The theme was consistent: If only America would do things differently, Saddam, bin Laden, and other such barbarians would no longer want to blow us off the globe.
Every rally has its superstars, of course, and this was no exception. It was now time to hear from the mastermind of the Tawana Brawley fraud; the man whose vile rhetoric and frivolous charges of racism are legendary; the man who referred to the late Khalid Muhammad, whose racist diatribes were even too incendiary for Louis Farrakhan to condone, as “a very articulate and courageous brother.”
Yes, Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton stepped to the podium to warn that Bush “is pursuing a manifest destiny plan that will not secure America, but will put the whole world at risk.” It is wrong, he said, “to send our children to foreign soil to protect oil interests.” It is immoral, he emphasized, for Bush to pursue his “philosophy of international domination.”
Another well-known speaker who addressed the crowd was Ruth Messinger, the former Manhattan borough president and unsuccessful mayoral candidate. “A war [with Iraq] will cost us $200 billion,” she said, money that would be better spent on education, housing, and environmental protection.
She did not, however, discuss any environmental hazards that could result from a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack against our country. America’s war chest, she said, could “feed the 30,000 children around the globe who die from hunger every day” — an assertion that earned her a loud ovation. No one seemed to care that the U.S. already provides fully 60 percent of food aid around the world. Such details would only have spoiled their rollicking hate fest.
Before long, it was time for the denunciations of U.S. foreign policy to expand far beyond the borders of Iraq. Harry Belafonte took the occasion to condemn America’s past military actions specifically in Vietnam, Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, “and many [other] places in the world.” Thereafter, two speakers representing New York’s People of Color Against War extended their “warm, militant greetings” to the crowd, and spoke about “the impact of U.S. militarism on freedom in the Philippines.” A Colombian woman named Vividad Cordoba proclaimed, “I’m coming from a country that is a victim of U.S. foreign policy.”
Still another speaker blamed America for its “unjust” policies in “Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Grenada, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia.” The director of the Southern Peace Research and Education Center said that not only should the U.S. not attack Iraq, but that it was now time to put the Saddam issue behind us and “lift the sanctions on the Iraqi people.”
America’s “three vices [of] militarism, materialism, and racism,” she said, preclude our country from claiming any moral authority to decide who should possess the weapons of genocide.
New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman focused more on perceived domestic atrocities. “We are here today to talk about the other war,” she said, “the Bush administration’s undeclared war on our civil liberties.” With that, the crowd erupted with cheers.
A Florida woman shared her own story of oppression as well. “I can tell you as a Jewish woman, a grandma….It’s not just the black people who were denied their [voting] rights in Florida.”
A homeless New Yorker took the microphone and expressed her deep concern “about the war on poor people in this country, the war on working people in this country.”
The day’s loudest, most frenzied greeting was reserved for the infamous Communist and black revolutionary “Sister Angela Davis,” as she was introduced. Describing herself as a former “political prisoner” in the United States, Davis mocked Colin Powell’s recent assertion before the UN Security Council “that he represented the world’s oldest democracy.”
