Not in Our Name

"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."



Over the next week, the Not In Our Name statement will carry out an audacious project to puncture

the whole shameful celebration of war, greed, and intolerance that will surround the second

inauguration of the Bush regime.



Our aim is to publish across the nation a NEW statement of conscience (text below), signed by this

nation's recognized voices of conscience. Bush does not speak for us. He does not represent us. He

does not act in our name. And the whole world needs to hear that.



We want this statement to ring throughout all forms of media, and reach every part of the country.

In this country, free speech is very expensive. But think what a difference it will make if tens

of thousands of us contribute, and a few who are able contribute tens of thousands.



We have but four days left to raise the necessary funds. If you would like to see this statement

in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle and many others

large and small, then you need to go to Not In Our Name statement web site at www.nion.us, sign this

statement, and make your on-line contribution.



Together we can make this happen!



* * *



Not In Our Name



George W. Bush is about to be inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States. Let

it not be said that the people in the United States silently acquiesced in the face of this

shameful coronation of war, greed, and intolerance. He does not speak for us. He does not represent us.

He does not act in our name.



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.



In our name, the Bush government claims to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq on baldly

false pretenses, raining down unspeakable destruction, horror, misery and death to as many as

100,000 people. It destroys entire cities in the name of so-called democratic elections, while

intimidating and disenfranchising tens of thousands of African-American voters at home. It holds an entire

nation hostage, forcing on its people torture, hunger, and unimaginable privation and humiliation.



In our name, it holds in contempt both international law and world opinion. It has carried out

torture and detentions without trial all over the world and proposes new assaults on our rights of

privacy, speech and assembly. It has already stripped the rights of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians

in the US, denying them legal counsel, holding them without cause, stigmatizing, and deporting

tens of thousands.



Could we have imagined a few years ago that core principles such as the separation of church and

state, due process, presumption of innocence, freedom of speech, and habeas corpus would be

discarded so easily? But under this government anyone can be declared an "enemy combatant" by

Presidential decree with no meaningful redress or independent review, by a President whose rationale for

concentrating power in the executive branch is "trust me." Its choice for Attorney General is the

legal architect of torture from Guantanamo to Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib.



As terrifying "trial balloons" are floated about invasions of Syria, or Iran, or North Korea,

about leaving the United Nations, about new "lifetime detention" policies, there is no telling what

further crimes this government will commit in our name against nations or individuals deemed to

stand in the way of its goal of unquestioned world supremacy.



The Bush government seeks to impose a narrow, intolerant, and political form of Christian

Fundamentalism as government policy. We must face the fact that this extremist movement is no longer on

the margins of society. It aims to strip women of their reproductive rights, to drive gay people

from public life back into the closet. It seeks to drive a wedge between spiritual experience and

scientific truth, smugly denying thousands of years of human scientific achievement.



We believe all people must be free to find meaning and sustenance in whatever form of religious or

spiritual belief they choose. But we will not surrender our right to think to extremists and the

President in whom they have their strongest ally. The Grand Canyon was not created by a biblical

flood. Women are not human incubators. Breast cancer is not retribution for having an abortion. AIDS

is not a punishment from God. Evolution happened. Religion can never be compulsory. This

government may claim to make its own reality, but we will not allow it to make ours.



Millions of us worked, talked, marched, poll watched, contributed, voted, did everything we could

to defeat the Bush regime in the last election. It was a massive effort, bringing forth new

energy, new organization, and new commitment to struggle for justice. It would be a terrible mistake to

let our failure to stop Bush in this way lead to despair and inaction. On the contrary, this broad

mobilization of people committed to a fairer world, a freer world, a more peaceful world must move

forward. We cannot, we will not, wait until 2008. The fight against the second Bush regime has to

start now.



The movement against the war in Vietnam never won a presidential election. But it blocked troop

trains, closed induction centers, marched, spoke to people door to door -- and it helped to stop a

war. The Civil Rights Movement never tied its star to a presidential candidate; it sat in, freedom

rode, fought legal battles, filled jailhouses -- and it changed the face of a nation.



We must change the political reality of this country by mobilizing the tens of millions who know

in their heads and hearts that the Bush regime's "reality" is nothing but a nightmare for humanity.

This will require courage and creativity, mass actions and individual moments of courage. We must

come together whenever we can, and we must act alone whenever we have to. This will require

extraordinary acts from ordinary people.



We give our love and support to the soldiers who have refused to fight in this immoral war, and we

pledge to create community that backs courageous acts of resistance. We applaud the librarians who

have refused to turn over lists of our reading, the high school students who demand to be taught

evolution, those who brought to light torture by the U.S. military, and the massive protests that

voiced international opposition to the war on Iraq. We stand with the tens of millions of people

throughout the world who fight every day for the right to create their own future.



It is our duty to stop the Bush regime from carrying out this disastrous course. We believe

history will judge us sharply should we fail to act decisively.





Among the initial signers are:



Janet Abu-Lughod, professor emerita, New School



Michael Albert



Edward Asner



Michael Avery, president, National Lawyers Guild



Rosalyn Baxandall, chair, American Studies/Media and Communications, State University of New York

at Old Westbury



William Blum, author, US foreign policy



Judith Butler, author and professor, University of California at Berkeley



Daniel Ellsberg, former Defense and State Department official



Jorie Graham, Harvard University



Abdeen M. Jabara, past president, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee



C. Clark Kissinger, Refuse & Resist!



Staughton Lynd



Reynaldo F. Mac¡as, chair, National Association for Chicana & Chicano Studies



Robin Morgan, author and activist



Jill Nelson, writer



Rosalind Petchesky, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Hunter College & the Graduate

Center - CUNY



Jeremy Pikser, screenwriter (Bulworth)



Michael Ratner, president, Center for Constitutional Rights



Matthew Rothschild, editor, The Progressive magazine



Luc Sante, writer



Naomi Wallace



Howard Zinn, historian



* * *



You may sign this statement at http://www.nion.us/READ_AND_SIGN.htm. You may also e-mail your

name, how you would like to be identified and your state of residence to sign@nion.us. (Personal

contact information will not be shared or utilized for any other purpose.)