to deny equal rights to lesbian, gay, bi and trans
people and force them back into the closet.

(8)  The 40-year war against Cuba must end. Bush, like the nine presidents
before him, wants to turn Cuba back into a colony of the U.S. as it was
before the 1959 revolution. It is time to end the blockade and aggression
against a small neighboring country and let Cuba live in peace.

(9)  The Bush administration wants to speed up environmental destruction
for the sake of corporate profits. Under Gov.  Bush, Texas ranked 50th
among states in air quality and first in toxic polluters, toxic releases,
carcinogens in the air and 13 other polluting categories. Bush put
polluting industry representatives in charge of the state's Natural
Resources Conservation Council (Texas' version of the EPA). Bush and his
nominee for Interior Secretary Gale Norton want to open the Arctic
National Wildlife Preserve to oil drilling, just a hint of what is to come
unless we mobilize now.

(10)  Support an independent home land for the Palestinian people. The
U.S. has given Israel hundreds of billions of dollars in aid over the past
50 years, aid used to repress the Palestinians. The U.S. government and
Israel are acting as a team against the Palestinians. There will be no
peace in the Middle East until there is justice for the Palestinian
people.

(11)  End U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico--U.S. Navy out of Vieques! The
Bush administration's plan for military expansion includes keeping the
island of Vieques as a bombing range.  Many Puerto Rican people have been
killed or injured, and the environment and economy of Vieques have
suffered much destruction. Now is the time to support the Puerto Rican
people in their struggle to get the Pentagon out.

(12)  Shut down the prison-industrial complex! The U.S. has 5 percent if
the world's population and 25 percent of the world's prison population.
This amounts to over 2 million people, a majority of them African
American, Native and Latino. Prisons are all about brutal repression and
super-exploitation against the poor and people of color, not
rehabilitation. The economic basis for all of this repression is profits.
Wall Street firms and banks invested an estimated $41 billion into the
expansion of private prisons last year. Prisoners are forced to work for
slave wages for high tech, manufacturing and service companies. Under the
Clinton/ Gore administration, more prisons were built than universities.
The Bush administration plans to continue this trend. A national movement
must be built to shut down these concentration camps. Our youths need
union jobs and good schools, not incarceration.

(13)  We will march on Jan. 20 to say NO to the anti-worker Bush regime.
Bush's Secretary of Labor candidate is an extreme right-winger who is
anti-civil rights, anti-women's rights, anti-lesbian and gay,
anti-disabled persons, anti- immigrant and ANTI-LABOR! Linda Chavez is the
dream Secretary of Labor--for the corporations and bosses.  Appointed by
Reagan to head the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 1983, she worked to
reverse all the gains of the civil rights movement. Chavez is opposed to
there even being a federal minimum wage.