World Can't Wait TODAY

Today is the National Day of Mass Resistance declared by World Can't Wait to drive out the Bush régime.

• the illegal Iraq war, with wars already planned in Iran and other countries
• torturing people, justifying torture, and legalizing torture
• indefinite detention on mere suspicion, without access to courts, lawyers, or family
• a narrow Christian theocratic domestic agenda full of hatred and intolerance
• suppression of science for political, religious, or economic reasons
• hostility towards not only abortion, but also all forms of birth control
• a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance, and ignorance

Recent events, just in the past week, have underscored the issues involved — and I'm not talking about Congressman Mark Foley and the pages. Senators McCain, Graham, and Warner took a principled stand against the Bush Administration's drive to legalize torture, but in the end they caved in and gave the President unchecked power to detain whomever he pleases and use any method of "interrogation" that he alone deems appropriate. Almost without notice, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would gut the First Amendment's guarantee of separation of church and state by making it impossible for ordinary Americans to stop the imposition of Christian religious items by the government.

The Democratic Party has shown far too little willingness to challenge the Bush régime, and the Greens and other "third parties" have failed to step up to the plate; indeed, they haven't even made it to the locker room, if I may continue a sports analogy. The people must rise up and demand — from Republicans, Democrats, and anyone else who wants to be a player on the national political stage — an end to these immoral policies and the hostility towards our fundamental rights as supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution.

Quoting the World Can't Wait call to action: "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."

I'll bring you updates from the protest; if I can find a WiFi connection, I'll be blogging live.

Technorati tags: World Can't Wait, October 5