AIDS ACTIVISTS RALLY FOR PREVENTION JUSTICE
Showing the “missing pieces” of the HIV prevention puzzle in the United States, hundreds of activists poured into downtown streets for the Prevention Justice Mobilization (PJM) Unity Rally and March on December 4 in Atlanta, where the National HIV Prevention Conference was occurring. People from across various communities called for comprehensive HIV prevention, not divided by community or issue, with the slogan: “HIV is more than a disease. It’s proof positive of injustice!” Music and poetry marked the spirited event. Speakers included representatives from the Georgia Prevention Justice Alliance, Atlanta’s SisterLove, the New York City-based Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Projext (CHAMP), AIDS Foundation of Chicago, and AIDS Services Austin. For more on PJM’s participants, vision and actions, checkout: preventionjustice.org.
— Kenyon Farrow
IRAQIS MARCH VS. U.S. WALL
In a rare public demonstration in the violence-plagued capital, over 1,000 Iraqis in the mostly Shiite district of al-Washash in west Baghdad marched on October 6 to protest the construction of a wall around their neighborhood by the U.S. military. Carrying flags and banners they chanted, “No, no to the wall. No, no to America.” The U.S. military claims the wall is for security; one protestor told Reuters, “The occupiers are planning to build a wall around our area under siege. This is a secure area and this is a peaceful demonstration to condemn it.” In September, U.S. air strikes on the neighborhood killed at least 14 people.
FREE THE JENA SIX!
Outraged by the persecution of six black teenagers by the criminal justice system, inspired by the leadership of their families, and mobilized through Black, community and activist media, thousands rallied to Jena, LA, on September 20 in one of the largest national demonstrations against anti-Black racism in years. Many see the movement in solidarity with the Jena 6 as a catalyst for a new era of activism. Kazembe Balagun, a marcher from New York, offers, “The march showed that far from being dormant, the post-civil rights generation is taking the struggle into their own hands.”
L.A. EIGHT ARE FREE!!
After a 20-year ordeal of vindictive persecution on October 30 the Board of Immigration Appeals forced federal prosecutors to drop any remaining deportation charges against Michael Shehadeh and Khader Hamide. They will be able to apply for citizenship in three years. The two were among seven Palestinian nationals and one Kenyan, arrested in 1987. Invoking 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, which made advocating the “doctrines of world communism” a deportable offense, the government accused them of supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Though a judge rejected the absurd charge married to “secret evidence,” the government amended the charges against these two of them of total of six times over the years, appealing judges’ dismissals. Of course, the 2001 PATRIOT Act was a big help in keeping alive this case, which the immigration judge in 2007 called “an embarrassment to the rule of law.”
The government finally has relented, tacitly acknowledging what judges have validated along the way, that there was never any evidence of any illegal activity: all the defendants did to raise this ire was exercise their First Amendment right to support the Palestinian cause.
IRANIANS PROTEST
A couple of updates to our feature on Iran’s vibrant array of social movements in WIN’s Fall 2008 issue: Iranian workers continue to protest state repression of labor unions, particularly the months-long imprisonment of Mahmoud Salehi of the bakers union and Mansoor Osanloo and Ebrahim Madadi of the bus workers. Their detention has also been challenged by solidarity campaigning from the International Transport Workers Federation, Amnesty International,and others.
Meanwhile, on December 9, 1500 rallied and marched at Tehran University, breaking the college’s main gates. Continuing a wave of protest, they denounced President Ahmadinejad, protesting repression against student activists and demanding the release of three from Amir Kabir University who have been jailed for months. The demonstration marked the National Day of Students, commemorating the 1953 police killing of three students protesting the shah’s brutal regime during a visit by then-Vice President Nixon, a few months after the U.S.-engineered coup toppled Iran’s democracy. Protesters also chanted anti-war slogans directed at the United States and Israel.
While progressives in Iran and the diaspora - from Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi’s National Peace Council to the international Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran and a wide array of others - debate internal Iranian politics, they have been unequivocal in their opposition to U.S. meddling or attack, which they say would cause nightmarish setbacks to their promising struggles.
PALESTINIANS ASSERT STRUGGLE DEMANDS
On the occasion of Bush’s Mideast conference at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Ramallah, Gaza City, Hebron, Nablus, and Tulkarem on November 27 to protest U.S. empire, Israeli apartheid, and Palestinian Authority complicity and repression. PA forces beat and arrested scores of demonstrators in Ramallah. The Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wal Campaign, the Popular Committees of refugee camps, and more than a hundred other organizations announced a Declaration of Principles and National Rights.
The activity was preceded by an October unity-building conference of Palestinian civil society in Cyprus and a November conference in Ramallah furthering the global boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) strategy against the Israeli occupation. Campaign coordinator Jamal Juma, noting that the people, not the PA, are “the leaders of the Palestinian national struggle,” asserts, “The grassroots movement against normalization with the occupiers will continue to grow.” Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign: stopthewall.org
MILITARY RESISTERS GO TO COURT
War Resisters Support Campaign, a broad alliance of activists aiding U.S. soldiers seeking sanctuary in Canada, put out an urgent action appeal in the wake of a Canadian Supreme Court decision in November rejecting two resisters’ refugee claims. In December, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration recommended halting all deportation proceedings against U.S. military resisters and their families. WRSC will continue to organize and rally pressure and support for this cause. To learn more, go to www.resisters.ca
Stateside, resister Lt. Ehren Watada won an important legal victory. After his first court martial ended in a mistrial, a district court ruled on November 8 that a second trial would violate his protection against double jeopardy. The Army will appeal. Updates: www.thankyoult.org
DIRECT ACTIONS TAKE ON THE WAR
Protesters brought their antiwar resistance directly to the headquarters of Blackwater in Moyock, N.C. on October 20, re-enacting the September 16 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, in which the mercenaries killed 17 Iraqi civilians. The State Department offered the military contractor and its employees complete legal immunity. Seven protesters were arrested and were scheduled for trial in December.
In November days of action, Olympia, Washington activists obstructed and delayed military shipments from the port, facing violent police repression. Sixty-six were arrested. This is the latest of several major actions at Washington ports in the last two years. Protesters were trying to prevent the movement of combat vehicles and hardware used by the Army’s Stryker Brigade Combat Teams.
FRANCOIS D’HEURLE (1925-2007)
Longtime peace activist 
died on October 8 in Westchester County, New York. The French-born emeritus scientist at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center was an accomplished and recognized researcher in physics and engineering. He also taught at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm; the institution awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy in 1995. For decades, the d’Heurle home was a hospitality center for Middle Eastern and European peace activists visiting the States. From 1966 to 1974, he served as secretary of the Committee of REsponsibility, helping arrange medical care for war-injured Vietnamese children. D’Heurle was an active member of the Westchester People’s Action Coalition, Fellowship of Reconciliation,and WRL. A memorial website has been posted: francoisfriends.webhop.net
VETS LEADER DAVID CLINE (1947-2007)
There’s this photo in my mind, used int he film Another Brother, of Dave Cline and Clarence Fitch and Grace Paley and me at a WRL dinner in 1988. As chair of WRL at the time, I had the honor and pleasure of sharing emceeing responsibilities with Grace, presenting our annual Peace Award to Dave and Clarnce as representatives of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Now Dave joins the ancestors, along with the other two from that frozen memory, and my sadness is mixed with the fact that they all must be giving one helluva hard time to whomever it is one faces upon death.
I can’t begin to describe the ways in which Dave inspired and educated me and my generation of resisters over decades of demonstrating, celebrating, strategizing (about this war and that, about intervention and imperialism, about South Africa and south Jersey and everywhere in between), and speaking out. Though the words were not originally his own, he embodied a phrase that I still repeat often and that seems important to hold on to at difficult times like this: Mourn for the dead, fight like hell for the living. We will miss and mourn Dave, and will redouble our fight in his spirit and memory.
— Matt Meyer
