Article Update - July 29, 2007

Our Youth Are Not for Sale to the Military

No to the DREAM Act!

Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat from Illinois re-introduced the DREAM Act as an amendment to H.R. 1585, the Department of Defense authorization bill. This is the main war-funding bill now before Congress and will definitely pass in the coming weeks. Various amendments are currently being debated and may be added to it, including ones promoting war against Iran as well as the by Durbin on the “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM)” Act.

The government has already used the blackmail of offering citizenship to any undocumented person 18 or older if they enlist in the military, with about 35,000 undocumented youth and workers already serving and about 8,000 enlisting yearly. While citizenship is the promise made, in an estimated 20 percent of cases, it is not kept. Many of the families involved have angrily protested this blackmail, as it has often meant death and severe mental and physical injury to those who enlist and serve in Iraq.

The DREAM Act is being presented as an opportunity for “relief and education” for the hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth in the country. Many of the youth have been here for years, are graduating from high school and are fluent in English and Spanish. Others are newly arrived. Some have a parent or sibling who is a citizen. But they are all being profiled and targeted for the military. Just as the No Child Left Behind law requires schools to turn over the lists of their students to the military or lose federal funds, the DREAM Act also has a military component that goes even further. Using the promise of education, it will in fact mean required military service for large numbers of youth.

The DREAM Act, as currently written, allows the youth deemed eligible, (those Durbin and the military refer to as the “cream of the crop”) to obtain conditional permanent residency status for a period of six years — at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. At the end of the period, citizenship may be granted if the person has maintained “good moral character,” and has “acquired a degree from an institution of higher learning in the U.S. or completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor’s degree in the U.S.” or “has served in the Armed Forces of the U.S. for at least two years” and received an honorable discharge. Participation requires registering with the government. It also requires either going to school or joining the army, or the youth will be deported, even if they have lived most of their lives in the U.S.

Durbin, in announcing the planned amendment, made clear that its main role is for the military. He said “Many in the Department of Defense believe, as I do, that the DREAM Act is an important part of making certain we have talented young men and women ready to serve in our military.” He added, “The DREAM Act would address a very serious recruitment crisis that faces our military.” He added that the Army had missed its monthly recruitment quota by more than 1,000 recruits in June and in May. He brought out the broad rejection of the military among youth by saying that the Army is only able to get recruits because it has lowered its standards, with 11.7 percent of recruits having criminal backgrounds, and another 20 percent not having graduated high school.

Durbin also quoted military experts anxious to get their hands on the undocumented youth. Undersecretary for Defense David Chu said, “There are an estimated 50,000-65,000 undocumented young adults who entered the U.S. at an early age and graduate from high school each year…the DREAM Act would provide these young people the opportunity of serving the United States in uniform.” A professor at West Point said, “Passage of the DREAM Act would be highly beneficial to the United States military. The DREAM Act promises to enlarge dramatically the pool of highly qualified recruits of the U.S. Armed Forces.” Senators Hagel of Nebraska and Lugar of Indiana joined Durban in supporting the Act. Other Democrats sponsoring the amendment include presidential candidates Clinton (New York) and Obama (Illinois), as well as Leahy (Vermont), Kerry (Massachusetts), Lieberman (Connecticut), Menendez (New Jersey), Bayh (Indiana), Feinstein and Boxer (California), Murray and Cantwell (Washington).

Given the general level of poverty and racism faced by undocumented youth and their families, the military is already targeting them. Durban sited a 2004 study that found that “45 percent of Hispanic males and 31 percent of Hispanic females between the ages of 16 and 21 were very likely to serve in the Armed forces.” The percentage able to get into and afford college for two years is nothing close to that, making this aspect of the DREAM Act a possibility for a small minority. It is also no doubt why the military experts can claim that the DREAM Act will “enlarge dramatically” the pool for recruits.

The DREAM Act provides the Pentagon with the means to secure a huge pool of recruits at a time when they are facing increasing resistance among the troops and from youth refusing to be canon fodder in aggressive imperialist wars. It is a criminal means to force young people who otherwise meet the usual criteria for citizenship to be denied it, while forcing them to join the military in a time of war. It also puts in law a double standard for citizenship. Those whose parents happen to be documented immigrants face one standard, while those who are undocumented face another. These youth are singled out and must meet a whole series of requirements, including required military service if they cannot attend college. As well, the youth are subject to deportation while having committed no crime at all.

Today, the government is targeting these youth, but they could easily extend the same criteria to all youth in the country. Say No to the DREAM Act and No to War! Our Youth Are Not for Sale to the Military!

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The Militarization of American Youth

Bryn Lloyd-Bollard

Across the country, the U.S. military is failing to meet its recruitment goals. To address this problem, the Pentagon has been rapidly expanding its programs designed to entice young people to enlist. It is now spending $3.4 billion dollars annually, an average of $14,000 per new recruit. Using flashy marketing campaigns, television spots, and even developing its own videogames, the Army is bombarding young people with images that glorify guns and violence. Recruiters use elaborate PR strategies: they set up shop at malls, movie theaters, sporting events, and concerts, and they cruise around town in decked-out Humvees that blast music popular among teenagers.

The military presence in our nation’s public schools is growing at an alarming rate. Educational institutions in working-class areas are prime targets of military recruiters, particularly the vocational schools. The military considers students to be easy targets who can be manipulated into signing up by promising them career training, money for college, free travel, and adventure. Recruiters are PR experts; like drug dealers and tobacco company representatives, they market a dangerous product with side effects they don’t want their potential customers to know about.

While recruiters tell students that they can receive $70,000 for college through the Montgomery GI Bill, the average payout to veterans is only $2,151. To be eligible for educational benefits, soldiers must commit to serving three years on active duty and must also pay a nonrefundable “deposit” to the military of $100 a month for a year. Considering that only 43 percent of the soldiers who sign up for the program receive any money, the majority who seek financial assistance through the GI Bill actually end up paying the military $1,200 and get nothing in return. And a soldier who does get the average payment of $2,151 actually receives only $951 beyond his or her own contribution. Only 15 percent of all recruits graduate with a four-year degree.

The skills learned in the military are often nontransferable to civilian -employment, and many people find themselves in need of retraining after leaving the armed services. Veterans in the 20-34 age bracket have a higher unemployment rate than non-veterans and those who are employed typically earn 12-15 percent less. Most people would be surprised to learn that veterans make up one-third of all homeless people and half of all homeless men. While in the military, 65 percent of enlistees state that they are not satisfied with their current jobs.

There is a variety of other less-than-flattering statistics about the military that recruiters fail to mention. People of color represent 1/3 of all enlisted personnel but only 1/8 of the officers. Nearly 90 percent of women in the military report being sexually harassed, and 1/3 report being raped. In addition to the more than 3,500 U.S. men and women who have died in the current war in Iraq, tens of thousands have been wounded and are returning home with traumatic brain injuries, loss of limbs, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and other serious illnesses related to exposure to the depleted uranium used in U.S. munitions.

Recruiters are under enormous pressure to meet their quota of two recruits a month, which requires them to contact an average of 120 potential enlistees over that time. Since fewer than 10 percent of all recruits seek out military employment on their own, recruiters face the daunting task of finding the large majority of new military recruits. Thus it’s no surprise that a central recruiting tactic is a combination of deception and omission. One recruiter recently interviewed in the Boston Globe characterized his work: “You have to convince those little punks to do something. I figure if I can sell this, I can sell anything.” By the Army’s own count, there were 320 substantiated cases of what it calls recruitment improprieties in 2004, up from 199 in 1999, and 213 in 2002. The offenses varied from threats and coercion to false promises that applicants would not be sent to Iraq. The number of those investigated rose to 1,118 in 2004, or nearly one in five of all recruiters, up from 913 in 2002, or one in eight. A recruiter interviewed by the New York Times said it best, “The problem is that no one wants to join [and] we have to play fast and loose with the rules to get by.”

Military Miseducation

The military manual for the high school recruiters offers us a window into their strategies. It suggests that recruiters make themselves “indispensable” to schools and that, in addition to the wealth of student data currently given to recruiters by school administrations, recruiters should access informal sources of information such as school yearbooks. Also stating that it is “only natural for a potential enlistee to resist,” the manual suggests ways to turn aside objections and lists techniques for closing the deal, such as the Challenge Close. It advises that the Challenge Close works best with young men, and that “You must be careful how you use this one. You must be on friendly terms with your prospect, or this may backfire. When you find difficulty in closing, particularly when your prospect’s interest seems to be waning, challenge his ego by suggesting that basic training may be too difficult for him and he might not be able to pass it. Then, if he accepts your challenge, you will be a giant step closer to getting him to enlist.”

Despite the fact that the military is hazardous to young people’s education and their future careers (not to mention their lives) the No Child Left Behind Act makes it easier for the military to gain direct access to students. The Act contains a little known provision that threatens to take away federal funding if a school refuses to hand over to the military personal information about its students, including names, addresses, and telephone numbers. Before the law went into effect, 1/3 of all high schools in the country felt it inappropriate to give out this information to recruiters. The law now coerces schools into giving the military unimpeded access. By law, parents may request that information about their child be kept private, yet there is no system in place that informs parents or students of these rights, so many remain unaware.

The Pentagon also gets information about students through administering its Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test (ASVAB). This test is offered to schools free of charge, and while it is marketed as a way to help students choose between a variety of military and civilian careers, the test is primarily designed to assess a person’s military qualifications. When a student takes the exam, their contact information and test scores are automatically sent to recruiters, who may use the information as they see fit.

JROTC & Teen Soldiers

Another major way in which the military attracts young people is through the Junior Reserves Officer Training Corps (JROTC) program, which the Pentagon has been enthusiastically expanding since early 1990s. There are currently 500,000 students, aged 14 and over, enrolled in JROTC programs throughout the country. The JROTC claims that its goal is “to motivate young people to be better citizens” by “teaching high school students the value of citizenship, leadership, service to the community, personal responsibility, and a sense of accomplishment, while instilling in them self-esteem, teamwork, and self-discipline.” In the program, teenagers are taught military-style drills and are given military-style discipline. All JROTC recruits drill with weapons and study military history, and 90 percent of them are trained to use guns. The U.S. Army insists that the JROTC is not a recruiting tool or public relations ploy designed to give the military a better face, yet half of all JROTC graduates join the military. Of these, only one-third enters a higher education program. William Cohen, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, bluntly told Congress in February 2000 that the JROTC is “one of the best recruiting devices we could have.”

The government initially set up JROTC as an elective high school class. However, many schools have begun to enroll students in the program automatically. Federal law mandates that at least 100 students or 10 percent of the student body must be enrolled in each JROTC unit in order to maintain the program in a school. Thus, school administrators can feel pressured to bend, if not break, the rules regarding the voluntary nature of the program by making it difficult for students to find alternative courses. A JROTC unit costs a school an average of $75,000, which drains resources from other school activities and vital programs.

School administrators often think of JROTC as a good alternative for students who do not excel at academics or who have behavioral problems, but the JROTC track record at helping at-risk youth is far from perfect. Since 1990, there have been -nu-merous violent incidents involving JROTC recruits. Murders, gang activity, sexual assaults, and violent hazing have been linked to JROTC instructors, members, and graduates. Rather than teaching students about peaceful alternatives, the JROTC promotes violence by teaching students to use guns and to take part in mindless drills that train them to follow orders without hesitation and without thought.

Counter Recruitment

In response to the growing military presence in schools throughout the country, counter-recruitment efforts have also been growing. In 1986, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, schools creating a forum for proponents of the military must also provide equal access for those with opposing points of view. Counter recruitment programs help students understand the real implications of military service and educate them about alternatives to military enlistment and ways to get out once already signed up. […]

Militarism in our schools is an issue of serious and growing importance. Using a variety of clever tricks and persuasive tactics, the Pentagon takes advantage of our nation’s youth by marketing dead-end military jobs. With its vast budget and immense political power, the military is trying to sell itself as a cure for our country’s social and economic problems, even in the face of considerable evidence showing that a military career can cut short a student’s education and make it even harder to find a productive livelihood. Despite its best efforts, however, military recruitment rates continue to decline. This testifies to the fact that the real implications of military service are slowly gaining widespread attention and that counter-recruitment campaigns are succeeding. As the anti-war movement and all people concerned about the welfare of our nation’s youth continue to expose the military’s lies about enlistment, it will become more and more difficult for the Pentagon to continue fighting its wars abroad and to mislead and misuse the country’s young citizens at home.

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Over Hill, Over Dale: The Militarization of Culture

Charles Sullivan, The Smirking Chimp

A very disturbing commercial is being shown on network television in the United States with alarming regularity. I have seen it frequently during the past few weeks on an NBC station that broadcasts from the nation’s capital.

It opens with a male chorus — perhaps a military choir — singing: “Over hill, over dale; we have hit the dusty trail.” The song has the cadence of a forced march. In muted light soldiers are seen wading through fetid water with weapons aloft, while well-coordinated precision military operations are unfolding all around, like a Rogers and Hammerstein musical. We are supposed to be impressed with the military and technological prowess on display, awed into admiration for it; awed into submission to it, the oracle of our times.

As a montage of war images flicker across the screen, each of them portraying military operations (none of them showing the real horrors of war); a male voice extols the virtues of technological warfare and the unification of all military branches. Air force. Navy. Marines. Army. One force. The commercial ends with the statement, “Northrop Grumman: Defining the future.”

The infomercial clearly targets a male audience. Northrop Grumman and other defense contractors are realizing staggering profits from U.S. imperial policy in the Middle East and around the globe. The social and environmental costs, as always, are born by others. This is corporate welfare in its most hideous form — socialized costs and privatized profits. It is parasitic capitalism in its most malignant incarnation. It is the kind of propaganda Americans are exposed to their every waking moment.

No one who views the advertisement is going to run out and buy an advanced weapons system from Northrop Grumman. Thus one must ponder the real purpose of the ad. The message is not designed to sell weapons systems; it was created to sell the American people on the notion of superior technological prowess, perpetual warfare and war profiteering that guarantees, for a little while longer, at least, an unsustainable way of life: ideas that have already won widespread acceptance among the slumbering masses and the willfully ignorant.

We are supposed to believe that the Military Industrial Complex, a conglomeration of defense contractors with its long poisonous tentacles firmly lodged in the gangrened flesh of government, is protecting us and our way of life from a hostile world intent on destroying both. We are supposed to see perpetual war in Orwellian terms of peace; ignorance as strength, evil as good. Destruction of the commons and our civil liberties by fascist corporatism is supposedly good for the country because it is good for the war profiteers in government and Northrop Grumman — which is only the tip of a much larger malignancy rooted deeply in the cadaverous flesh of American society.

If Northrop Grumman is indeed defining the future, America and the world are in deep trouble. We are witnessing the blatant militarization of our culture by the forces of darkness, the machines of misery and death.

Hummers, a military vehicle, populate the roads and highways of America, even as the last drops of cheap oil are being sucked from the sands of the occupied territories. The human costs of war that sustain patterns of conspicuous consumption and waste never enter the minds of consumers. After all we are an exceptional people. The costs are born by others and kept hidden from view.

The glorification of war is nearly ubiquitous in the culture. You see it in the vehicles we drive, aggressive behavior, excessive national pride, flag waving, military style clothing, movies, video games and television commercials. The American consumer is essentially becoming a piece of computer hardware programmed to download propaganda and to execute its commands without thinking. It does what it is programmed to do.

Northrop Grumman, the neocons, and their timorous accomplices in Congress are all peddling the same bogus image to the American people. Like the forces portrayed in the television ad, they are a well-financed, well-organized array of seemingly disparate forces fighting as one. Who are they fighting? We the people. Democracy. Truth. Peace. Organized labor. Working class people the world over.

Charles Sullivan is a photographer and free-lance writer.

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Pull the Plug on the Mercenary War

By Jeremy Scahill

The Democratic leadership in Congress is once again gearing up for a great sell- out on the Iraq war. In plain terms, despite the impassioned sentiments of the anti-war electorate that brought the Democrats to power last November, the Congressional leadership has made clear its intention to keep funding the Iraq occupation. The Democrats’ plan also does almost nothing to address the second-largest force in Iraq — and it is not the British military. It is the estimated 126,000 private military “contractors” who will stay put there as long as Congress continues funding the war.

The 145,000 active-duty U.S. forces are nearly matched by occupation personnel that currently come from companies like Blackwater USA and the former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, which enjoy close personal and political ties with the Bush administration. [The most recent estimates now put the number of mercenaries as larger than the number of troops]. Until Congress reins in these massive corporate forces and the whopping federal funding that goes into their coffers, partially withdrawing U.S. troops may only set the stage for the increased use of private military companies (and their rent-a-guns) which stand to profit from any kind of privatized future “surge” in Iraq.

From the beginning, these contractors have been a major hidden story of the war, almost uncovered in the mainstream media and absolutely central to maintaining the U.S. occupation of Iraq. While many of them perform logistical support activities for American troops, including the sort of laundry, fuel and mail delivery, and food-preparation work that once was performed by soldiers, tens of thousands of them are directly engaged in military and combat activities. According to the Government Accountability Office, there are now some 48,000 “soldiers” of private military companies in Iraq. These not-quite G.I. Joes, working for Blackwater and other major U.S. firms, can make in a month what some active-duty soldiers make in a year. “We got 126,000 contractors over there, some of them making more than the secretary of Defense,” said House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha. “How in the hell do you justify that?”

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman estimates that $4 billion in taxpayer money has so far been spent in Iraq on these armed “security” companies like Blackwater — with tens of billions more going to other war companies like KBR and Fluor for “logistical” support. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of the House Intelligence Committee believes that up to forty cents of every dollar spent on the occupation has gone to war contractors.

With such massive government payouts, there is little incentive for these companies to minimize their footprint in the region and every incentive to look for more opportunities to profit, especially if, sooner or later, the “official” U.S. presence shrinks, giving the public a sense of withdrawal, of a winding down of the war.

The crucial role of contractors in continuing the occupation was driven home in January when David Petraeus, the general running the president’s “surge” plan in Baghdad, cited private forces as essential to winning the war. In his confirmation hearings in the Senate, he claimed that they fill a gap attributable to insufficient troop levels available to an overstretched military. Along with Bush’s official troop surge, the “tens of thousands of contract security forces,” Petraeus told the senators, “give me the reason to believe that we can accomplish the mission.” Indeed, Gen. Petraeus admitted that he has, at times, been guarded in Iraq not by the U.S. military, but “secured by contract security.”

Contractors have provided the White House with political cover, allowing for a back-door near doubling of U.S. forces in Iraq through the private sector, while masking the full extent of the human costs of the occupation. Although contractor deaths are not effectively tallied, at least 770 contractors have been killed in Iraq and at least another 7,700 injured. These numbers are not included in any official (or media) toll of the war.

More significantly, there is absolutely no effective system of oversight or accountability governing contractors and their operations, nor is there any effective law — military or civilian — being applied to their activities. They have not been subjected to military courts martial (despite a recent Congressional attempt to place them under the Uniform Code of Military Justice), nor have they been prosecuted in U.S. civilian courts. And no matter what their acts in Iraq, they cannot be prosecuted in Iraqi courts. Before Paul Bremer, Bush’s viceroy in Baghdad left Iraq in 2004, he issued an edict, known as Order 17. It immunized contractors from prosecution in Iraq which, today, is like the Wild West, full of scores of unaccountable, heavily-armed mercenaries, ex-military men from around the world, working for the occupation. For the community of contractors in Iraq, immunity and impunity are welded together.

Despite the tens of thousands of contractors passing through Iraq and several well-documented incidents involving alleged contractor abuses, only two individuals have ever been indicted for crimes there. One was charged with stabbing a fellow contractor, while the other pled guilty to the possession of child pornography images on his computer at Abu Ghraib prison. While dozens of American soldiers have been court-martialed — sixty-four on murder-related charges — not a single armed contractor has been prosecuted for a crime against an Iraqi. In some cases, where contractors were alleged to have been involved in crimes or deadly incidents, their companies whisked them out of Iraq to safety.

By sanctioning the administration’s continuing use of mercenary corporations — instead of cutting off all funding to them — the Democrats leave the door open for a future escalation of the shadow war in Iraq. This, in turn, could pave the way for an array of secretive, politically well-connected firms that have profited tremendously under the current administration to elevate their status and increase their government paychecks.

Blackwater’s War

A decade ago, the company barely -existed; and yet, its “diplomatic security” contracts since mid-2004, with the State Department alone, total more than $750 million. Today, Blackwater has become nothing short of the Bush administration’s well-paid Praetorian Guard.

It protects the U.S. ambassador and other senior officials in Iraq as well as visiting Congressional delegations; it trains Afghan security forces and was deployed in the oil-rich Caspian Sea region, setting up a “command and control” center just miles from the Iranian border. The company was also hired to protect FEMA operations and facilities in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where it raked in $240,000 a day from the American taxpayer, billing $950 a day per Blackwater contractor.

Since September 11, 2001, the company has invested its lucrative government payouts in building an impressive private army. At present, it has forces deployed in nine countries and boasts a database of 21,000 additional troops at the ready, a fleet of more than twenty aircraft, including helicopter gun-ships, and the world’s largest private military facility — a 7,000 acre compound near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina.

It recently opened a new facility in Illinois (“Blackwater North”) and is fighting local opposition to a third planned domestic facility near San Diego (“Blackwater West”) by the Mexican border. It is also manufacturing an armored vehicle (nicknamed the “Grizzly”) and surveillance blimps.

The man behind this empire is Erik Prince, a secretive, conservative Christian, ex-Navy SEAL multimillionaire who bankrolls the President and his allies with major campaign contributions. Among Blackwater’s senior executives are Cofer Black, former head of counterterrorism at the CIA; Robert Richer, former Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA; Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon Inspector General; and an impressive array of other retired military and intelligence officials. Company executives recently announced the creation of a new private intelligence company, “Total Intelligence,” to be headed by Black and Richer.

For years, Blackwater’s operations have been shrouded in secrecy. Emboldened by the culture of impunity enjoyed by the private sector in the Bush administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Blackwater’s founder has talked of creating a “contractor brigade” to support U.S. military operations and fancies his forces the “FedEx” of the “national security apparatus.”

As the country debates an Iraq withdrawal, Congress owes it to the public to take down the curtain of secrecy surrounding these shadow forces that under gird the U.S. public deployment in Iraq. The President likes to say that defunding the war would undercut the troops. Here is the truth of the matter: Continued funding of the Iraq war ensures tremendous profits for politically-connected war contractors. If Congress is serious about ending the occupation, it needs to rein in the unaccountable companies that make it possible and that stand to profit from its escalation.

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Peace Bridge Demonstration

Welcome Activists Home from Cuba

IAC & Latin America Solidarity Committee

Again this summer, courageous Americans will defy the U.S. travel ban to Cuba, which has been in effect for forty-five years. All on the same day, brigadistas from the Venceremos Brigade, caravanistas from Pastors for Peace, youth from FIST (Fight Imperialism Stand Together), and other groups including the U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange, African Awareness Association and the Seattle Women’s Challenge will openly participate in this challenge of the U.S. blockade of Cuba and ban on travel to Cuba. These travel ban challengers demand the right to see Cuba with their own eyes, to bring the truth of what they see back to our communities, and to stand up for everyone’s ability to travel to Cuba.

They will return from Cuba on Saturday Morning, July 28, by crossing the border at the Peace Bridge into Buffalo, New York, and other ports of entry, openly and proudly declaring that they have traveled to Cuba. Supporters will be coming from near and far to gather to salute and welcome them all home. In doing so they are willing to risk draconian fines and harassment at the border.

Come and Join the Welcome Home

People will be demonstrating on both sides of the Peace Bridge beginning at 8:30am June 28. Come and be there to enjoy music and food together, and to discuss with those returning about Cuba. The Venceremos Brigade says “We oppose any and all restrictions on our right to travel to Cuba. We oppose the Bush administration’s warlike actions toward Cuba and its relentless pursuit of “regime change” in Cuba — a country where people have free healthcare and education, where they do not suffer homelessness and hunger and where racism is actively combated, and whose largest export to the poor countries of the world is medical assistance. We support the Cuban people’s sovereign right to have the social system of their choosing —and we want to learn more about it.”

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Cuba Caravan

Activists with Aid for Cuba Blocked by Government

IFCO Pastors for Peace

The U.S. government stopped the 18th Pastors for Peace caravan to Cuba at the Pharr International Bridge at the Texas/Mexico border. The 126 activists involved and their medical supplies and computers were stopped from crossing. The caravan was diverted by local police into the U.S. Customs lot where Customs and Border Patrol officers proceeded to X-ray and search the vehicles. Almost 50 officers spent nearly two hours unloading and reloading crutches, wheelchairs, commodes, and medical supplies from the vehicles. They located and “detained” 12 computers from the caravan.

“This is a battle of David and Goliath – and Goliath knows that he is losing,” said Reverend Luis Barrios, member of the IFCO/Pastors for Peace board of directors. “What they are taking from us today is purely symbolic. They are trying to show us that they are in charge. But we know that we are the ones in charge, and that the people’s power will prevail.”

The Pastors for Peace caravan, 12 brightly painted vehicles carrying 126 activists and 90 tons of aid, plans to cross into Mexico later today on its way to Cuba. The caravan is a direct nonviolent challenge of the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba which prevents the Cuban people from accessing much-needed supplies. The caravan also challenges the travel blockade, which seeks to prevent U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba.

Two years ago, U.S. government -officials spent a whole day seizing computer equipment — CPUs, modems, cables, and toner cartridges — from the 16th IFCO/Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba. IFCO/Pastors for Peace struggled for nearly a year to finally get that aid released. Two weeks ago, the Bush administration detained medical aid for Cuba at the Maine-Canada border: hospital gowns, stethoscopes, even breast pumps, although they allowed the very same sort of aid to pass into the U.S. from Vancouver, Toronto, and Winnipeg. Demonstrations continue in Canada and the U.S. for the release of that aid.

“We are going to allow Homeland Security a couple of weeks to reconsider their decision to seize these computers today,” said Reverend Lucius Walker, Jr., executive director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace. “By then we will have returned from Cuba. Our supporters around the U.S. will have contacted their elected officials to let them know about the pettiness of the U.S. government’s policies toward Cuba. And we will be prepared to mount yet another campaign to win the release of this humanitarian aid for our sisters and brothers in Cuba.”

“Our caravans are like water dropping onto a rock,” said Reverend Diane Baker of Dallas, Texas. “The rock may seem impenetrable, but we just keep on keeping on — because the water always wins.”

[The caravan arrived in Tampico, Mexico July 19 and delivered its 60 tons of humanitarian aid to the dock for shipment to Cuba. The caravanistas will fly to Cuba and many will return by air to Canada and then cross into the U.S. at the Fort Erie/Buffalo Peace Bridge July 28.]

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July 2007

IFCO/Pastors for Peace 18th Friendshipment
Caravan to Cuba

The 18th Friendshipment organized by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) Pastors for Peace, traveled on 14 different routes to visit more than 120 U.S. and Canadian cities. Participants travelled in school buses, trucks, and cars to Cuba via Mexico with medical and educational supplies collected from groups across the U.S. and Canada as a collective challenge to the blockade and travel ban.

The U.S. government says you cannot go to Cuba and see things for yourself. We say you should! Our Friendshipment Caravans to Cuba call domestic and international attention to the cruel and immoral U.S. economic blockade by delivering humanitarian aid to our sisters and brothers in Cuba without asking permission for a U.S. Treasury Department license.

In November 2006, the United Nations once again voted overwhelmingly (183-4) to condemn the U.S. blockade. The Bush administration and its “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” continue desperately to look for more ways to starve the Cuban people into surrendering to U.S. domination.

We think that the tide in the U.S. is turning against the blockade, but this issue cannot be left to the politicians — we must take the lead and challenge them by implementing a People to People Foreign Policy that calls for an end to this insidious and immoral policy.

Wonder Why Bush Does Not Want You To Know The Truth About Cuba?

• A cultured people who receive free education at all levels. Who have produced many outstanding scientists, artists, scholars and sports stars. Yet they cannot get access to many basic supplies, because of a 45-year-long economic blockade by the U.S. government.

• A healthy people, with free health care, who live on average to age 77 — the same as those in the U.S. — yet some die prematurely and many others suffer unnecessary pain because the blockade denies them access to many of the world’s medicines.

• A proud and humane people who share what they have, including sending tens of thousands of their doctors around the world to provide free health care to others in need. — yet when 1600 Cuban doctors were ready to fly to New Orleans to help out in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration would not let them in, just like it tries to stop U.S. citizens from visiting Cuba.

Join us in rejecting the blockade and visiting Cuba: www.pastorsforpeace.org.

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Voice of Revolution
Publication of the U.S. Marxist-Leninist Organization

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www.usmlo.org • office@usmlo.org