A NEW STATEMENT OF CONSCIENCE

Not In Our Name

New York Times
January 23, 2005
Page 13

http://www.nion.us/NSOC/NION2wsigninfo.htm

AS GEORGE W. BUSH is inaugurated for a second term, let it not be said that people in the United States silently acquiesced in the face of this shameful coronation of war, greed, and intolerance. He does not speak for us. He does not represent us. He does not act in our name.

NO ELECTION, whether fair or fraudulent, can legitimize criminal wars on foreign countries, torture, the wholesale violation of human rights, and the end of science and reason.

IN OUR NAME, the Bush government justifies the invasion and occupation of Iraq on false pretenses, raining down destruction, horror, and misery, bringing death to more than 100,000 Iraqis. It sends our youth to destroy entire cities for the sake of so-called democratic elections, while intimidating and disenfranchising thousands of African American and other voters at home.

IN OUR NAME, the Bush government holds in contempt international law and world opinion. It carries out torture and detentions without trial around the world and proposes new assaults on our rights of privacy, speech and assembly at home. It strips the rights of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians in the U.S., denies them legal counsel, stigmatizes and holds them without cause. Thousands have been deported.

AS NEW TRIAL BALLOONS are floated about invasions of Syria, or Iran, or North Korea, about leaving the United Nations, about new “lifetime detention” policies, we say not in our name will we allow further crimes to be committed against nations or individuals deemed to stand in the way of the goal of unquestioned world supremacy.

COULD WE HAVE IMAGINED a few years ago that core principles such as the separation of church and state, due process, presumption of innocence, freedom of speech, and habeas corpus would be discarded so easily? Now, anyone can be declared an “enemy combatant” without meaningful redress or independent review by a President who is concentrating power in the executive branch. His choice for Attorney General is the legal architect of the torture that has been carried out in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib.

THE BUSH GOVERNMENT seeks to impose a narrow, intolerant, and political form of Christian fundamentalism as government policy. No longer on the margins of power, this extremist movement aims to strip women of their reproductive rights, to stoke hatred of gays and lesbians, and to drive a wedge between spiritual experience and scientific truth. We will not surrender to extremists our right to think. AIDS is not a punishment from God. Global warming is a real danger. Evolution happened. All people must be free to find meaning and sustenance in whatever form of religious or spiritual belief they choose. But religion can never be compulsory. These extremists may claim to make their own reality, but we will not allow them to make ours.

MILLIONS OF US WORKED, talked, marched, poll watched, contributed, voted, and did everything we could to defeat the Bush regime in the last election. This unprecedented effort brought forth new energy, organization, and commitment to struggle for justice. It would be a terrible mistake to let our failure to stop Bush in these ways lead to despair and inaction. On the contrary, this broad mobilization of people committed to a fairer, freer, more peaceful world must move forward. We cannot, we will not, wait until 2008. The fight against the second Bush regime has to start now.

THE MOVEMENT AGAINST THE WAR in Vietnam never won a presidential election. But it blocked troop trains, closed induction centers, marched, spoke to people door to door -- and it helped to stop a war. The Civil Rights Movement never tied its star to a presidential candidate; it sat in, freedom rode, fought legal battles, filled jailhouses -- and changed the face of a nation.

WE MUST CHANGE the political reality of this country by mobilizing the tens of millions who know in their heads and hearts that the Bush regime’s “reality” is nothing but a nightmare for humanity. This will require creativity, mass actions and individual moments of courage. We must come together whenever we can, and we must act alone whenever we have to.

WE DRAW INSPIRATION from the soldiers who have refused to fight in this immoral war. We applaud the librarians who have refused to turn over lists of our reading, the high school students who have demanded to be taught evolution, those who brought to light torture by the U.S. military, and the massive protests that voiced international opposition to the war on Iraq. We affirm ordinary people undertaking extraordinary acts. We pledge to create community to back courageous acts of resistance. We stand with the people throughout the world who fight every day for the right to create their own future.

IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY to stop the Bush regime from carrying out this disastrous course. We believe history will judge us sharply should we fail to act decisively.

Rabab ibrahim Abdulhadi, director, Center for Arab American Studies, U. of Michigan-Deaborn
James Abourezk, former U.S. senator
As`ad AbuKhalil, California State-Stanislaus
Janet Abu-Lughod, prof. emerita, New School
Michael Albert
Stanley Aronowitz
Edward Asner
Michael Avery, president, National Lawyers Guild
Russell Banks
Amiri Baraka
Rosalyn Baxandall, S.U.N.Y at Old Westbury
Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Global Exchange and Code Pink
Michael Berg
Terry Bisson
Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, playwrights, The Exonerated
William Blum, author of Rogue State
Wayne C. Booth, professor emeritus, U. Chicago
St. Clair Bourne
Yvonne Jacquette Burckhardt
Judith Butler, U. of C., Berkeley
Leslie Cagan, national coordinator, United for Peace and Justice
Jacalyn Carley
Kathleen & Henry Chalfant
Ben Chaney, president, James E. Chaney Foundation
Bell & Paul Chevigny
Noam Chomsky
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney-general
Marilyn Clement, Campaign for a National Health Program NOW
Mitchel Cohen, Green Party of N.Y.
Robbie Conal
Ry Cooder
Blanche Wiesen Cook
Clare Coss
Peter Coyote
J. Keay Davidson
Angela Davis
Diane di Prima
Muriel Dimen
Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party
Michael Eric Dyson
Luise Eichenbaum
Deborah Eisenberg
Nora Eisenberg, author of The War at Home
Daniel Ellsberg, former Defense and State Dept. official
Kathy Engel
Eve Ensler
Martín Espada
Michelle Esrick
Nina Felshin, author of But Is It Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, City Lights Bookstore
Laura Flanders
Carolyn Forché
Michael Franti
Boo Froebel
Peter Gerety
Francis Goldin
Lynn Gonzales, Military Families Speak Out-San Diego
Vivian Gornick
Jorie Graham
Wavy Gravy
André Gregory
Michelle Gross, V.P., Communities United Against Police Brutality
Marilyn Hacker
Jessica Hagedorn
Sam Hamill, Poets Against the War
Suheir Hammad
Donna J. Haraway, History of Consciousness U.C.-Santa Cruz
Christine B. Harrington, Politics and Law Program, NYU
David Harvey, Anthropology, CUNY
Rev. Louise B. Higginbotham, pastor, United Church on the Green, New Haven
Jane Hirschman
Danny Hoch
Connie Hogarth, Connie Hogarth Center for Social Action
Marie Howe
Thomas Dudley Hurwitz, verger, Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
Abdeen M. Jabara, past pres., American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Alice Jardine, Harvard
Bill T. Jones
Hettie Jones
Rickie Lee Jones
Evelyn Fox Keller, History of Science, MIT
Bill Keys, pres., Madison (WI) School Board
Barbara Kingsolver
C. Clark Kissinger, Refuse & Resist!
Hans Koning
David Korn, author of Kornshell
David C. Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World
Joel Kovel
Joyce & Max Kozloff
Zoe Leonard
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor, Tikkun magazine
Phil Lesh, Grateful Dead
Tracy Letts
Richard Levy
Raymond Lotta, author of America in Decline
Craig Lucas
Josh Lucas
Staughton Lynd
Reynaldo F. Macías, chair, National Association for Chicana & Chicano Studies
Holly Maguigan, co-president, Society of American Law Teachers
Mary Mara
Dave Marsh
Maryknoll Sisters, Western Region
Malachy McCourt
Rep. Jim McDermott, Member of Congress, Washington State
Robert Meeropol, executive director, Rosenberg Fund for Children
Robert R. Merritt, Physics Dept., Ohio State
Arnold Mesches & Jill Ciment
Susan Minot
Robin Morgan
Walter Mosley
Jill Nelson
Mike Nussbaum
Odetta
Sheldon Patinkin, chairman, Theater Department, Columbia College
Rosalind Petchesky, Hunter College & the Graduate Center-CUNY
Eric L. Peters, Ecology & Environmental Biology, Chicago State Univ.
Guy Picciotto, musician/Fugazi
Jeremy Pikser
Fred L. Pincus
Howardena Pindell
Frances Fox Piven
James Stewart Polshek
William Pope.L
Francine Prose
Jerry Quickley
Michael Ratner, pres., Center for Constitutional Rights
Reno
David Riker
Stephen Rohde, civil liberties lawyer
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Matthew Rothschild, editor, The Progressive magazine
Bernard Sahlins
Jane Nicholl Sahlins
Luc Sante
Juliet B. Schor
David Seaborg, World Rainforest Fund
Roberta Segal-Sklar, comm. dir., National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
Regina & Peter Serkin
Wallace Shawn
Sister Annette Marie Sinagra, O.P.
Zach Sklar
Michael Steven Smith
Starhawk
Tony Taccone
Studs Terkel
Mary Ann Tétreault, distinguished professor, Trinity University
Chuck Wachtel
Rosemarie Waldrop
Alice Walker
Rev. Dr. Marlene R. Walker
Naomi Wallace
Leonard Weinglass
Cora Weiss
Peter Weiss, pres., Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
Naomi Weisstein, prof. emeritus of Psychology/Neuroscience, SUNY
Cornel West
C.K. Williams
Saul Williams
Martha Wilson, founder of Art Space
Krzysztof Wodiczko, director, Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT
Barry Yourgrau
David Zeiger, Displaced Films
Zephyr
Howard Zinn, historian
Julie Zuckerman

Organizations for identification only