Ten years is enough. Bring the troops in our war dollars home.
Ten years is enough. Bring the troops in our war dollars home.
Ten years is enough.
There's another one I wrote right after 9-11, and I kind of wish it wasn't as relevant as it is,
but I've got to keep singing this song until they bring our troops home.
I've got an idea to heal this planet. I've got an idea to heal this planet.
I've got an idea to heal this planet. Say no to war.
Say no to war. Say no to war.
What are we going to tell our children? What are we going to tell our children?
What are we going to tell our children? Everybody can say no to war.
Say no to war. Say no to war.
When are we going to push away sadness? When are we going to learn to share gladness?
When are we going to end all this madness? When are we going to be free?
You and me.
Free from this insanity.
We've got an idea.
We've got an idea to heal this planet. We've got an idea to heal this planet.
Say no to war, say no to war, say no to war!
Let's protect this earth, it's our only salvation.
Let's make up tomorrow future generations,
not just ours, but all of creation's.
It's time to reveal what is real.
It's time, time to heal.
What are we gonna tell the people?
Say no to war, say no to war, say no to war!
It's a great day, it's a beautiful day.
We're so honored that our sisters and brothers
who have been starting yesterday at the Occupy New Jersey site
right across the street are joining us.
We're in solidarity with each other.
These issues are all connected
and we're just so glad to all be here together.
I'm Reverend Bob Moore,
I'm the Executive Director of the Coalition for Peace Action
and on behalf of the Coalition,
I'd like to welcome you to this rally
on the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan War,
the longest war in U.S. history.
We've had to mourn the terrible cost.
We're here to mourn the terrible cost
in blood and in treasure of this longest war in U.S. history.
1,720 U.S. troops have been killed so far.
Tens of thousands more wounded.
Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands
of civilians killed and wounded.
And nearly a half trillion dollars.
It's going at the rate of 120 billion dollars per year,
year in and year out,
now that we were ramped up to 100,000 troops
by President Obama.
Sisters and brothers,
that comes out to $1.2 million per soldier.
We're paying in taxpayer dollars,
$1.2 million per soldier.
If we brought that soldier home,
just one soldier,
we could create 24 jobs here in America
at an average of $50,000 each.
And I think that's what the American people want.
Jobs, not war!
Jobs is what we need in our country.
You know, that would come out to 2.5 million new jobs
just from Afghanistan soldiers being brought home.
If we also brought home,
as we're supposedly committed to do,
the rest of the $50,000 approximately troops from Iraq,
that would come out to 3.5 million new jobs for Americans.
And that's why we're here to say,
we want jobs, not war!
Now, we can still choose peace.
We can still choose the path of negotiation.
We know that war is not the answer.
Remaining in Afghanistan only keeps us bogged down
in a never-ending war with some people called a quagmire.
President Obama's plan
is to supposedly bring these troops home by 2014,
and we're here to say today that is not soon enough,
bring them home now!
Bring them home now!
Hallelujah, I love the spirit.
And you know, that's a part of what's going to make us
have the impact that we're trying to have.
As we are spirited, we are in unity,
we're here to say no to war and yes to peace.
Keeping our troops in Afghanistan will not make us any safer,
and it doesn't make the Afghan people any safer.
We know that there have been a few successes
at capturing or killing Al-Qaeda leaders.
That's who actually did the damage on September 11th of 2001.
None of those were killed by war.
None of those were captured by war.
They were killed or captured by having intelligence gathering.
Careful, long-term.
It took ten years to figure out where Osama bin Laden was hiding.
And with good intelligence and persistent intelligence,
they finally did it.
Large armies don't do anything.
Large armies only make the situation worse.
So we are here to say it's time to end this war in Afghanistan,
bring our troops home, and create good jobs in America.
That's why we're here today.
I'm happy to introduce our first speaker for this rally.
She is a terrific organizer, a dedicated peace activist
from Montgomery County, Maryland.
So she's come a ways to be with us, and I want to put her on first.
Partly because of how far she's come,
but also partly because she was in Afghanistan
as part of a peace delegation this spring.
I'm sure she'll be telling us more about that.
Please welcome Gene A.P.
Gene A.P.
Thank you, Bob, and thank all of you for being out here today.
It's so important for all of us to be here.
By your presence, you're informing other people about what's going on.
You're giving permission and courage to other people
to stand up against this war and against the corporations.
And you're sending a clear message to Congress
that we want this war to end.
Bob mentioned that I was in Afghanistan this spring,
and I'm going to tell you a little bit about what I learned there.
First, as you probably are not surprised at,
there's tremendous suffering there.
I went to a women's literacy class outside of Kabul,
and I asked the women to tell me how the war had affected their lives.
They all started talking at once.
One said, my two sons were killed.
They were both engineers.
Another said, my husband was killed.
And another, I lost my son.
My home was destroyed.
Both my children were killed.
One woman summed it all up when she said,
the war has destroyed our lives.
My friend who took me there by the name of Fahima
said that she doesn't ask this question anymore
because the tragedy and the grief that she hears is too much to bear.
There's all kinds of suffering in Afghanistan.
In Kabul, where I mostly spent my time,
the employment rate is estimated to be 50%.
This is a city that was built for 600,000 people,
and now there are 5 million people living there.
These are essentially internally displaced persons.
Their houses are made of mud,
but a city lot in Kabul now costs about $3.5 million.
The warlords and the internationals have did the price up
while the people are living in hobbles.
The Afghan people feel that the world is fighting its proxy battles
in their village and they are struggling to survive.
Almost none of the money that is poured into this country
gets to them for the things that they would like most,
medical care, schools, jobs, decent housing, clean water.
The Afghan people are sick of war,
and they are sick of being pawns in other people's battles,
and they want peace, they want justice,
and they want a country, a government that is not run by criminals.
Yes!
Which brings me actually to the second key thing
that I learned in Afghanistan,
and that has to do with corruption.
Transparency International has a corruption index,
and Afghanistan is tied with Myanmar
for the second most corrupt government in the world.
Only Somalia is worse.
And so it's not surprising that no matter who I talked with in Afghanistan,
the conversation always went to corruption.
But in Afghanistan, corruption doesn't mean
what you and I might think of it as sort of like a little bit of skimming
off the top or something of that sort.
Rather, it means a corrosive destruction of society
that's based on a complete lack of justice.
The government's primary function in Afghanistan
appears to be collecting brides.
A small group of families controls all of the wealth,
while the huge majority of Afghans barely survive.
No one can feel safe there,
because power is concentrated in the hands of a few
who are beyond any law.
There's pervasive criminality,
and it affects people every day and every way.
Essentially everyone I talked to described
referred to their government as a mafia.
And they're furious
that the U.S. supports this mafia government.
They feel that it holds power only because of U.S. support.
They know that billions of dollars have been poured into Afghanistan
and they cannot feed their families.
This immense amount of money simply enriches the warlords
who control the government,
further consolidating their power,
and the people go hungry.
One Afghan I met asked me,
why has the U.S., knowing very well who Karzai is,
kept him in power?
Why did the U.S. continue to support him
following the fraudulent elections?
Why has the U.S. allowed war criminals to run our country?
And he pointed to a particular minister that he knew of,
and he said, that guy is well-known for atrocities
for cutting off women's breasts.
Our troops are fighting to maintain a mafia government,
and we're asking the Afghan people to fight for a mafia government,
and they deeply resent it.
Our government claims that we're trying to help the Afghan people,
but the people that I spoke to
saw very little evidence of a humanitarian goal.
And in fact, through our military tactics,
we're creating enemies faster than we can kill them.
We're generating more and more violence.
We have untold numbers of deaths,
billions of dollars, all for nothing.
The Red Cross recently estimated
that Afghanistan is more dangerous now
than it's been in any time in the last 30 years.
In Kabul, there are open trenches of raw sewage
running through the streets.
There's no garbage collection.
There's little access to potable water.
There are rolling blackouts of electricity.
Billions and billions of dollars and nothing to show for it.
When I asked about justice and reconciliation,
which is the name for trying to come to peace,
one person says, there's none.
These are all pretexts to spend money.
It's all fake.
And we in the U.S. are constantly misled.
We're told that religious fundamentalism
is fueling the insurgency
because the Afghan people hate what we represent.
They don't hate what we represent.
They hate what we do to their families,
to their communities, and to their country.
So this is a lose-lose situation for Afghanistan
as well as for America.
Both American children and Afghan children
are deprived of basic health care,
of good education, and food.
And money is flowing endlessly
into the open pit of American militarism.
It is the military contractors
and the mafia warlords who benefit from this,
and the Afghan people suffer.
And violence, and corruption, and hatred fester.
We are not any safer because of the misery
that we have imposed on Afghanistan.
People asked about the Taliban.
The Afghans that I met despise and fear the Taliban,
and they're appalled by suicide bombers.
But they also despise and fear in equal measure
the warlords that have been embraced by the U.S.
and incorporated into the government.
They basically see no difference.
They also deeply resent our occupation.
It angers them greatly to see military vehicles
blocking the streets.
If you drive too close to a military truck,
you may be shot, and that's scary for people.
They deeply resent the nighttime raids
in people's homes and all of the deaths.
Malaleh Joya, who is a woman who you may have heard of,
who used to be in the Afghan cabinet,
says that the Afghan people have three enemies.
The Taliban, their current government, and U.S. NATO.
She says if the U.S. leaves, that's one less enemy
that the people of Afghanistan have to struggle against.
But it doesn't appear that we're really planning to leave.
Representative Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California,
said this week that the U.S. might have a military presence
in Afghanistan for another 40 years.
The Obama government is aiming a little bit lower.
They're trying to get a status of forces agreement for 20 years.
But why do we want to be in Afghanistan?
The Afghans that I talked to said,
it's because of our strategic location.
We're next to Iran, we're next to Pakistan,
we have a border with China,
and several republics of the former Soviet Union.
With large bases in Afghanistan,
the U.S. can, quote, project power, unquote,
which is another name for intimidate.
So today, we've been at war in Afghanistan for 10 years,
the longest war in our history.
I came to you from Freedom Plaza in D.C.,
where I was yesterday, where the occupation is going on.
Hallelujah!
Where we're demanding that the war in Afghanistan end now.
We're demanding that our troops return home now.
Together, we're creating a democratic, nonviolent world.
We seek peace, economic justice, and human rights.
This war should be ended simply because it is wrong.
The loss of life is unconscionable,
but we can't ignore the huge fiscal cost of this war.
And our struggle really is bigger than the war in Afghanistan.
The U.S. military budget, as you may know, is huge.
It's bigger than it's ever been since World War II.
It dwarfs that of any other country in the world.
It's about the same as all the rest of the world's military is combined.
And our entire economy has become militarized.
Weapons now are our biggest export.
So we've had ten terrible years of war in Afghanistan.
Almost 2,000 U.S. soldiers killed and many, many other wounded.
Tens of thousands of Africans killed.
Nearly half a trillion dollars just in direct costs.
We must do all that we can to end this war now.
Let's occupy D.C., let's occupy Wall Street,
let's occupy Trenton, not Afghanistan.
Right. That's the kind of occupation we want.
People power occupation.
You know, right before I left to come here and to pick Gene up
at the train station, I got a call from a reporter
and she asked me, are there going to be more than four people there?
I'm counting more than 70 right now.
And there's more still coming.
I see people driving by who I know are planning to come.
So we're going to be at least 75 here tonight.
Let's give ourselves a hand. Hello.
You're in the right place.
I'm especially excited about in this event here
and in this coming together is that we have a number of students here.
Charlene was just talking about that, the diversity, the unity.
We have a number of students from the Progressive Student Alliance
at the College of New Jersey.
And we're going to call up one of those students right now.
We may have time for a second one to also speak,
which I think would be a lot of fun to hear from two young people.
Right now we're going to hear from Adam Morsi.
He is a member of the Progressive Student Alliance at TCNJ
and the past president of the Islamic Society at TCNJ.
So let's welcome Adam Morsi.
Good afternoon. How are we today?
Like I said, how are we today?
Exactly. Great to hear.
I stand here before you today with a simple idea.
I am an American and I am very proud to be an American.
I'm also a Muslim and I'm equally proud to be Muslim.
And yes, the two can and are synonymous with one another.
I'm also a proud student of the College of New Jersey.
We hear a cheer from our TCNJers.
I'm a son to two wonderful parents who have given me more than I can ever imagine.
I'm a brother to a little rascal back home who's always nagging me
and I consider myself a brother to each and every one of you standing here today.
I am all of these things and I'm proud to call myself all of these things.
But I am also another thing. First and foremost, I am a human being.
I am a living, breathing human being just like each and every one of you.
The mental need of this country, you guessed it, they're human beings as well.
The poor innocent Afghan civilians who are suffering horrible, horrible consequences
as a result of our war are humans as well.
We are all human beings here, but somewhere along the lines, we've seem to have forgotten that.
Engraved in the fabric of this country are certain inalienable rights
to which all of mankind can make a claim to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Afghans have been the first to suffer from this war, the longest war in our country's history
and they've suffered unimaginable horrors.
What happened to their claim for life?
What happened to their claim for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
What happened to their humanity?
Is their humanity more expendable than our humanity?
I ask again, is their humanity more expendable than our humanity?
No.
My life changed completely on that fateful September morning ten years ago.
I remember how I felt.
I remember feeling insecure. I remember feeling unsafe.
I remember feeling like my humanity has been attacked, like it had been lessened somehow.
And I know you all felt the same and some of you may still feel the same.
I wanted more than anything for justice to be brought to the perpetrators of those attacks.
I wanted those people, those interlopers who were treated on our way of life
without any regard to be called for their actions.
But I didn't, I never wanted those things at the detriment of another's right to be human.
Of another's right to live life freely in pursuit of their own hopes and dreams.
We are not fighting an enemy anymore.
We are fighting an ideology, one that is excessively exaggerated and misunderstood.
You cannot fight ideology with machine guns and tanks.
You cannot fight ideology with RPGs and M16s.
You fight ideology with ideology. You fight it with education.
Let's end this war. Let's empower Afghans to know that they have a stake to claim in their own destiny.
Let us tell them that we acknowledge their right to live freely in pursuit of their own hopes and dreams.
That we do recognize their humanity.
Let us inspire the world. Let us bring our men and women that are serving us so bravely overseas.
Let's bring them home.
Let's give them all what President Obama promised us when he ran for office in 2008.
A cause for hope.
My name is Adam Morsi. I am a Muslim. I am a student. I am an American.
But first and foremost, I am a human being and I believe that everyone in the world has a right to live their life in pursuit of their hopes and dreams without fear.
Thank you.
Thank you so much Adam.
Ten years is enough. Bring the troops in our war dollars home.
Ten years is enough. Bring the troops in our war dollars home.
Ten years is enough. Bring the troops in our war dollars home.
I found that so inspirational and fresh and insightful and thank you so much Adam.
And I think we have another student leader who is prepared to come and share with us.
Come. Come. Come on. Don't be shy now.
Come on.
All right. Let's give a warm welcome to Mark who is going to share some good thoughts with us.
Hello. Thank you.
Thank you all. It's hard to follow great speech like Adam's.
I want to say thanks to Reverend Moore and Prince of Peace Coalition for this great event.
And it's aptly time to with the occupation of Wall Street going on right now.
And we shall obviously occupy Wall Street, not Afghanistan.
More Americans are afraid of Bank of America foreclosing on their home
than they are of anything going on in Afghanistan right now.
Also, I'd like to say that the more I learn about the reaction against the Vietnam War
and the progressive era that that kind of ushered in
and how they passed progressive legislature like the EPA.
I realized that the reason they did those things is they weren't protesting about dollar figures.
And I think that it is important that we protest about war dollars and bringing them home
because there are more useful things to spend them on.
But also they were protesting because it was a moral cause and the war went against their morals.
And I mean, the same way when they passed the EPA, when they passed legislature for the EPA or workers' rights
they weren't taking into consideration cost-benefit analysis or anything like that.
Instead, what they were doing is taking into consideration these are people
and we have to treat them just like we would like ourselves to be treated.
And so I think it's important that when we do message out against the wars and against military spending
it is important to draw attention to how much we do spend
but also it's important to mention how much we spend in our human capital
and how that can't be replaced.
And that's one thing that's so refreshing about Occupy Wall Street
because when people are asking what are their demands, what are their demands
it's almost like they think they're dealing with a hostage situation.
That's not what it is. Their demands are to be treated like people
and their demands are bigger than anything you could put a dollar symbol on.
And so that's just what I wanted to say.
Thank you so much.
I don't think he needed to be shy about that to you. That was terrific.
I'd like to introduce somebody to you who has been a very wonderful blessing
in our work at the Coalition for Peace Action
and that is Kate Whitman, our Assistant Director.
She's a graduate of the College of New Jersey.
And she's about a year and a half ago, I guess just short of two years ago,
she graduated. She came to work for us last December.
She's been a great asset to us.
That's brought a lot of enthusiasm and vigor and talent.
And so please welcome Kate Whitman.
Thank you very much Bob and thank you everyone for being here.
I wanted to kind of reflect on how far we've come in 10 years since invading Afghanistan.
Because I'm sure we all remember 10 years ago, if you spoke out against this war at all,
you had a very negative, very hostile reaction.
And now what's going on 10 years from now is that hundreds of peaceful people
are occupying Wall Street, occupying Trenton, and we're here and we have cars beeping at us in solidarity.
How far have we come in 10 years?
So we might be frustrated that the war hasn't ended.
However, I think that the political consciousness of this country has just evolved so much.
And I think that we have ourselves to thank because I know a lot of you have been coming to the State House
going down to the Capitol for 10 years wanting this change.
And it's happening right now, so everyone give yourselves a round of applause.
And I also wanted to point out too, I had the very fortunate opportunity to go up to Wall Street this past weekend.
And it is such a diverse crowd.
I know it might seem like it's only young people, but there are elderly people, there are children, there are veterans,
there are union workers, college professors, teachers.
So this is a very diverse crowd that's demanding this kind of change.
And the war actually is a very uniting issue.
I think you know the exact figure, but over 60% of the country opposes the war.
And that was a very uniting theme of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
And even if you talk with some people who are on the opposition, fiscal conservatives,
they all agree that the amount of money that we're spending on this war is absolutely ridiculous.
So this is no longer just a fringe issue that a few peaceniks are really focused on.
This is something that can really unite this country.
So I think that's another thing we should give ourselves a round of applause for.
So that's really all I wanted to reflect on is that we're still fighting something,
we're fighting for the end of this war, but we've come a very long way and we shall be very proud of ourselves.
Alright, so, you know what?
Is that amazing or what?
I gave her two minutes' notice to give that speech.
She spoke that up in two minutes.
Don't get paid a great end.
Now, keep going to be inviting our friends across the street at the Occupy Trenton effort
to come and say a word with us, but while she's doing that,
Charlene, I think you have another piece of music to share with us.
Where are you, Charlene?
Here she comes.
Charlene is going to share another piece of great music.
She has a great website, so go visit it.
And we are just so blessed to have all of you,
but we're so blessed to have the people up here providing music, good thoughts,
and together we're going to end this war.
It's a question of win if it's a question of win.
We're going to end this war.
So let's welcome Charlene Leahy again.
Miracles.
In January begins the 100th anniversary celebration of the birth of Woody Guthrie.
And Woody Guthrie at home, as many of you know, broke well over a thousand songs,
and one of the most famous songs is one I'd like us to sing together,
because I know you know it.
The only thing is there are two verses that really gets shared,
and those two verses I'd like to share today.
And one verse says, the song is The Slant Is Your Land,
and it says, in the squares of the city, in the shadow of a steeple,
by the relief office, I saw my people as they stood there hungry.
I stood there asking, is this land made for you and me?
Join me.
This land is your land, this land is my land,
from California to New York Island, from the Redfoot Forest,
from St. Lawrence.
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking, that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me, that endless skyway,
I saw below me, that golden valley.
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land,
from California to New York Island,
from the Redfoot Forest to the Gulf Stream Water.
In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple,
by the relief office, I saw my people as they stood there hungry.
I stood there asking, is this land made for you and me?
Everybody.
This land is your land, this land is my land,
from California to New York Island,
from the Redfoot Forest to the Gulf Stream Water.
This land was made for you and me.
Nobody living can ever stop me,
as I go marching that freedom highway.
Nobody living can make us turn back.
This land was made for you and me.
Everybody, come on.
This land is your land, this land is my land,
from California to New York Island,
from the Redfoot Forest to the Gulf Stream Water.
This land was made for you and me.
This land was made for you and me.
This land was made for you and me.
This land was made for you and me.
Okay, sisters and brothers.
Adam already mentioned he feels like a brother to everybody here.
I feel the same way.
We're all sisters and brothers to each other in this human family.
And we're in solidarity with our sisters and brothers across the street
who are part of the Occupy Trenton Movement
that is part of the Occupy Wall Street.
And since we're running a little bit ahead of schedule,
I wanted to ask a representative of the group
to come and share some words with us.
So Alex Higgins is going to come and share some words with us.
Please welcome Alex.
Hi, Mr. Gellin.
I'm glad to see everybody out here.
I came out here to Occupy Trenton yesterday.
At two o'clock we got our technology up and running.
It's been a long night, so part of my experience.
I tried to get some sleep early this morning and we heard on the radio
New Jersey 101.5 reporting some misconstrued things about us
that we're here to legalize marijuana and to save the whales.
So I'm trying to sleep and everybody over there
that's camping out the whole night in the 40 degree weather is buzzing.
So I had to get up and we called in to Jim and I said to him,
you know, what you're reporting is either you're getting your facts
from media sources that had selective hearing or it's just outright ignorant.
And he turns around and he asked, well, what are you there for?
And I said, and we're all from New Jersey.
We'll listen to 101.5.
I said to him, what have you been rallying against for years on the radio?
What have you been rallying against?
And he agreed.
And we got to that and I ended up changing, you know, Jim around.
We started discussing some things about why we are here.
We've tried everything else.
We've tried everything else and they have turned a deaf ear on us.
And at this point, we are trying to build a community
and sustain a movement to get enough of us out on the streets that they cannot ignore us.
That's what it's all about.
Corporate greed has shipped industries overseas.
I went to school. I'm an IT guy, computer networking and security.
I work at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.
For those of you that don't know, they make Advil and Robotussin and Centrum.
After that, I work at Pfizer.
Jobs get shipped overseas to India.
Entire industries, we no longer have a manufacturing industry.
Why?
So corporations can increase their profit margins, drive up their stock prices
and give their CEOs million-dollar bonuses.
And they own our politicians.
Their lobbyists write our laws.
The system is gained against us.
That's why we're out here.
It doesn't stop with the corporations.
Wall Street, the entire financial industry, the speculation
caused the Great Recession that started in 2007.
Their greed caused it.
We are paying the price.
The industrial military complex has such a deep grip on our politicians.
One in three drone strikes in Pakistan kills a child.
Why are we killing children in Pakistan?
Why?
Why?
This is not the nation that we learned about growing up.
This is not what the veterans on the walls over there gave their lives for.
We had a state trooper and another representative come out to us
and ask us today if we thought it was disrespectful to those veterans.
Oh.
She?
Us being there.
And I told you, no, we are honoring them by being here.
That is why they gave their blood and their lives.
That's right.
And the wars.
We need those dollars here in America for education.
I have a six-year-old son.
I'm worried about his future.
A two-year-old daughter.
I'm worried about his future.
My wife has a bachelor's degree in business administration.
Could not find a job.
She went to dental hygiene school.
Graduated in June.
Still cannot find a job.
Our jobs are going overseas.
We need jobs in this country.
We need to end the wars.
And we need our politicians to listen to us.
It's no longer a democracy, and you can split hairs about the Republic, which is the Senate, and the democracy, which is the House of Representatives.
It's no longer a government for the majority of the people.
It's a government for the majority of the money.
Thank you.
Thank you, Alex, and if that doesn't explode any stereotypes that people have about who's over there, I don't know what would.
That was incredible.
Thank you so much, Alex.
Let's give them another hand.
God's not war.
Daring to speak against the war machine to stop the destruction of innocent beings.
From the streets of New York City to Washington DC, we're sending an urgent warning.
We are students, teachers, firemen, nuns, waitresses, veterans, daughters, and sons.
And we're marching through the streets with our banners and dreams for a world built on justice instead of on greed.
And we say, turn off your TV.
