Growing coalition protests US war on Iran

Presenter: Immediately after the United States announced the bombing of Iran, activists in Eugene Springfield began organizing. At the old federal courthouse June 22, Kaleigh Bronson-Cook:

Kaleigh Bronson-Cook: Sometimes, when you see the devastation—So I, about five years ago, I was leading very similar chants. And so to see the cyclical nature of the Empire, and that we’re here again. We’re here again saying no threats, no bombs, no war with Iran.

[00:00:32] I was two years old when 9/11 happened. My entire childhood was marked by the Iraq War. I had family members serve in the Iraq War. I saw the devastation that that did to Iraq, to my family, to my community. I grew up in a rural, conservative area where people supported the war until they saw what it looked like and what the true cost of war was, both in terms of human life and in terms of lack of investment in the things that my community desperately needed, like transportation and housing and education.

[00:01:13] So this one is (chanting) We remember Iraq / We will fight back!

[00:01:31] First, I want to introduce you to Chris Case. Chris Case is a former Marine and a union organizer. Give it up for Chris. [cheering]

[00:01:46] Chris Case (SEIU): Can everyone hear me? Hi, my name is Chris Case and I am a statewide executive for SEIU 503 and I am also a United States Marine Corps veteran. I served as an infantry marine from 2009 to 2014 and I am speaking to you today to condemn the U.S. attack against Iran and our continued support for the genocidal Zionist regime.

[00:02:12] We are once again seeing the tax dollars that could be going to improve our lives instead being used to immiserate others. A proposed budget that will see the largest transfer of wealth and the biggest slashing of social services this country has ever seen, but you bet your ass there’s room in the budget for this.

[00:02:37] The only country who has ever used nuclear weapons is once again using the cover of a nuclear weapons program to attack a sovereign state. And this is all to protect a country that will not admit it has nuclear weapons, that will not sign on to nonproliferation treaties, and has attacked at least five countries since Oct. 7. Our senators go on live television and say it’s fine Israel spies on us and it’s fine that they lie to us.

[00:03:18] It’s fine that we are formally entering a war on the side of a regime who for the last 20 months has livestreamed a genocide. Never mind what they’ve done for the last 70 years. A sovereign state is attacked and we demand they show willingness to come to the table. The president decides to attack another country, and then calls it a peaceful solution? When are we finally going to decide: Enough is enough.

[00:03:54] I would like to address all the current service members. To those of you currently deployed to U.S. cities to quell people’s righteous indignation at having their neighbors stolen in the night; to those of you standing by currently to see if you’ll be given orders for following on in operations to support the Zionist entity. I say this, it is time to refuse those orders.

[00:04:25] It is time to stand as a conscientious objector and say you will not put your morality and honor on the line to defend a government who could not care less about you.

[00:04:37] Just look at the pictures of where they have them sleeping in Los Angeles. The first detainment by the Marines working in concert with ICE was an Army veteran in front of the VA.

[00:04:58] Service members who were promised citizenship in exchange for honorable service are currently being deported.

[00:05:08] I’d ask you, those who have signed on to give your life and service to something greater than yourself, is this how you want to be remembered? I call on all service members to stand with the people. Our enemies are not people just as poor as us around the world. Our enemies are the ones who make the world poor.

[00:05:33] Long live the workers, long live the fighters, long live Palestine. Thank you very much.

[00:05:36] Kaleigh Bronson-Cook: Give it up for Chris! Next, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Selina Soray, who is an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Give it up for Selina!

[00:06:00] Selina Soray (PSL): I apologize in advance but I might be little bit emotional while I speak today. My best friend in the entire world is from Iran. His family is living currently in Isfahan. His dad in Baltimore, Maryland in tears wondering what his family is up to, where they are, how they are doing, cannot get in contact with his own family. I thought about this all night. I apologize.

[00:06:32] To the point: Donald Trump’s destruction of Iranian civilian nuclear energy by the use of bunker-busting bombs and cruise missiles will open up the gates of hell in the Middle East, perhaps igniting a regional and global war. The people in the United States should imagine their reaction if a foreign power dropped 31,000-pound bombs on this city right here.

[00:07:00] This is what Donald Trump did to Iran last night. This is a war crime. To make it even more outrageous Trump included in this announcement of these strikes that now is the time for peace. To include a call for peace is a literal expression of hypocrisy and arrogance that has perhaps no equivalent in world history.

What Trump has done shreds hope for peace and instead has plunged the region into perhaps a deeper and more devastating conflict. In his White House address last night, Trump claimed that Iran is the bully of the Middle East. Bulls—. “We must make peace now,” he says, “and if they do not, future attacks will come and be greater and far easier.” It’s hard to imagine a statement that has more completely turned reality on its head.

[00:08:02] Since the Bush admin, the United States has invaded Afghanistan, invaded Iraq, has bombed Libya, Syria, and Yemen, a genocide in Yemen at that, and in Palestine, we have made this all possible. It is the U.S. and Israel, not Iran, who are responsible for this. Trump also said in his speech that he wanted to thank and congratulate the devil himself, Netanyahu.

[00:08:36] We work as a team, he said, perhaps better than no other team has ever worked before. That Trump would embrace an internationally-wanted war criminal is a disgrace, and it only shows that America is built on genocide. We have one speed and one speed only, and that is the destruction of people whose natural resources we live comfortably off of.

Because of Trump’s aggression there is now no telling how far this will escalate. Iran could immediately retaliate by hitting one or many of the U.S. military bases that surround their country. If this leads to the U.S. consulates, the next step could be an open-ended U.S. bombing campaign, a boots-on-the-ground invasion, or even uncontrollable spread of war around the entire globe.

The one who is responsible for the grave danger to every person on the planet is the war criminal Donald J. Trump He was lying when he commented he would keep the United States at peace. And since his entry onto the political scene, Donald Trump has tried to take advantage of the widespread opposition to the endless wars in the Middle East by pretending to share this view. Bulls—. At his core, Trump is a hardcore imperialist and militarist who wants to use the Pentagon war machine to bully and subjugate the entire world. Human lives!

[00:10:19] Human lives are at stake, not just people that the Iranians themselves love, people I love, people I grew up with, breaking bread with, people who even reached out to me at the beginning of my gender transition from Tehran (of all places in the world) to tell me what a beautiful smile I had that I was hiding all of my life and they hope to see that beautiful smile shine through.

[00:10:46] Iranians are human beings the same way that we are the same way that Palestinians are and bombing them does not liberate them. (No, it doesn’t.) These things though however of absolutely no concern to Donald Trump and his warmonger friends.

Trump is also lying when he says that Iran is about to develop a nuclear weapon. We’ve heard this time and time again for almost 30 f—ing years. (Well, what’s causing that?) Even the U.S. government’s own intelligence does not believe this.

And the hypocrisy is striking: Israel itself is a nuclear power but refuses to sign the nonproliferation treaty.

[00:11:30] And what’s more, the United States has the largest nuclear weapons supply in the entire world and is the only, the one, the singular country to ever use them in times of war. (Shame!)

[00:11:49] ‘Iran is developing nuclear weapons.’ It’s just a poor imitation of George W. Bush’s lie about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ And it is just as false. And we must stand together in opposition to this in order to liberate not just ourselves, but in order to support the liberation of all oppressed people across the world.

[00:12:14] Thank you all. I appreciate this.

[00:12:29] Kaleigh Bronson-Cook: Give it up for Selina! Next, I want you to join me in welcoming Justin Filip with the Pacific Green Party. Give it up for Justin!

[00:12:45] Justin Filip (Pacific Green Party): Can you hear me? Alright.

[00:12:50] Listen, Trump’s not going to hear this speech, and the ruling class will not hear it, but you will, so I’m going to direct these comments to you. War is an antiquated concept, so why are we still doing it? (I don’t know.) My daughter made this sign for a ‘No War with Iran’ rally six years ago, and here we are again.

[00:13:16] This attack on Iran was supposedly meant to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. Never mind they’ve been saying the same thing for 30-40 years now, as Selina pointed out, okay? The only country that used a nuclear weapon on civilians is the United States: 160,000 killed in Hiroshima; 80,000 killed in Nagasaki.

[00:13:40] It bears repeating that the U.S. spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined. All while our infrastructure crumbles, our schools suffer from budget cuts, and the number of unhoused people continues to go up. Why do we allow this to happen? (I don’t know.)

[00:14:01] Dr. King said when there are 40 million poor people in America, when you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. We’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society.

[00:14:17] Researchers at Brown University looked at the U.S. post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. And I’m not going to inundate you with too many numbers, but I want to point out a few things. At least 408,749 civilians in those countries died as a direct result of the post-9/11 wars.

[00:14:41] These numbers don’t even seem real. Can you wrap your head around that? 408,000 people no longer with us because of our militarism. (Under both parties!) Under both parties, correct.

[00:14:53] (The Iraq war should have never happened.) As of May 2023, this is kind of an old stat, this comes from Brown, more than 7.6 million children under five, under the age of five, in post-9/11 zones suffered from acute malnutrition. So it’s not just the people that die from the bombs, it’s the indirect deaths that happen downstream from all of this war. Let’s not forget those deaths.

[00:15:19] Okay, let me remind you, there are people who voted for Trump thinking he would be the president of peace. (I did.) They were wrong. And anyone suggesting things would be different under Harris are also wrong. During the last presidential campaign, Harris called Iran our greatest adversary and said one of her top priorities was ensuring they do not get a nuclear weapon.

[00:15:42] Do we really think we would be in a different place if Harris was president? I do not. (No Democrats!) Well, you guys, when Donald Trump was president, she said, ‘When Donald Trump was president, he let Iran off the hook after Iran and its proxies attacked U.S. bases in American troops.’ ABC just reported that Israel and U.S. practiced this attack a year ago. Was Trump president a year ago?

[00:16:13] Let me also remind you that Obama ordered drone strikes that hit eight weddings. And we just watched the Biden administration enable a genocide for over a year. We cannot say we support peace and then vote for parties of war. If you believe, if you belong to and vote for parties of war and imperialism, don’t be surprised when you get war and imperialism.

[00:16:43] If you want peace you have to build and vote for parties of peace. People parties understand the people want peace. Billionaire parties prioritize money. (Yeah.) We are all residents of this same rock, spinning around in space, we must put people of the planet and peace before profits.

[00:17:08] People die while the ruling class plays tennis with our government, volleying power back and forth from one war party to another. (Yeah.) The extent of most people’s activism is voting and maybe a march or parade organized by the establishment. We don’t have time to wait for a violent revolution. Sorry, we don’t.

[00:17:29] And although I’d love to see one, we don’t have time to wait for a general strike. We need everyone here to commit to not voting for either billionaire party anymore. [audience cheering] Support independent and third-party peace candidates. The power is ours for the taking, and we cannot be bought.

[00:17:55] Kaleigh Bronson-Cook: Please join me in welcoming Molly, a long-time community organizer/activist. Give it up for Molly. [audience cheering]

[00:18:11] Molly Sirois: Hi, I just wanted to play for you a sample of what my friends in Gaza are hearing. So yes, we’ve bombed Iran, but the bombing in Gaza continues relentlessly. So I think it’d be good for all of us just to get a small sampling of what that might sound like.

[00:18:34] [Bombers flying overhead; bombs dropping; children crying; screaming]

[00:19:46] If you are a public employee you are invested in the manufacturer of these bombs. Of course if you’re a taxpayer you’re also paying for these bombs. I think each of us, like it or not, are tied to the bombs, to the making, the delivering, and the dropping.

[00:20:13] So if you are a public employee, if you have a family member or friend who’s a public employee, at the very minimum we can do is respectfully, calmly, state the facts. If any of you want to know how to find out about your public employee investments, please see me. And let’s do what we can to make the difference. Thank you.

[00:20:45] Kaleigh Bronson-Cook: Thank you, Molly [audience cheering and applauding]

[00:20:53] Next, I want to introduce you to Stan. If you don’t know Stan, Stan is a leader in Indivisible Eugene Springfield, helped convene the Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield (ACES), and has a master’s in international law from Georgetown University Law Center, served as the chair of Lane Peace Center for a dozen years, and more than anything, is a wonderful human being. Give it up for Stan.

[00:21:25] Stan Taylor (Indivisible Eugene, Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield): Lately I’ve been feeling a sense of deja vu. I first felt it when I stepped off the stage at the April 5 Hands Off! rally and looked around the crowd and realized that we are forming a long, sustained social movement, much in the vein of the civil rights movements of the ’50s and ’60s, the anti-war movement of the ’60s, the Poor People’s movement of the ’60s.

[00:21:57] These were my formative years. These are the years where I stepped forward to get a conscientious objector status to the war. These are the years when Martin Luther King said that the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.

[00:22:18] What we know is Americans do not want war. Americans do not want war. Americans do not want destruction. Americans do not want death.

[00:22:34] Now let’s be clear, these wars are illegal. The bombing in Gaza is illegal. It is violating the Geneva Conventions of War. The bombings in Iran, the current bombings, are illegal. In this country, the only body that has the power to declare war is Congress, Article II of the Constitution.

[00:23:07] In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act, it delineated specifically when military could be deployed and the only time the only time that the president can declare war or commit troops on foreign soil is when the United States is being attacked, either its territory, its soil in the United States, or its citizens somewhere in the world.

[00:23:39] Otherwise, you have to have an act of Congress, either a declaration of war or an authorization of the use of military force.

[00:23:53] These are the only circumstances where war can be declared or fought, so these wars that we’re seeing are a violation of the Constitution and a violation of the law.

[00:24:12] So what I want to say is: Don’t give up on a vision of a better world. Now is not the time for despair. Everything in the world is under attack. There’s a war in Iran, there’s a war in Gaza, there’s a war on the environment, there’s a war on immigrants, you name it—everything is under assault and to stand up for yourself is an act of self-defense.

[00:24:55] So again, now is not the time for despair. Now is the time to step forward. If we don’t do it for ourselves, let’s do it for the planet, let’s do it for our children, or let’s do it for our grandchildren. [Applause]

[00:25:18] No War On Iran rally attendee: Thank you Stan!

[00:25:20] Kaleigh Bronson-Cook: Let’s give a big round of applause to all of our amazing speakers today.

[00:25:28] As Rev. (It’s Sunday!) Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, ‘Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.’ So, we’re going to keep being out in the streets. Of course. We also need to get organized.

[00:25:53] We need, in any one of the amazing organizations here or elsewhere in the community, we need to get organized, so that we can fight back.

[00:26:05] The Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Green Party, there are incredible amazing grassroots anti- war pro-peace organizations in our community, many of whom spoke today, who you should get connected with and involved with and actively involved in organizing with, because we cannot expect to defeat the war machine if we do not, as MLK said, organize as effectively as those who love war. (Bingo!)

[00:26:32] I’m going to leave you with a final chant to hopefully inspire you to get involved: “Ain’t no power like the power of the people, cause the power of the people don’t stop, they won’t!”

[00:26:41] Presenter: Eugene protesters organize in response to war with Iran. They urge you to join a local group participating in the Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield, such as Planet versus Pentagon, which also co-sponsored the emergency protest.

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Field recordings by Todd Boyle for KEPW News. You can watch the entire rally on Todd Boyle’s YouTube channel.