Global Protests Echo Common Vision
Over 100,000 from Miami to Georgia to London confront Empire to Promote Justice and Peace
We, The Stop the War Coalition in London, England, The Mobilization
to Stop the FTAA in Miami, Florida (U.S.) and the School of the Americas
Watch Movement in Columbus, Georgia (U.S.), are mobilizing tens of
thousands of people this week in the United Kingdom and the United
States to hold our governments accountable. Our struggles are
interconnected and we organize in solidarity with each other.
We
recognize our governments’ foreign policies are not bringing security
to the world any more than their economic policies are bringing
prosperity.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq, the training of
soldiers in counterinsurgency at the School of the Americas, and the
expansion of so-called “free-trade” agreements like the Free Trade Area
of the Americas, are strategies in the building of an empire based on
greed, violence and power. These policies breed resentment.
Democracy
will never come about through military invasion. “Free trade” does not
equal democracy; in fact the two are usually at odds. And our
governments’ claims of “spreading democracy” throughout the world rings
especially hollow when they have failed to even listen to the democratic
input of their own citizenry.
We do not want war for empire. We
do not want training camps where soldiers are taught to torture and
assassinate their own people. We do not want economic globalization that
serves elite interests to the detriment of the rest of the world.
We
are united in building a world in which the values of justice,
cooperation, respect for the earth, and genuine democracy are upheld. We
believe this is the surest way to bring about lasting peace and
security. To this end we will struggle together on both sides of the
Atlantic and around the world.
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