Say no to NATO! Oppose war and poverty!

Fight Back News is circulating this statement from Freedom Road Socialist Organization, on the occasion of the May 20 anti-NATO protests in Chicago.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) welcomes all protesters to this major national and international demonstration against NATO, against war and poverty, in Chicago on May 20, 2012. We oppose U.S. imperialism and its military alliance NATO. The FRSO wants to see NATO defeated and dismantled. We want peace with the rest of the world, not war. We demand an end to the continuing U.S. war and occupation of Afghanistan and support the right to self-determination for the Afghan people. Afghanistan has suffered too much and we say bring the troops home now!

Freedom Road is one of the major groups leading the mass protest against NATO and the G8. We ask you to join us in marching and rallying so the world hears our message. The generals, politicians and bankers can hide behind all their security and spout platitudes about being ‘humanitarian,’ but we will expose their violent, oppressive and exploitative ways. We oppose U.S/NATO orchestrated violence and mass bombing of sovereign countries and the overthrow of their governments, and the killing of thousands of people, like in Yugoslavia in the 1990s or Libya last year. Now Syria and Iran are the targets. The U.S. sets up puppet governments, seizes oil fields and other natural resources and exploits the farm and factory labor of those countries, for the U.S. capitalist class to profit. Half of all U.S. corporate profits come from exploitation overseas. There is no ‘good’ U.S. imperialist intervention in developing, independent or socialist countries.

In opposition to U.S. aggression, Freedom Road sends a message of solidarity to the Arab Spring Uprisings, freedom for peoples suffering U.S. occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq and Korea, support for the national liberation movements in Palestine, Colombia and the Philippines. We stand with independent and socialist countries against imperialism and march together with workers around the globe who just celebrated May Day. Our vision is for peace, justice and socialism. We say, “Take away the money from U.S. militarism and war and spend it on good jobs, affordable housing, health care for all, education and student loan relief, Social Security, sports and cultural development.”

There has been a fair amount of controversy around the anti-NATO protest. The White House, U.S. intelligence agencies and the Mayor of Chicago are doing all they can to scare the public about our protest. We are here in Chicago, most of us from Chicago, to protest U.S. war and violence. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1967 during the U.S. war in Vietnam, “The United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” It still rings true today.

We know and trust the people marching with us – our friends, neighbors, co-workers and union members, people of faith, enthusiastic students and Occupy protesters. Unfortunately for the rich and powerful, it is hard to intimidate us and scare us away. Members and supporters of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization know this all too well.

Many of you know that the FBI is targeting 23 anti-war activists and Carlos Montes for repression. After we helped lead the mass protests outside the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, MN, in 2008, the FBI raided seven homes in Chicago and Minneapolis and subpoenaed all of us to a Grand Jury in Chicago. You can read about it at www.StopFBI.net. Now an important anti-war and immigrant rights leader Carlos Montes is on trial in Los Angeles, being framed by the FBI. His next court date is June 20, 2012. Carlos Montes urgently needs your solidarity to win!

We know this system we live under cannot deliver what we want. We live in strange times where one has to declare, “War is not peace, occupation is not liberation and corporations are not human beings.” We know the politicians of both parties are bought and paid for by the rich. We are in Chicago to protest this system based on empire that dominates people of other countries, while exploiting and oppressing people here at home. The FRSO aims to end capitalism – a system based on inequality, exploitation and oppression. We will replace it with socialism – a system of peace, justice and equality.

Now is the time to rally and march in Chicago, the home of the Haymarket Martyrs and the eight-hour day struggle, of the great unemployed marches of the 1930s and the urban uprisings after Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, where anti-war protesters defended themselves outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention from police under orders to beat and arrest them, and where the mega-marches of the immigrant rights movement came to life in 2006. The masses make history and we will be marching in their footsteps to oppose war and poverty, to bring down NATO and the G8. One more step on the road to end the rule by a small class of billionaires and millionaires. Let’s unite! We have a world to win!

#ChicagoIL #AntiwarMovement #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #antiimperialism #CoalitionAgainstNATOG8War #ChicagoNATOSummit