Join Anti-War Protest In Harlem

While only 15% of the US population, African Americans make up 60% of the 2.3 million incarcerated. One in every fifteen Black men and one in every thirty-six Latino men are confined behind bars.

[The Protest]

On Sunday, October 7, 2012 from 4 – 7 PM in the Plaza of the Harlem State Office Building located at 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd, a People’s Gathering of Harlem residents, Muslim and community groups, anti-war activists, immigrant groups and labor will march to demand an end to U.S. wars at home and aboard.

The United National Anti-war Coalition event marks the 11th year anniversary of the US war in Afghanistan, the longest war in US history. American (U.S.) taxpayers will pay an estimated 4 trillion dollars for wars abroad and the cost continues to mount.

Here at home, the situation is grim and harder times are coming. The U.S. Census Bureau reports 46.2 million people living in poverty, a 2.6 increase in the past 12 months, the hardest hit, African Americans and Latinos.

Hunger is increasing at an alarming rate. One in four children lives in food insecure households. US banks’ mortgage frauds cost African American homeowners $193 billion dollars in losses between 2009 and 2012 while the banks received a $17 trillion dollar bailout, the greatest theft of public dollars in US history.

While only 15% of the US population, African Americans make up 60% of the 2.3 million incarcerated. One in every fifteen Black men and one in every thirty-six Latino men are confined behind bars. And one in three Black men will most likely experience incarceration in their lifetime.

Blacks and Latinos are three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than whites and African Americans are twice as likely to encounter physical brutality or execution at the hands of police. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s “Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 110 People” documented killings of Black women, men and youth by the police or someone “deputized” by the police every 40 hours between January 1st and June 30th of 2012.

In 2011 the New York City Police Department, touted by billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg as his own “private army”, stopped and frisked 685,724 people, 53% Black, 34 % Latino and only 9% white. Fifty one percent were age 14-24 and those totally innocent made up 88%.

We have 1.8 million Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans returning home. 300,000 have returned with traumatic brain injuries. And Uncle Sam shows no mercy in routinely redeploying troops despite post traumatic stress disorder. 200,000 vets are homeless, and that number is a conservative estimate. Veterans of the Persian Gulf War that started in 1991, some twenty-one years ago, continue to fight for disability compensation and healthcare.

The militarization of police departments across the country and the National Defense Authorization Act that allows indefinite military detention without charge or trial anywhere in the world is nothing more than terrorism, in many ways similar to the acts of terror inflicted against people in the Middle East, Africa and the world over.

These crimes of terror perpetuated for corporate profit, population control, and US hegemony to dominate the globe demand a people’s resistance and fight back.

Join us on Sunday, October 7th. We will gather at 3 PM for a March that will kick off at 4 PM. After the march we will return to the Plaza for a speak-out. We demand jobs, education, health care & social services – a real future – instead of war and the school-to-prison pipeline! We demand No War on Iran, US destabilization covert operations out of Syria, the right of the Palestinian People for Self-determination, UN troops backed by the US out of Haiti, an end to sanctions and drone attacks, and a nuclear free Middle East.

WE WANT PEACE, A RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE AND THE EARTH, AND THE RIGHT OF NATION STATES TO DETERMINE THEIR OWN DESTINIES WITHOUT THE BLOODLETTING AND CHOAS OF SO CALLED “HUMANTARIAN INTERVENTION.” US military invasions, drone strikes, massacre of women and children, decades of propping up military dictators, and racist disrespect for people and their culture underline the exploding anti-America protest now sweeping through the Middle East and Africa.

The Harlem march is part of nationally coordinated protests October 5 – 7, taking place in numerous cities, including Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Olympia WA, Vancouver BC, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Chicago, Columbus OH, Boston, Philadelphia, and Tallahassee, FL

For additional information visit: october7actions.net/wordpress  
or [email protected]

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