Netér in Chaos

Columbia College 11am:

The front lobby of the school had been turned into a sign-making operation – neon green attached to sticks. People gathered, a bullhord started listing the crimes and atrocities of this regime. Suddenly a cheer went up as people arrived in bunch – walking out of several classrooms to join in. Off we went, about 200, loud, across time for the main Chicago convergence – the buildings echoed with “The World Can't Wait—Drive out the Bush Regime” and “Join Us!”


Main rally in Federal Plaza in Chicago:

Students defined the character of the rally – young, spirited, intense. There were lots of people who had never been to a rally before. Prologue/Winnie Mandela, an alternative high school on the south side, was in the house. Student leaders from Clemente made it just in time, after being locked down for hours. And Oak Park River Forest HS received a shout out when their arrival was announced. Columbia College, Harper College and the University of Illinois at Chicago were all there in force. One political science major from University of Illinois Chicago said he saw the march go across campus and just couldn't go to class – he had to come along.

Federal Plaza was filled with at least 2,000 people and real energy – despite the attempt by a double row of cops in riot gear to threaten. One man who had been in the marines for 4 years said he could not sit by any longer, a woman whose son is in the Navy, a family with home-schooled kids who said “what happens to our sons if the government brings back a draft.”

When Tom, the MC, said “This isn’t just another demo,” you could feel what he meant. People responded to the speakers and performers. The crowd wasn't just bodies, we moved the people on the stage and each other. We were beginning something new.

The march wound in a great loop through the Chicago downtown. Taking the entire breadth of the streets on a weekday is extremely unusual here (permit or not) and it was only our numbers that enabled us to do that. While the police kept us in a virtual corral, with lines of cops on all sides, we were growing even more as we went along. People on the sidewalks divided out – some stone faced, some thrilled and waving, here and there people crossing through the police lines to join in.

Josh, representing the Chicago committee, spoke to the tremendous significance and challenge of the aim we have set ourselves. Nothing less than changing the political direction of this nation. He announced the new slogan, “Bush Must Step Down and Take His Whole Program with Him,” and the focus on massive demonstrations at the time of the State of the Union address. The drama was heightened when Clemente HS students marched on stage behind him carrying a banner with the new slogan. Hundreds of people signed contact cards and took programs announcing this weekend's strategy meeting.

JOIN US! JOIN US!

Now the question is: How much do YOU want to drive out the Bush regime? Realizing that “the Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way and for generations to come,” will you readjust your life to prevent that?

JOIN US!!

This Saturday 3 PM,
Acme Art Works
1741 N. Western Ave
Chicago

To add your energy and ideas to make sure we don't fail. History depends on it.

This is only the beginning :)

www.worldcantwait.org

Get the call out there! Talk to your co-workers and friends! If you are in school, network and get your professors and teachers behind this as well! In fact get fellow students involved in this and start up your own group behind "The World Can't Wait!." We've already started a chapter here at Columbia College of Chicago, so the support is THERE AND WAITING!

www.worldcantwait.org

This journal is now friends only, well for the most part it will be :)

Comment to be added bizzatches, that is if you still want to partake on this journey

WWW.WORLDCANTWAIT.ORG


Sign the call

View the signers


The call to start this movement!

Read this important article by a pro choice activist

Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

Your government suppresses the science that doesnít fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this.

There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "MISSION FROM GOD" will NOT go without a fight.

There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whle idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT ACCEPTABLE!



History is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten.

WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.

These next two months are crucial. The call you are reading has to get out to millions right away – on the internet, passed out as flyers in communities, published as ads in newspapers.

DO NOT WAIT!! GET ORGANIZED!! by November 2nd!

If you agree with this statement, add your name to it!!! And do more than that: send it to friends, get them to sign it, organize a meeting, take it to your church, your school, your union, your health club, your barber shop, to concerts and libraries and family gatherings, everywhere you go. Raise money, lots of money.
Get people together, make plans to be there on November 2, and to build for it.

We have drawn our inspiration from the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience which we encourage you to read, add your name to, and distrbute broadly.
Excerpts:
'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.
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.'


WWW.WORLDCANTWAIT.ORG

This is absolutely insane. Does anyone remember what
happened in germany almost a decade ago, where a national
id card system was controlled by the police? Yes in their
country the police documented and collected information on
to a national database that has silenced several left-wing
magazines and political organizations.

National ID Battle Continues

Wired News | May 12, 2005
By Kim Zetter

Legislation supporting a standardized national driver's license may have won unanimous approval in the Senate on Tuesday, but the bill's apparently smooth passage left some jagged edges in its wake.

The Real ID Act appeared in take-it-or-leave-it spending legislation, which effectively forced lawmakers to sign on to the whole measure even if they disagreed with a portion of it. Several Republican and Democrat senators who cast favorable votes for the bill simultaneously railed against the provision authorizing the new driver's license rules.

They're not the only ones refusing to accept the bill peacefully. The National Governors Association is threatening lawsuits to fight the legislation. And some states are threatening to ignore the legislation because they say it will cost up to $700 million for states to comply and will place a heavy burden on Department of Motor Vehicles workers.
RELATED:
Senate Passes Real ID: National ID Card On Its Way

Real ID Act Passed - The End Of America

National ID Cards Won't Stop Terrorism or Illegal Immigration

REAL ID Act Passes in House, Heads to Senate

War bill shields I.D. Act from ax

HR 418 -- A National ID Bill Masquerading As Immigration Reform

Congress May Require Closer Scrutiny to Get a Driver's License

The Real ID card: the machine readable you





A spokeswoman for the governors' association did not return calls for comment. But Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, told the Associated Press this week that "if more than half of the governors agree we're not going down without a fight on this, Congress will have to consider changing" the rules.

In the meantime, mobilization against the legislation is also occurring on the citizen front. Civil liberties activist Bill Scannell, who launched a website this week to protest the legislation, said that visitors to his site sent more than 20,000 faxes to senators within 24 hours.

"One by one (senators) got up and said, 'This is a real stinker but you've got a gun to our heads so we've got to vote for it,'" Scannell said. "This is an incredibly sleazy way to push something that pushes the very nature and foundations of our democracy."

The act passed in the Senate with a 100-0 vote Tuesday and passed through the House twice -- first as a stand-alone bill in February and again last week as part of a larger spending bill. But several senators, such as Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), said the legislation would have unintended consequences and likely wouldn't improve national security.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said more than 600 organizations -- including state legislation associations, civil liberties groups and pro-immigrant advocates -- opposed the bill. And he said organizers will gather next week to discuss plans to press Congress to revisit its decision.

"This is one of the biggest mistakes Congress has ever made," Rotenberg said. "This is not over by any means."

Supporters of the bill say it would prevent terrorists and undocumented immigrants from obtaining legitimate documents that would help them move freely through the country. Last year, the 9/11 Commission called for tightening control over government-issued IDs because 18 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks used U.S. IDs to pass through airport security.

But opponents of the bill say it would create a national ID card and a de facto national database -- a concept that Congress rejected when it was first proposed several years ago.

The act would force states to produce standardized, tamper-resistant driver's licenses that would include machine-readable, encoded data. States wouldn't be required to comply. But those that don't comply would create hardship for residents, who wouldn't be able to use their licenses as official identification to travel on airplanes, collect federal benefits or gain access to federal buildings.

All drivers, including current license holders, would have to provide multiple documents to verify their identity before they could obtain a license or renew one. Drivers would have to provide several types of documentation, such as a photo ID, birth certificate, proof that their Social Security number is legitimate and something that verifies the applicant's full home address.

Some critics call the legislation anti-immigration because it would prohibit undocumented immigrants from obtaining a driver's license.

The law would compel DMV workers to verify the documents against federal databases and store the documents and a digital photo of the card holder in a database. Critics say the mandates would result in higher costs and longer lines at the DMV.

"It's a controversial measure and a controversial manner in which to pass it," Rotenberg said. "We want them to know that in passing (the Real ID Act), Congress mandated the collection of sensitive personal information by state DMVs at the same time that the state DMVs have become the target of attacks."

Since March, there have been at least three reported incidents of personal data being stolen for the sake of identity theft from DMV offices in Nevada, Florida and Maryland.

Senators opposing the act reluctantly passed it because it was slipped into a larger spending appropriations bill that authorized emergency funding for the Iraq war and tsunami victim relief.

Last month, 12 lawmakers -- six Republicans and six Democrats -- called on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) to prevent the ID bill from being slipped into other must-pass legislation. They asked Frist to refer the bill separately to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it could receive a hearing and debate.

"Legislation in such a complex area without the benefit of hearings and expert testimony is a dubious exercise and one that subverts the Senate's deliberative process," the senators wrote in a letter to Frist.

Among the senators who signed the letter were Alexander, Durbin, John McCain (R-Arizona), Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), John Sununu (R-New Hampshire), Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Richard Lugar (R-Indiana).

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) wrote the Real ID Act and tried unsuccessfully to slip it into different must-pass legislation last year. But many lawmakers objected, which forced Sensenbrenner to try again this year.

Rotenberg said groups didn't mobilize strongly before the bill passed this week because they were hoping and expecting the Senate would keep the bill separate from other legislation to give it a proper hearing. Once it became clear last week that the Senate was not going to do this, there was little time to mobilize.

Jeff Lungren, spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee, which Sensenbrenner chairs, acknowledges that the bill wasn't debated on its own in the Senate, but he says the legislation was discussed extensively last year when Sensenbrenner first proposed placing it in another bill.

"We had plenty of debate," he said. "It started in September; it was in various committees of Congress. It was in the (9/11 bill) that the House passed (last October). It was the main bone of contention ... last year. It was also very much in the headlines in the news everywhere last November.... If some members (of Congress) chose not to deal with it (then) that's their fault."

Lungren said that senators told Sensenbrenner last year to put the provisions in a separate bill so they could consider the proposals.

"So we did that," Lungren said. "Nobody should be surprised or whine about lack of debate on these provisions."

Rotenberg disagrees.

"There were no hearings on the bill in the Congress, just a lot of procedural maneuvering," he said. "And how can he say that they agreed to allow the Senate to consider the bill separately when that is exactly what they prevented during the conference (where proponents pushed to have the bill inserted into the spending bill)?"

As for the idea that states might choose not to comply with the legislation, Lungren said they would "probably have some feedback from their residents if (residents) can't use their driver's license as a form of identification. But that's their call to make and we're hopeful they'll work with us to improve the security standards (of their cards)."

Lungren said the main standard put forth by the legislation regards verifying that people obtaining a state ID card are legally present in the state. He said 41 states currently have such requirements that meet the Real ID Act standard.

"It's the ... other states that have low standards," Lungren said. "Because of those low standards they put all Americans at risk."

President Bush is expected to sign the Iraq spending appropriations bill this week.