{"id":25635,"date":"2023-03-25T12:42:37","date_gmt":"2023-03-25T19:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=25635"},"modified":"2023-03-25T12:42:40","modified_gmt":"2023-03-25T19:42:40","slug":"thousands-demonstrate-in-front-of-white-house-to-demand-an-end-to-the-us-war-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/03\/25\/thousands-demonstrate-in-front-of-white-house-to-demand-an-end-to-the-us-war-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"THOUSANDS DEMONSTRATE IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE TO DEMAND AN END TO THE US WAR MACHINE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Protesters<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

POSTED IN POLITICS AND MOVEMENTS: US<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over 200 organizations participated in a rally and march this weekend to fight for peace in Ukraine and an end to US escalation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\u00a0NATALIA MARQUES<\/a><\/strong> MARCH 22, 2023 (therealnews.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People are gathering for an anti-war demonstration near the White House in Washington D.C., United States on March 18, 2023. Photo by Celal Gunes\/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This story originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch<\/a> on March 20, 2023. It is shared here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On March 18, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, over 2,500 people representing over 200 organizations gathered in front of the White House to protest the latest war drive: the escalation and prolongation of the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Iraq invasion and the US\u2019s central role as an aggressor on the world stage could not be more related to the Russia\u2013Ukraine war, speakers argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The warmongers] want you to somehow think that it\u2019s progressive, that it\u2019s good, that it\u2019s morally right to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fight to the last Ukrainian,\u201d said Eugene Puryear of BreakThrough News, opening the rally. \u201cFor what? Just for the ability of the United States government to control the whole world!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After rallying, demonstrators displayed coffins emblazoned with the flags of Iraq, Russia, Palestine, Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, the US, and Syria, representing the lives lost as a result of the US war drive, at the gates outside of the White House. Ellen Barfield of Veterans for Peace addressed demonstrators outside of the White House. \u201cVeterans, we have seen victims, we have caused victims I\u2019m afraid to say,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople are hungry and suffering in this country because more than 50% of our discretionary budget every year is thrown at the Pentagon, for weapons that don\u2019t work, for idiotic wars that make us less safe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSadly, the general public worships troops, so they listen to us,\u201d Ellen Barfield of Veterans for Peace, who was active in opposing the Iraq War, told Peoples Dispatch<\/em> during the starting rally on March 18. \u201cWe use our status. And that\u2019s what Veterans for Peace is all about, it\u2019s about supporting each other in doing a better job of trying to educate the public about the real costs of war, not only to us, but to them too, to the whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The March 18 demonstration sought to unite various people\u2019s struggles within the umbrella of the anti-war movement. Riya Ortiz of Damayan Migrant Workers addressed the crowd to speak about the struggle of Filipina labor trafficking survivors. In conversation with Peoples Dispatch<\/em>, Ortiz expanded on the link between anti-imperialism and Filipina struggle: \u201cThe reason that [Filipina workers] were getting trafficked is because the U.S. ravaged our home country, we don\u2019t have our own heavy basic industry, and basically the main commodity of the country are our people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reverend Annie Chambers, a former Black Panther and an activist since the age of 14 (and is now 81), spoke at the rally about the poor and dispossessed of the United States. \u201cWe\u2019re here talking about peace. But do you know where you live at? You live in the United States of America,\u201d she declared during her speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow can we talk about peace? And we have our very own people starving in the street. Cutting off the food stamps. Cutting off of social aid. Homelessness,\u201d she continued. \u201cOnly the needy suffer when we fight for the greedy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demonstrators then marched, coffins and banners in hand, to the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church for a teach-in, a location famous for hosting one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s last sermons. The march also stopped briefly at the Washington Post to publicly condemn the pro-war messaging of the corporate media, highlighting the fundamental role it has played in swaying public opinion in support of military spending and wars. At the teach-in, speakers discussed social movements and anti-imperialist struggle in regions as diverse as Haiti, Eritrea, Syria, Guam, water protectors in Hawaii, and anti-fascists in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is an event that [warmongers] didn\u2019t even want to happen,\u201d said Eugene Puryear. \u201cThe powers that be\u2026none of them want this to be out here. They want people to be confused.\u201d The share of people in the US who believe that the country is sending too much aid to Ukraine has grown<\/a>, and although most support sending aid to Ukraine in general, only a minority<\/a> support increasing US troop deployments overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a proxy war, but it\u2019s a dress rehearsal for bigger war that the US intends to wage to weaken Russia, to topple it\u2019s government, to go to war and have confrontation with China, to topple the Communist Party of China,\u201d said Brian Becker at the rally in front of the White House. \u201cWe\u2019re determined, we\u2019re gonna build a new movement. This movement is not ending today, this movement is beginning today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

POSTED IN POLITICS AND MOVEMENTS: US Over 200 organizations participated in a rally and march this weekend to fight for peace in Ukraine and an end to US escalation. BY\u00a0NATALIA MARQUES MARCH 22, 2023 (therealnews.com) People are gathering for an anti-war demonstration near the White House in Washington D.C., United… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[299],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25636,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25635\/revisions\/25636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}