Make a difference at the National Democratic convention in Denver

For some time I’ve been showing musical videos of 1960s and 1970s protests against the Vietnam and Kampuchea wars. I Intended for the readers to notice similarities between the wars we fight today and the war torn period of the late 1960s and half of the 1970s. We have an unpopular and dangerous president who disrespects our own constitution. The economy is bad and young people feel a need to take action.
In the 1960s we had Richard Ni卐on and today we have, one of the nation’s worst presidents in history, George W. Bush. Democrat candidate Barack Obama is already beginning to back-pedal on the war. So, as with the Democratic Convention of 1968, where Democrats ignored war protesters, we may have a repeat of something similar to
“Don’t ask Jack to help you,
He’ll just turn the other way” from the song Chicago" by Graham Nash

So this year the World Can’t Wait organization is planning it’s own demonstrations next week as the Democratic Convention in Denver. -史蒂夫 奥多

Their plans are:

The Democratic Convention starts a week from Monday. The political battle over whether anti-war sentiment will get expressed in a mass way on the streets there is intensifying on both sides:
Tom Morello, Daniel Ellsberg, Howard Zinn, and Camilo Mejia (courageous Iraq war resister and leader of Iraq Veterans Against the War) have signed a Call to Come to Denver. We are out to make August 24 the biggest anti-war march there since Vietnam. This letter - an effort to unify the movement based on the need to resist and stop the war and not temper our demands in order not to anger the Democrats - is still circulating. Sign it here and send it on!
How does this protest happen? People in Denver are housing 50+ World Can't Wait organizers who are getting to Denver at their own expense. Materials and signs are being produced; event venues rented where they are not donated; and vans rented where they're not borrowed. Simply said, No one funds this effort but YOU. Donate online now, or send a check ear-marked "Denver." See tax deductible details below**.
Rage Against the Machine is playing a free show Wednesday August 27 at the Denver Coliseum. At the DNC in 2000, in Los Angeles, Rage was playing a concert (in a cage!) for 8000 people when the police attacked. It was a police riot. In 2004 Rage had broken up, so the fact that they're back together and playing for the protest is beautiful. (see their comments below):



“Rage Against the Machine Denver 8-27-08
Interviewer to Rage Against the Machine singer Zach de la Rocha: It's an election year here in the U.S. -- did that factor in to your decision to debut new music now?
Zach: I'd be lying if I said it was coincidental. I think that it's an interesting moment. The lowest approval rating in the history of any presidency -- and for Congress. There's this interesting rupture developing, and I think it's a healthy one. To watch the Democrats, who were really our only institutional obstruction to this extremely rightward swing, fall in lockstep behind this new imperial fantasy that became reality -- that was a pivotal moment. A lot of people began to question the whole nature of both parties. Now more than ever, there's a more fertile ground for artists to try to reveal the nature of both parties, who are mainly the public relations team for transnational corporations. Guitarist Tom Morello told the Rocky Mountain News in a 2007 interview "real change doesn't come from crossing your fingers and hope you get a better president next time. We've had abominable wars under Democratic administrations as well . . . It feels like we're on this train that is hell-bound and there's no way to do anything about it . . . what we fail to do now will determine the path the country goes in."
ticket info”

An important part of the battle going on the next two weeks will be over the political repression of protest, and it's already started. I wrote "Gitmo on the Platte: Secret Service, CIA, Military Plans to Suppress Protest at the DNC in Denver Please post it to other sites, and send links around to this exposure. We knew about the "freedom cages" at the Pepsi Center, and then Wednesday learned about the detention cages in a Denver warehouse that the city is preparing. Denver activists protested there Friday. There's more in the Colorado Independent.
Major news stories have warned about "massive protests" in Denver for more than a year and Denver got $50 million for security because the convention is designated a "National Security Event." If the Democrats wanted to present a different image than the police-state loving Bush regime, certainly they could. We have to ask, beyond the usual vague warnings of "terrorist threats" used to justify political repression, what are the authorities really trying to prevent? And where will all the new tools - material and organizational - go after the convention? Will all the political surveillance they gather be destroyed when no "terrorist" incidents happen? Or will they signal another leap in what World Can't Wait so correctly identified when we began in 2005, "The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come."
Remember the line that follows that in our Call? "We must act now; the future is in the balance." Never more true than now!
Sending a shout out to our friends at Come Up to Denver "The Come Up to Denver Campaign started in March 2008, when Graham Nash gave permission to Colorado activists to re-record his song "Chicago" for the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In 2008, the DNC will be in Denver. That version, "Come Up to Denver" is now a rallying cry for anti-war activists from around the country to converge on Denver for 2008 DNC to protest the war."
Here's how the song, written in 1970 when the "Chicago 8" were on trial (later all charges were overturned), ends:
We can change the world!
Rearrange the world!
It's dying - if you believe in justice
dying - and if you believe in freedom
dying - let a man live his own life
dying - rules and regulations, who needs them
Open up the door
**Send checks or money orders, payable to "World Can't Wait" 305 West Broadway #185 New York NY 10013
To make a tax-deductible donation of $100 or more in support of WCW's educational activities, please make checks out to "The Alliance for Global Justice," a 501(3)(c) organization, and designate "for WCW" in the check memo line.
Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime
World Can't Wait - http://us.mc305.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=info@worldcantwait.org - 866.973.4463 - 305 W. Broadway #185, NY, NY 10013


(I may try to make it to this event. -史蒂夫 奥多)