April twentieth will mark a turning point for America. Seriously. Let us take a look at the world before September 11. It was one of gross economic inequality between the richest few in the world and the majority of the world. It was a planet where the top billionaires made half the people of the earth slowly die on less than two dollars per day. Where economic inequality in the First World was growing year by year. A world where the environment was being destroyed. These were the objective conditions which lead to a rise of protest across the US and Europe. Students and shop-stewards linked arms from Seattle to Quebec to Genoa, millions participating in the Global Justice Movement. The world after September 11 looks worse. Not only is America in a recession, but we are engaged daily in an illegitimate war that has killed over three thousand innocent Afghans and more working class American soldiers by the hour. Every bomb Bush builds is money he steals from the Medicare, Medicaid, welfare assistance, school funding. He steals to kill. His war is murder both for the civilians of other countries and for those of us back home. And all his roads lead to Iraq: to spending more money and killing more civilians so that Shell can set up its dream pipeline. That’s why all of our roads lead to Washington, D.C. The Global Justice Movement that was born in Seattle is back. The proof is last February in New York where well over ten thousand individuals-many still reeling from the tragedy of the twin towers-took to the streets demanding that the city be rebuilt for people, not for profit. Now the same bosses that make up the World Economic Forum (which met in NYC)-the same bosses who are earning millions in Bush’s tax cut and military deals for his endless war-are meeting in Washington But all our roads lead to Washington; the same Neo-Liberal policies that lead to the debt cycle are the same policies of deregulation and privatization that Bush and his cronies are forcing upon Americans by measures such as huge tax cuts for the rich and the shredding of any social safety net. In Washington, roads will collide as those who say there is no alternative to a world of war and poverty will be chanted down by those who say another world is possible. I will be in Washington. You should be, too. Exciting stops before April 20 also approach. This Wednesday we will have an incredible panel of speakers in Billings (radical organizers, a man exonerated from racist death row and an Anti-War activist who had a family member die in the 9/11 attacks. In late March, students will attend a major conference in New York and also, in early April, there will be state-wide Anti-War rallies.
