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A (brave?) New World

Omar Shariff

 

I know I am just one person, but I believe that my words have weight. Thank

you for listening.

 

The world changed on September 11th. Or at least this is what they tell me.

I suggest that perhaps the world hasn't changed, so much as America has

realized what many people in the world go through. In the end, that might be

change enough. Americans now know what it is like to live in fear or

terrorism, and let us not be so ignorant as to believe that sovereign

nations are not terrorists. For years, I remember trying to get people to

care about the issue of sweatshops, and people thought the suffering was

just something that had to happen, as with so many other modern day horrors

that many Americans ignore.

Still, this is not the time for activists to say, " I told you so. " This is

the time to ask people all over the world to open their eyes, to make them

realize that " injustice anywhere " really IS " injustice everywhere " , that

once you don't care about someone's suffering, someone else is just as

unlikely to care about yours. Bush wants people to go back to their daily

lives, to believe that he and the US government can catch and eliminate

terrorism. And so we as Americans are willing to ignore the pleas of the UN

to save the lives of 7.5 million innocent Afghans. If we want justice, how

can be so unjust in the pursuit of it? Because we want to be safe, to once

again ignore the world. That can't happen, that shouldn't happen, and we

cannot let it. Even now, disturbing actions of a conservative US government

continue to leak out, and in one of the most bizarre moves Ashcroft seems

willing to suspend every Amendment but the Second. The strangeness of events

surrounding Sept. 11th, and the possible direct involvement of major

corporations and perhaps even the US government itself is horrifying.

The burden of making people listen falls to us, the protestors who want a

truly better world, to not allow a return to a status quo that will only

cause the deaths of more people, American and otherwise. Not even a status

quo, but a horrifying new America, where apparently not everyone is equal,

least of all anyone who could be Muslim.

We as activists have always struggled to get people to pay attention to the

suffering around the world. Or so we were willing to believe. We thought we

spoke for those who could not speak for themselves, and we were proud of it.

Yet the people of America did not listen, did not join us in the streets.

And while I applaud the brave nature of everyone who battles for peace in

places around the world, I must ask if we too did not fail? The protests in

Seattle became a nightmare, where people saw the activist community as

destructive maniacs. In DC, I was disgusted to watch the lack of cohesion,

the petty arguments between protestors, the loss of the message in the

confused desperation to display one's particular cause. Yes, freeing those

wrongly imprisoned such as Mumia is important, as is trying to protect sea

turtles. But we won't win the day with only puppets and picket signs that

have catchy phrases calling for an end to money.

People will simply laugh at our foolishness, and say how protesters just

need something to complain about. Marching down the streets at 4:00 am

shouting and screaming is not going to make the person who you want to

listen happy. Spray painting anarchy symbols on American flags will

definitely not bring people to our side, especially after September 11th. We

want the people, because we seek a revolution of the people. We want people

to think about global peace and justice, but because they don't agree with

us doesn't make them sellouts or servants of " The Man " . We decry the

military and the police and yet it is they who protect the freedoms we use

in our cause. Just because certain rights are inalienable doesn't mean we

don't owe a debt to those who allow us to keep them. I have friends in the

military and formerly in law enforcement, and they are not fascists or

racists. They're people. As one policeman said at the DC protest two years

ago, " We don't know anymore than you do. We're just pawns. " Perhaps its time

we gave those who keep us safe some credit. Realize that even an assassin

trained in the School of Americas might be some inner city child who wasn't

given anything by his country but an ROTC scholarship so he could die in

another country instead of in his backyard. Does this make their work right?

No, but hate the sin, not the sinner.

Don't worry, I'm not just writing to complain. Next year, we will have more

actions in DC, one meant to tell Bush that all Americans aren't behind him,

which is ridiculous for him to say, knowing that over one thousand of them

are being detained mysteriously by Ashcroft though the charges are not

disclosed. Suddenly, the country is forgetting that studies show there will

be a massive drop in the teaching force of our nation, that around 1 million

of our children are homeless, that rural America was never doing well even

in the Clinton years. (We measure our economy by the stock market, thus

ignoring the welfare of many citizens who aren't well represented in Wall

Street.)

All Americans can think about is the next bomb, the next virus. And so we

are willing to fight a war on terrorism, willing to believe that protestors

in other countries are just jealous of American power, and to be patriot one

must naturally support Bush. The country will hate us for the protests, and

I personally believe there could be a riot, as angry citizens become unable

to watch people with upside down flags walk around the streets hating

America. If we bring out the mocking puppets, the smart-ass slogans, the

spray paint and all the other instruments of chaos, we will be heckled,

attacked, jailed, gassed and worse as the American public cheers at our

failure. Worse, we will have done it all for nothing.

It's time for us to grow up. What we need to do is remind -and in some cases

even teach--Americans of the truth. We need to remind them that it was the

CIA that trained Bin Laden, and if we need to arrest someone, maybe we

should check Bush Senior's involvement in that debacle. We need to remind

them of the Red Scare, of the internment camps. We need to ask them who is

supporting the poor who have been laid off by drops in tourism, by the

economic plummet in NYC. We need to talk to them, not scream at them. We

need to stop mocking them as unenlightened pawns of the corporations and

government, and we can't just tell them to have " a world of sharing " as a

solution. They will want to know how to keep their children safe, and we

will have to try to show them that Bush's way will only put them in more

danger. We need to explain why Ashcroft is insane and cruel, and how even

the White House doesn't seem to fully know what he is doing. This can't be

done by making a giant puppet of the Attorney General with horns on it or

with little comics or pictures as stupid looking as the ones fundamentalist

Christians pass around. This isn't the time to vent out our frustrations at

not fitting into society, to let loose our destructive angst. Because for

once, people might just be willing to pay attention, if we are intelligent

and can give them something they can believe in. We have, by the sacrifice

of the September 11th victims, and all who came before them, the unique

opportunity. This is the chance to open the eyes of the American people, so

that they may take up the ideals of America and act as responsible citizens

of a democracy that claims that all are created equal.

We need pamphlets, we need banners and posters with facts instead of cute

phrases and pictures, and we need to be solemn in remembrance of the victims

of September 11th and the Afghan Bombing. We shouldn't just blockade

streets, we should feed the homeless and help work on schools (The Divine

knows DC needs it). That sounds crazy doesn't it? But it will get people's

attention, it will help us to actually identify with the poor, as so many of

us are upper middle class men, often white, who are distance from those we

want to aid. If you want to over turn cars or go toe to toe with the police,

find another way to let go of your anger. If you want to help people around

the world, start by helping your neighbor.

Don't get me wrong. We SHOULD stand together, we SHOULD block streets, and

we NEED to show people that maybe this War on Terrorism isn't such a great

idea. We have to be what we always strive to be, the conscience of a nation

where the media distorts the truth and the government just lies. We need to

gather and use our numbers to speak in a way that will make Americans

listen. I do this because I am a patriot, and this is the only way to begin

an end to war and terrorism, by creating a world where people don't feel the

need to hate the world's only superpower. September 11th showed that all of

us, in America and the world, must act in a way that puts aside our selfish

desire and truly pursues the goal of a just peace.

If this means that when we're all in DC next February, we have a vigil for

the fallen soldiers, so be it. If we paint some schools and put up a couple

playgrounds, even better. If we help at shelters, soup kitchens, etc, we may

get some understanding of who we are trying to help, and what they really

want. If nothing else, we need to establish solidarity with those who are

victims here, those affected by the bombing and those who have lost their

jobs after it. We need to use the truth, to let people know what their

Government is doing under the cover of a war on terrorism. We need to remind

them that THIS IS NOT AMERICA, and simply by quoting the Founding Fathers we

can show that this isn't the way they envisioned the nation.

We were selfish, childish, and destructive, and the time for that has

passed. It's not about us, it was never meant to be about us, and now it

can't be about us ever again.

It's about starving children, people in burning buildings, and citizens in a

nation called America that don't really know the atrocities its government

has committed. So lets really try to talk to the citizens of the great

experiment that is America. The lives of millions may, and already does,

depend on it.

 

I thank you all for what you do, and I hope you heed my words.

 

Omar Shariff

 

" They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety

deserve neither liberty nor safety. "

- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

 

" Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired

signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,

those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending

money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its

scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in

any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross

of iron. "

----------Dwight D. Eisenhower

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