(See below for conference registration, workshop proposal,  conference endorsement and submission of resolutions. This hotel is wheelchair accessible.)

 Say No! to the NATO/G8 Wars and Poverty Agenda

 A Conference to Challenge the Wars of the 1% Against the 99% Abroad and at Home.

 March 23-25, 2012 – Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT – One MetroNorth RR stop from NYC

 Next spring, international military, financial, and political leaders who serve the 1% at home and abroad will meet in Chicago to discuss their economic and military strategies for the planet for the coming period.

 At the invitation of the White House, the 28-nation US-commanded and largely US-financed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the G-8 world economic powers are meeting in Chicago, May 15-22, 2012.

 The NATO generals and G8 heads of state and finance ministers are the team that is imposing austerity on the working people of the world in the interest of expanding profits.  In many places, economic “reform” is enforced at the point of a gun – by drones, armies, and police.  

 In May, those of us struggling against the tyranny of the banks and the corporate elite, those of us fighting against job loss, foreclosure, cuts to education, and the restriction of our democratic rights, will march in Chicago. The authorities intend to deny us our constitutional rights to peacefully and legally protest.  We must challenge them and bring thousands to Chicago to stand in solidarity with all those fighting US-backed austerity and war around the globe.

 To plan these actions and further actions against the program of endless war that necessarily accompanies the austerity drives of the global elite, we will meet in a large national conference March 23-25 in Stamford CT. This conference will bring together activists from the occupy movements, the antiwar movement, and all the constituencies representing the 99% engaged in struggle for economic equality. We will demand that Washington Bring Our War Dollars Home Now! and use these trillions immediately for human needs.

 The conference program will feature movement leaders, educators, grassroots activists, 40 workshops, and discussion/voting sessions on an action program.  

Workshop topics include: Occupy Wall St. Movement ∞ Global Economic Crisis, Climate Crisis, and War ∞ Women and War ∞ War at Home on Black Community and the Role of Mass Incarceration ∞ War on the U.S.-Mexico Border ∞ Islamophobia as a Tool of War ∞ War and the Labor’s Fight Back ∞ The Truth about Iran ∞ Afghanistan after Ten Years of Occupation ∞ Is the U.S. Really Withdrawing from Iraq? ∞ Pakistan: How US Wars Hurt the Movements of Workers, Farmers, and Women ∞ Updates on Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Yemen ∞ What Next for the Arab Spring ∞ Occupation of Haiti ∞ U.S. Intervention in Honduras, Colombia, and the rest of Latin America ∞ Drone War and Weapons in Space ∞ Fight for Our Right to Protest ∞ Civil Liberties ∞ Guantanamo ∞ Torture and Rendition ∞ New Scramble for Africa ∞ Why Are U.S. Combat Troops in Central Africa? ∞ Somalia ∞ Control of Media ∞ Imperialism ∞ Nonviolence & Direct Action ∞ Palestine: UN Recognized Statehood or Civil Resistance ∞ Breaking the Siege of Gaza ∞ Veterans Rights ∞ Immigrant Rights and War

 A conference highlight will be the relationship between the Wars Abroad and the racist War at Home on the Black Community.  Speakers will address the massive unemployment and the New Jim Crow of mass incarceration, 24/7 surveillance, entrapment, police brutality, the prison industry, and the racist death penalty, as well as the way in which mobilizing around these issues are central to effective movement building.

To register for the conference, click here.

To register for a table at the conference, click here.

Sleeping room reservations.

Go directly to the special convention page put up by the hotel.  Click here.

http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/groups/personalized/B/BDRSTHF-UNA-20120320/index.jhtml.

To submit a resolution for the conference voting sessions, please sent it to UNACpeace@gmail.com.  Put “Conference Resolution” in the subject line of the email

To submit a proposal for a workshop, please click here. 
 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.” However, both the Israeli and the U.S. governments have admitted to covert activity in Iran. Irrespective of the actors, the assassination of law-abiding scientists living and working in Iran is a reprehensible act that should be condemned by all.

The fact is that the governments of the U.S. and Israel have declared Iran to be their enemy and have publicly stated that they will use all means possible, up to and including military attack, to stop the production of nuclear energy in Iran and to change the government of Iran. To this end, they have admitted to:
1 – Using hacking to disrupt nuclear energy facilities in Iran
2 – Conducting covert operations in Iran
3 – Deploying spy drones to Iran
4 – Imposing draconian sanctions and embargo against Iranian oil exports, banking and trade
5 – Deploying U.S. nuclear super carrier battle groups with destroyers and nuclear submarines to the Persian Gulf
6 – Threatening Iran with military attack
7 – Planning to hold in January the largest ever joint military exercises with Israel

The assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists falls within the covert activities in disrupting nuclear energy production in Iran. In addition, it works to create an atmosphere of fear among other Iranian scientists who want to work in their field of study. This is similar to the right-wing assassinations of physicians in the U.S. who perform the procedure of abortion, which is legal in the U.S. The terrorists who kill scientists aim to make it difficult for the Iranian nuclear energy industry to find scientists who would work there. However, the people of Iran have repeatedly stated their resolve to defend their right to nuclear energy.

Considering that Hillary Clinton threatened Iran with military attack, it is disingenuous for her to state that the U.S. denies involvement in any act of violence within Iran. A military attack on Iran, especially an attack on Iran’s nuclear energy facilities, would produce results similar to a nuclear attack. (U.S. Concerned Scientists report.) It would be the most violent act against the people of Iran, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

All the actions listed above, sanctioned by the U.S. government, are intended to weaken the Iranian government and economy, create an atmosphere of fear and dissatisfaction among the people, increase unrest, and decrease trust, all in the service of making it easier for a military attack on Iran. Of course, so far these actions have only strengthened the Iranian people’s resolve to protect their country against Imperialism.

Similar U.S. actions are aimed at any government which fails to submit to the U.S. corporate domination. This disobedience or defiance by Iran is its real “crime.”

It is extremely important that all international and especially U.S. antiwar and progressive organizations condemn these acts of assassination of innocent citizens as well as all forms of violent and aggressive actions by U.S. and Israel.

1- Condemn the assassination of Iranian scientists
2 – End all sanctions against Iran
3 – End covert activities inside Iran
4 – End all war threats against Iran
“No war, No Sanctions, No Internal Intervention in Iran!”
 
January 16, 2012

Defend the right to Free Speech!
 
The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations  is holding a national march, rally and conference entitled “Stop the Wars, Build the Resistance!”
 
Philly Against War, a Philadelphia affiliate of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), supports this march as a significant initiative from the Black community against US wars overseas and cut backs and repression here at home. We urge all local antiwar, social justice, and community organizations to support this march and rally.
 
The Civil Affairs Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department is denying the Black is Back Coalition a permit to march, claiming it is because they have already spent too many resources on the occupation at City Hall.
 
Philly Against War is in solidarity with the Occupy Philadelphia movement as well. The heavy police presence and surveillance at the occupation is both unnecessary and intrusive.  The recent police riot at Occupy Oakland, where police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and flash grenades at protesters, resulted in at least one serious injury, numerous arrests and the break-up of the Oakland occupation. We condemn this attack on a peaceful protest movement.
 
Denial of a permit to march is a blatant violation of the Black is Back Coalition’s civil rights.  The exercise of our free speech rights should never be contingent on the budgetary constraints of government.
 
Why a permit is necessary
 
Given the history of police repression against the Black community, Black is Back Coalition organizers feel strongly that the march requires a legal permit as a guarantee against police attempts to interfere with the march.
 
We urge all supporters of democratic rights to lend their support and solidarity for the right to free speech and to the November 5 march and rally.  Stop the Wars! Build the Resistance!

•  Peter Lems of the American Friends Service Committee
•  Oskar Castro of Military Families Speak Out
• Diop Olugbala, Independent Candidate for Mayor of Philadelphia
•  Pam Africa of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
• other speakers TBA

The program will start with yoga and tai chi.

Entertainers will include;

• Ryan Gaughan of the band Among Criminals (Antiwar Regaae Punk)
•  Doug Cox, Swahili Hip hop 
•  Brujo de la Mancha, Mexican artist with Indigenous drumming, flute and dancing
•  ”A Tribe Called Masmoudi”  bellydance group
• Darius, Spoken Word,
•  Karen and Matt, singer songwriters

Other performers TBA

OCTOBER 15 ENDORSERS & SPONSORS

Philly Against War

Brandywine Peace Community

BuxMont Coalition for Peace Action

Green Party of Philadelphia

Northwest Greens

Philadelphia ANSWER

Philadelphia Party for Socialism and Liberation

Philadelphia International Socialist Organization

 Philadelphia Socialist Action

Philadelphia Solidarity

Workers Power

Stop the Wars and Build the Resistance!

This is a call to join the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations in Philadelphia on Saturday, November 5 for a national rally, march and conference entitled “Stop the Wars and Build the Resistance.”

The U.S.-led attack on the government of Libya is the latest attempt of a dying, parasitic social system to rescue itself at the expense of the happiness and resources of the world’s peoples.

The people are fighting back – in Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Egypt and Iran in the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf.

The people are fighting back throughout the Americas – in Haiti and Venezuela and Cuba and Bolivia and Ecuador, and again in Nicaragua.

The people are also organizing in the North American concentration camps euphemistically referred to as Indian reservations.

These are the Other Wars. They are occurring against the people in the internal colonies—the Barrios and the criminalized African communities of North America, Europe and Australia.

The Other Wars are displacing millions of people on the African Continent, which has experienced hundreds of years of colonial domination, pillage and exploitation, all of which is also experienced by the millions of African people who have been displaced around the globe as enslaved captives.

The Other imperialist wars include the Africa Command or AFRICOM, the U.S. military apparatus that projects U.S. imperialist State power blanketing the entire African continent in a desperate effort to lock Africa into a permanent state of bloody, impoverished servitude.

The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations opposes these imperialist wars and supports the righteous resistance of the people in the struggles to regain their resources, sovereignty, dignity and happiness.

Stop the desperate efforts of a mortally wounded parasitic capitalist system built and sustained by the slavery, colonialism and centuries of genocide that provided the primary accumulation of capital upon which the modern imperialist system depends for its survival!

March and rally in Philadelphia on November 5 to Stop the Wars and Build the Resistance!

Stop the wars against African people in Africa, inside the U.S. and Europe and around the world! Stop the wars against the Native people, the Mexicans and so-called “Illegals.”

Stop the domestic wars against the Muslims and Arab peoples.

We are marching against all the imperialist wars. We are marching in Philadelphia because our real obligation is to stop the U.S. imperialist war machine that is headquartered in the U.S. and we understand that to stop the imperialist wars we must open up another front of resistance right here.

We are marching in Philadelphia because Philadelphia is prototypical of the war being waged against the internal colonies of the U.S. It is the city where police under the leadership of the first African mayor, dropped a bomb in 1985 that incinerated an entire African community, killing 11 men, women and children.

Over half of the more than one million people in prison in the U.S. are Africans, Mexicans and other indigenous people. Scores of political prisoners are rotting behind bars in U.S. prisons with little chance of release through normal legal processes.

In Philadelphia 72 percent of the 253,000 people stopped and searched by the police department in 2009 were African and Latino men.

Philadelphia is the city where U.S. use of mass imprisonment as a modern form of population control and colonial slavery and where the death penalty and political incarceration of colonized people is exemplified in the cases of Mumia Abu Jamal and the MOVE 9.

But the people are fighting back.

In Philadelphia, where a neocolonial black mayor has engaged in a vicious anti-African slander campaign to win white support for his reelection he is being forced to defend himself and the system from an independent campaign being waged by a real anti-imperialist candidate that is affiliated with the Black is Back Coalition.

We will draw the connection between the neo-colonial bombing of 1985 in Philadelphia by the city’s black mayor and the neo-colonial bombing of Libya in Africa by the first black U.S. president.

We are marching to change the contours of the political terrain in Philadelphia by forcing a public anti-imperialist discussion that will expose neocolonial, indirect imperialist rule used against the peoples of Philadelphia, the U.S. and the world. We are marching to demand freedom for the Cuban 5, to end the blockade of Cuba and the ongoing counterinsurgent interventions throughout South America.

However we are going beyond the traditional anti-war movement. We are not only opposing the popularly recognized wars abroad. We are not simply calling for peace. We are not pacifists; we are anti-imperialists that recognize that the way to stop the wars is to build resistance to imperialism itself.

This is a call for all anti-war and anti-imperialist activists to join with the Black is Back Coalition in Philadelphia on November 5 to open up a new front of anti-imperialist struggle capable of defeating imperialism and ushering in a new world free of war and exploitation.

Stop the Wars and Build the Resistance!