Crawford Action Inspires Move for Student Strike, Sep 26
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Green Democrats Correspondent (activ-l) - Aug 18, 2005
This just came off the Crawford Peace House yahoo group. I don't know
anything else, but what is in this message.
source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crawfordpeacehouse
Nationwide STUDENT STRIKE!! Sept. 26
START SPREADING THE WORD!!!!!
Backed by Noam Chomsky and more than 100 other professors so far...a
call has been put out by a fabulous guy in OR for a student strike on
Sept. 26 - a damn fine birthday present to me, I might add! ;)
And nicely coordinated with the D.C. action so students can have more
leeway to go to DC that weekend.
The brainchild of this effort puts this in line with Cindy's efforts,
but seeks to begin to transfer the focus "from Texas to the nation's
300-plus Pentagon-dependent universities." (see bottom--and I'm sure he
isn't trying to "transfer the focus" away from the military families so
much as start to give all these new people coming 'out' into the
movement a target to focus their loss and anger on, besides Bush)
------------------------------
September 26, 2005
President George W. Bush, The White House
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Department of Defense, The Pentagon
President Nils Hasselmo, Association of American Universities
Governor Ted Kulongoski, State of Oregon
President Dave Frohnmayer, University of Oregon
Dear Public Servants,
As University of Oregon's first graduate student in the field of Peace
Studies, it is my responsibility to explore the role of the military in
society and those conditions that most promote peace and human welfare.
In so doing, I have come to understand the nature of America's war
industry, and how that industry has flourished in the wake of the Cold
War. I have come to find that more than 300 of our universities are
developing weapons for the Department of Defense, and that these schools
are increasingly reliant on the industry of war to sustain their
education programs. Indeed, the Association of American Universities
appears to be little more than a lobby for such funding.
As a person of good conscience, I have learned too much about the
business of war to remain silent about its overwhelming encroachment in
our schools, communities, and global life systems. In promoting this
encroachment, I do not believe that you serve in the interest of
prosperity and security for the common people. By your consistent
actions, in fact, it is abundantly clear that you believe America's top
priority is profit from the business of war, not the general welfare of
its people.
When America was born a people-first country, the concept of freedom
spread rapidly throughout the world without military force. The vision
of our Founders was to advance the notion of people living in peace
using the freedom that nature provides upon birth. You may feel at
peace with yourselves, but I believe you are acting as businessmen
instead of servants. And in honoring our Founding principles, I must
proclaim that to exploit the fears and prejudices of the common people
to maintain the flow of profits from conflict-to perpetuate a state of
war for personal gain-is treasonous to our creed.
You say this is a peace-loving nation when you know it is not; America
is by far history's greatest peddler of arms, and your business is
making war everyone else's business. The people, under this set of
priorities, are an expendable resource, and on behalf of those who
founded this country and those whose lives stand in peril today-thus,
on behalf of all Americans-I reject the notion of our servants serving
only themselves and war profiteers.
Therefore, I feel compelled to strike in peaceful but vociferous
opposition to your priorities until our national policies reflect our
priorities and serve the rights and needs of the common people.
I am a dedicated scholar and University of Oregon alumnus. But I refuse
to study inside the classroom of any school that sells itself to the
war industry, and I will stand outside and speak my heart as strongly
as possible to highlight the obvious hypocrisy that you promote. For I
fear that if I do not, America and other countries are very likely to
suffer and fall as a result of your cold determination to saturate with
weapons a world that stands on the verge of resource depletion.
Developing weapons at our institutions of enlightenment contradicts the
inherent purpose of learning. How will we ever learn peace while making
war in our schools?
I hereby submit to you this petition for peaceful priorities.
Dutifully, Brian D. Bogart
bbogart@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Multicultural Studies Certificate,
US-Japan Relations, Lewis and Clark College,
Portland 1995 International Studies Certificate, Waseda University,
Tokyo 1996
B.A. Japanese History, University of Oregon 1997
M.A. Candidate, Peace Studies, University of Oregon
Sponsors of this action include:
Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Franklin W. Stahl
Professor Emeritus of Biology
University of Oregon
Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Sociology Department/Project Censored
Sonoma State University
(names removed for space)
***
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9831.htm
Strike A Match for Cindy Sheehan
America Programmed for War: Cause and Solution
"What one generation perceives as repression, the next accepts as a
necessary part of a complex daily life."
By Brian Bogart
A single policy decision made in secluded chambers of the White House
shortly after World War II explains why our financial and intellectual
creativity focuses on lethal technologies, why 51% of our taxes go to
defense and less than 5% to education, why there are 6000 military bases
in the United States and 1000 US bases overseas, why comprehensive
agendas support war fighting and weak agendas address human services
and the environment, and why our top industry since 1950 remains the
manufacture and sale of weapons.
*
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