The anger and frustration that millions of people all throughout the country have been feeling during Bush's second term has mostly remained at a low simmer, beneath the surface, held in check by feelings of impotence and the illusion of a Democratic savior.  This reservoir bubbled up and overflowed this spring in Berkeley. Hundreds of youth took to the streets to demand: military recruiters out of our schools and out of our communities!  Hundreds of people of conscience - lawyers, psychologists, law students, torture survivors - have been part of a growing movement to dismiss, disbar, and prosecute "torture professor" John Yoo.

The battles to shut down the Marine recruiting station in Berkeley and to fire UC Berkeley professor John Yoo have become major fault lines which have reverberated across the country and put Berkeley in the national spotlight as an epicenter of resistance to the Bush program of unending war and torture.  All summer long we will be mobilizing youth to spark a movement that can transform the national landscape.

No more sitting passively on the sidelines waiting for some politician to put an end to the dangerous direction this country is heading.  It's not going to happen!  If the Democrats really wanted to stop the war, they wouldn't keep funding it.  They just gave Bush another $162 billion!

We are the ones we've been waiting for.  Will we go down in history as the apathetic self-absorbed generation who spent the summer playing video games while our government tortured people and got ready to bomb Iran?  Or will join the resistance movement in Berkeley, changing ourselves and the world in the process? 

SPECIFIC PLANS: Volunteers will begin arriving in Berkeley July 15.  August 20 we'll be heading to Denver to put out a radical pole of opposition at the Democratic National Convention (Aug. 25-28).  Here are some of the things we will be doing before we head out there:

• "Shut Down the Recruiters" tour: Build for a Bay Area-wide tour that becomes a major political event.  People can "hook up with" the tour.  This would be a one week tour of recruiting stations and military bases around the Bay Area.  Each day we would go to two different spots, including off-the-beaten-track places like malls.  This would culminate in a large civil resistance at the Marine recruiters in Berkeley.  
• Street canvassing in Berkeley, including fundraising.  We will take out a petition calling for shutting down the Marine recruiting station.  We will also build support for the John Yoo tribunal in the Fall.  And we will find people who want to come on the "Shut Down the Recruiters" tour and to the DNC.
• Mass flyering at concerts and events all summer long.
• A musical benefit show to raise money for the DNC trip and get people onboard. 
• Youth mural project against military recruiting.
• Thursday youth gatherings.  Young people can hook up with us Thursday evenings for movies, discussion, brainstorming, and planning.  4-6pm starting July 17 at Spud's Pizza (Alcatraz and Adeline in Berkeley)
• Organize buses/vans/car caravans to the DNC.  Some youth will go early and make stops at military bases, including the notoriously right wing Christian fascist Air Force base in Colorado Springs.
  

What you can do to help make this happen:

Come to Berkeley!  If you live in the Bay Area, get involved in these exciting plans!

Intern with World Can't Wait: get school credit for fighting the power and changing the world.

Berkeley residents: house World Can't Wait volunteers from around the country.  Email us back and let us know how many people you can house and what the arrangements would be.

DONATE!  DONATE!  DONATE!  All this is going to take money.  What could be more important than helping a youth volunteer get to Berkeley and making it possible for them to be part of this summer of resistance?   Adopt an Actvist !

Several youth are ready to go make history. Your generous contribution today will make it happen!

Contact us at:

youth_students@
worldcantwait.org

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World Can't Wait on Facebook

With special guest Aaron Newman showing his new documentary film:

IRAN (is not the problem)

6:30 PM, Friday evening, June 6
The Persian Center, 2029 Durant Ave., Berkeley, CA
Map & Directions to the Persian Center 

 This important special meeting will focus on the dangerous situation with possible US attacks against Iran looming. This is a chapter meeting, open to all concerned friends and the community, to discuss urgent plans that everyone can take part in.

We'll be joined by filmmaker Aaron Newman who will screen for us his excellent new documentary "IRAN (is not the problem).” Although his film had a recent premiere screening in San Francisco, it hasn't yet been released widely. We are encouraging everyone to see it, spread it, take it to classrooms and communities and house meetings.

Ron Kovic -- the paralyzed Vietnam veteran whose autobiography was made into the Oscar-winning 1989 feature film by Oliver Stone: "Born on the Fourth of July," starring Tom Cruise -- sends his complete support to the effort to stop the recruiters in Berkeley and across the country.

We are encouraging all of our friends and supporters to read his powerful statement, posted today on "Common Dreams," forward it widely, and yes . . . go out and rent/borrow/buy "Born on the Fourth of July." And make sure you bring a couple of friends to the debate Thursday!

Here is Ron's statement:
Stopping the War Machine: Military Recruiters Must Be Confronted

A storm of controversy has erupted over recent protests against the Marines Recruiting Station in downtown Berkeley. With no end in sight to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a new war against Iran looming -- all the major presidential candidates agree on a significant expansion of U.S. military forces. What do you know about these questions? What do you think? Come hear a two-sided debate between one of the country's most well-known anti-war leaders and the military recruiters themselves. Bring your friends, your family, your opinions, and your questions.

This debate presented by The World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime!,
SF Bay Area Chapter and will be taped by KPFA 94.1 FM for later broadcast.

Wheelchair accessible

For more info, or to reserve seats, call: (415) 864-5153 or email: sf@worldcantwait.org

General Help:   Office;     415-864-5153
Housing:        MaryAnn;    510-502-8947
Food (meals):   Sabrina;    510-827-8372
Logistics:      Mike;       650-619-9273
Logistics:      Noel        415-864-5153

• the story on the recruiters "Unwelcome" in Berkeley city resolutions
• San Francisco Chronicle story
• New York Times story
• City of Arcata, CA has just begun ballot initiative for banning recruiters
  

YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

People look at all this and think of Hitler - and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.

There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight.

There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn - or be forced - to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it.

And there is a way. We are talking about something on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in the world. We need more than fighting Bush's outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history.

Acting in this way, we join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be stopped. 

This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop.

The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.