Anti-war protesters: Join us and help shut it down

Presenter: Anti-war protesters gathered at the Wayne Morse Courthouse in Eugene Saturday, and KEPW’s Todd Boyle was there. Introducing the speakers March 7 was Dahlia:

Dahlia: Our first speaker is going to be Ross from the Eugene-Springfield Democratic Socialists of America. Give it up for Ross.

Ross (Democratic Socialists of America): In 1953, after threatening to nationalize the country’s oil industry and direct the profits not to foreign investors, but to the Iranian people, the prime minister of Iran’s relatively young democracy was overthrown in a coup by British and American intelligence officials, empowering the Iranian monarchy and giving way to more than 20 years of brutal repression by the Shah Reza Pahlavi.

In 1979, the people of Iran rose up behind a common cause, that of the cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, in a rejection of the Western-imposed authoritarian rule of the Shah. The Shah sought refuge in the United States, precipitating the event that most of us probably know better: the Iran hostage crisis.

After a failed armed intervention to free the hostages, the Shah died of cancer, and Iran and the United States have remained adversaries ever since.

I’m a history professor by trade, and I bring all of this up to demonstrate a key truth. The United States history with the Iranian people has never been driven out of concern for their well-being. It has always been about the economic and military interests of the West, including the state of Israel, and that after the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, there was a very pressing reason for countries like Iran to obtain a nuclear deterrent.

There’s another more recent part of history to remember here: That Iran, for whatever faults its government and ruling class might have had, was on a path to peaceful relations and an uneasy but durable peace with its neighbors.

In 2013, Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor was aging and a reformist president had been elected on a wave of support from young Iranian men and women.

Hassan Rouhani bet his presidency and the entire fate of Iran’s reformist movement on the success of a diplomatic pact that deescalated and disarmed Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for assurances that their sovereignty would be respected, that their nation of nearly 100 million people could finally become part of the world economy.

After decades of harmful sanctions, a deal was struck between Iran and the West. A triumph of diplomacy and a reputation of the strategy of violent regime change that had torn apart the region a decade earlier.

In 2017, the same man who ordered the bombings that have killed more than 1,000 Iranians, including 180 children and teachers at an elementary school in the early hours of the war, tore up that agreement. It did not matter that international observers attested that Iran had kept their end of the bargain because, as has always been the case with the United States and Iran, it was never about that in the first place. The reformists in Iran were defeated.

Diplomatic efforts were rejected and we were set on a path to the world we now live in. It was a tremendous waste. It was also a choice in the wake of the unfolding atrocities of Israel’s U.S.-enabled genocide in Gaza.

The same man (I don’t need to tell you who, I expect) was returned to office and in the same short time of his second term, he has continued his relentless assault on the Iranian people while openly facilitating an expansionist and monstrous campaign by Israel against nearly every country in the region, which climaxed in the 12-day War of 2025 which itself claimed the lives of 935 Iranians.

Some have tried to tie the recent renewal of hostilities, which have not only claimed more than 1,000 lives, not only destabilize the entire region creating an economic crisis, as the world’s oil supply is held hostage to the demented demands of that pedophilic, would-be tyrant.

They’ve tried to tie that to the violent suppression of protests by Iran’s ruling government. This is nonsense. The killing of Iranian leadership has not freed the people of Iran. There is no intention to free the people of Iran. (Right.) 

Whatever crimes Iran’s leadership may have committed, it is up to the Iranian people to decide the future of their country free from foreign intervention. (That’s right.) 

We in a United States that looks far less like a democracy than it has in generations, are hardly in a position to throw stones now, are we?

As the United States chose a path that led to the bloodstained backpacks of schoolgirls, it can also choose a path away from those outcomes. We call for the end of the war against the people of Iran and the withdrawal of American military assets for the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Israel cannot maintain this war and its campaigns of regional conquest without American help. We must withdraw all military aid to Israel and recommit to diplomacy. Iran has a right to defend itself against attack, and no democracy has ever been birthed from bombs.

So some of you may be asking: How can we make that choice? Well, as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, one way of building working-class power and working to end the imperialism of the world’s hegemon is to elect true champions of our values to office—to every office. It won’t be easy, it won’t be quick, but it must be done.

So in addition to supporting the city council campaign of Athena Aguiar in Ward 5, the Eugene Springfield chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America was proud to endorse Ky Fireside, a local privacy rights activist, Starbucks Union organizer and Democratic Socialist, and one of the founders of the immensely successful Eyes Off Eugene campaign that removed Flock cameras from our streets.

Ky is running for House District 7 in Springfield to replace the retiring John Lively against a very establishment Democrat and they could use your help.

In addition to voting in the primary on May 19, if you live in Springfield, please come find me to get more information about how you could help us in our grassroots efforts to send a true ally to the people of Palestine and Iran to Salem, and put the Democratic Party on notice.

The state of Oregon holds significant investments in Israeli companies. We must elect people with the courage and clarity to demand divestment, boycotts and sanctions on the state of Israel.

But for any but for any change to last, we must elect as many socialists as we can. So in addition to join to Ky’s campaign, I urge all of you who are not already involved to get organized: Join DSA, join PSL, or any number of local activist groups and coalitions.

You may feel helpless in the face of bombs falling on Tehran, but together we can work to build working-class power, and with it a better world where it cannot and will not happen again. 

Dahlia: Dr. Mark Bronner is this emergency physician who has treated civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza. He’s here today to speak about what war really does to human beings and why so many of us are calling for peace. Please welcome Dr. Mark Bronner.

Dr. Mark Bronner: No democracy has been birthed from bombs. Let that set in for a minute. That is amazing. No democracy has been birthed from bombs. Look at Iraq. What happened in Iraq? Same thing. Trillions of dollars, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, entire population of Eugene-Springfield gone because of us, because of our tax dollars, because of our ineffectual ability to lead our government.

So this is what’s going on. What I want to talk to you a little bit about is my personal experience visiting in Iran as a tourist during sanctions. You know, I took my two children and my spouse to Iran, to travel for three weeks just to meet people, to share meals, to eat, to cook. To see what it was like to live as an Iranian. It was beautiful.

We’re dropping bombs on human beings. We’re killing people. We’re traumatizing them. The trauma will show up for generations. It’ll show up in relationships, inability to hold a job, and being innovative and loving.That’s what we’re doing. We’re robbing people—generations—from being a human being. We’ve got to do something.

And I see the same thing. I was in Gaza last June in Nasser Hospital, the last hospital in Khan Younis, in Gaza. And it was the same thing. It was just beautiful people that I met. Children, 20,000 children murdered by our genocide in our name, our tax dollars, our bombs.

There was a moment where there was a young boy that had been shot in the head and he was out of it, we put a breathing tube down. And the father spoke perfect English and was this tall, handsome guy.

And I don’t know why, I started several times. I finally said, ‘Hey, I’m so sorry. I paid for the bomb that’s killed your son.’ And he just turned around and he hugged me and he is like, ‘No, Dr. Mark, you did not kill my son.’

These people, they understand the difference between government and people. We are the people. We’ve got to take the power. We’ve got to demand justice in this world. And it starts with grassroots, it starts with this, it starts with all of us here together. (That’s right.) 

You know, raising our voices and saying: No bombs. Do not bomb Iran. Do not create a genocide in Gaza. It is us.

So that’s all I have to say is it’s about human beings. It’s about people, it’s about civilians, it’s about brothers and sisters and people that we could fall in love with. And it’s just wrong, and I’m so glad you guys are here to put a stop to it. Thank you.

Dahlia: Our next speaker is going to be Sadie from the University of Oregon’s Jewish Voices for Peace.

Sadie: Hi everyone. My name is Sadie and I’m a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of Oregon and one of the co-chairs for Jewish Voice for Peace. 

As we are all aware, the United States and Israel began joint attacks on Iran at the end of February, killing over 1,300 people through the use of destructive military power while displacing civilians and targeting women and children. 

Shame. They launched missiles on an all-girls school in Minab, which alone killed over 150 young girls, and was described by UNESCO as a grave violation of international law. Shame. 

The U.S. and Israel have enough collective power to assert control over Southwest Asia, North Africa—or the SWANA region—and they continue to exert their dominance and force Iran and other surrounding countries to surrender.

We have been watching them work in collaboration with one another to carry on the Zionist project in occupied Palestine, and we’ll continue to watch them to do anything it takes to ensure they have full access to different countries in the SWANA region without any possible threats of retaliation as long as there is a longstanding history of the U.S. and Israel’s escalation in these countries with that very goal. Shame! 

It makes me so angry to see that our tax and tuition dollars continue to be invested in companies that fund the creation of military weaponry, surveillance programs and technology that works to instill fear for safety such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

It is absolutely crucial that we continue to stand up and fight back against the violence and destruction taking place across the globe, whether that is in Iran, Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Ukraine, Myanmar, Yemen, Syria, and beyond.

The United States is deeply responsible for many of these attacks, which is why we must advocate in our immediate communities for complete structural change. This repression will continue to make its way to all of us, and we have to make it clear to everyone we will not give up in the fight for a just world.

We cannot be silent while bombs are being dropped and missiles are being deployed onto communities just like ours. We must use our anger as an effective tool of creating change because the struggle is far from over and none of us will be safe until we all are safe. We have a responsibility to advocate and care for one another and ourselves in this fight.

I want to end with a quote from Audre Lorde’s collection of essays, In A Burst Of Light: ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.’ 

Dahlia: Please give a warm welcome to local anti-war activist, Molly Sirois:

Molly Sirois: First I want to thank PSL for always, always showing up, for bringing us all out here and thank you for all of you who have come out on a Saturday. And for many of you, it’s a little segment of time in an incredibly busy schedule.

I am going to change the tone here a bit. I am going to focus on my responsibility for this war on Iran. I am an American. I am a taxpayer. I am an Oregon public employee retiree, and I am a consumer

In all of those identities, I am both a contributor to and a beneficiary of the systems that make this war—all wars possible. Right?

Last Wednesday after the Aaron Bushnell vigil—thank you to Veterans For Peace in honoring Aaron Bushnell, the serviceman who self-immolated in protest of the genocide in Gaza—I was driving home and I wanted to stop and pick up something to eat and it was dark and I made a left hand turn into a parking lot, and suddenly thud, wham. 

I heard someone cursing and shouting and I got out of my truck and there was a guy getting his things together. And he had been riding on an electric scooter, and I said, ‘I am so sorry, I didn’t see you.’

The short story is: He wasn’t hurt, at least not to his knowledge, in the moment. I wasn’t hurt. But the beauty of that accident is that it propelled me into days of contemplation about where responsibility falls. 

And the more I thought about it, the more I recognized that the minute I got in my truck, I was assuming a certain amount of responsibility for anything that was going to happen while I was in that truck.

I really appreciate these rallies and protests. I really appreciate people showing up, coming out, raising their voices. We need to be doing that, and we are doing that and I am recognizing that I need to get quiet and still and listen to this different source of information, not the ones that we are all immersed in.

In the morning, I’m tempted to reach for my phone and see what has happened next. And I’m resisting that temptation and I’m just giving myself some time to be quiet and still, and to listen to that source of information within that might help me to imagine what I can do about my responsibility for this system that I am a part of.

And so, we need this, we need that. We need group organizing, coming together, and we need individual contemplation. Thanks. That’s it.

Dahlia: Give it up for Thea from the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Thea (PSL): Iran is not an asset. Iran is not to be controlled by the U.S. government. Iran is not an asset, and despite facing decades of economic sanctions and foreign interference, the Iranian people stand strong in their fight for self-determination. The Iranian people deserve the right to sovereignty as we all do.

The U.S. government has already caused enough harm in Iran with a long history of interference that goes back to Operation Ajax, the first coup orchestrated by the CIA in 1953 after the people of Iran nationalized their oil.

This act set the stage for decades of the U.S. government trying to exert control over Iran and countries around the globe through the CIA, resulting in even more bloodshed and destabilization.

Trump hopes to continue this atrocious legacy. But the people see through the lies. Trump and his admin fail to understand that humans will fight for their freedom because they know in their bones, it is an inherent right. We will rise up in the face of tyranny and oppression every time.

The struggle for peace in Iran and justice for working-class families here in the U.S. is the same struggle.

Trump’s attacks on Iran are not just unprovoked, they’re illegal under both the Constitution and international law. This unprovoked, active war does not make anyone safer and it threatens to destabilize the whole region and spread, creating untold bloodshed. Over 1,000 people have already died, and for what?

We won’t stand by while the lives of Americans and Iranians are put on the line for the interests of the ultra-rich. We won’t stay silent while the money and power motives of the elite threaten to drag the world into full-scale conflict. We will fight for peace. 

With International Working Women’s Day, it’s important to remember that it is women and children who suffer disproportionately from these endless wars. Children who are just trying to grow up. And mothers who are just trying to teach their children about the world should not have to fear bombs overhead. 

You don’t liberate women by bombing them. The girls who died in their school in Minab should still be here. They deserve to grow up. They deserve to live in a world where children are not used as cannon fodder, where their lives are treated as more than just a statistic, a casualty. We all do.

Iran does not pose a threat to the people of the United States. Trump does. The U.S. government does. The Pentagon’s War machine costs taxpayers about $1 trillion every year. Our already-bloated military budget, which is larger than the next nine countries combined, will still not be enough to satisfy the war hunger. 

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is estimated to have already cost $3.7 billion so far. Who is going to  shoulder the cost of a spiraling military budget, funding unchecked conflicts? Certainly not the billionaires. 

No, it’s the working people who will see the effects of this. We are the ones who have to watch more cuts to health care and education and services ravage our communities. We are the ones who have to deal with skyrocketing costs for gas and groceries. The companies and billionaires that benefit from this war are not the ones that have to face the brutal costs.

It is not their children who will be sent off to fight and die in this war (right). They will not see their homes in rubble. They will not suffer the aftermath of reckless conflict. 

Instead, they profit companies like Exxon, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing salivate at the profit potential. Here, government officials are already cashing in on the conflict through the stock market and their tendrils of connection in these same organizations. 

Are we going to continue letting our government funnel our money back into their own pockets and the pockets of weapons manufacturers? (No.) Or are we going to demand that our tax dollars go towards the things our people so desperately need? We must stand up. We must use our power as the workers who make this country run to loudly demand: No war with Iran.

Dahlia: Next, I’m going to introduce Jackson from the University of Oregon’s Young Democratic Socialists of America, please join us.

Jackson (Young Democratic Socialists of America): Hello, I’m Jackson, and I’m only a general member here, and this is not my home state of Colorado, but I wanted to start with a story from that state. 

There is a group of activists that have shown something beautiful to me. Within four days from now, some comrades in a little high school and a little town planned to launch a walkout against the Iranian attacks, the Gaza genocide, and our attacks with ICE, a Gestapo force.

And within that walkout, adults of that community plan to crack down on those students’ rights, to be able to use their voice to showcase their horror for the actions our government has committed.

These adults have become tools used by the regime to hunt down our youth as these adults attempt now to stalk and harass members of their own community.

But still these young activists march forward. Because a star of solidarity is a light that shines upon all people of this globe.

I ask for you to carry that star forwards and fight the same tenacity as all our comrades across the world have. We must maintain ourselves as a movement on a mass global scale, but also as a community.

We are strong because no matter what border, no matter what state, and no matter what time, every fight of injustice is our fight. And so I give my deepest respect to my brothers, my sisters, and my siblings and the many other brave people from Monument, Colorado who carry this fight forward by any means they can.

This solidarity has become necessary as an empire beyond any measure looms over us. The U.S. regime is unchanging in its path. If you’re not aware, our president has been trying to use the terrorist organization of the CIA to arm Kurdish groups within Iran. 

The Kurds are one of the largest stateless groups in the world located within the Middle East, and we’ve seen this story far too many times in the invasion of Iraq, the Kurdish Peshmerga were used to invade and end Saddam Hussein’s regime.

They played an absolutely critical role within that conflict, spending their blood for a chance at freedom. However, after the war, the U.S. government saw the Peshmerga as a threat to stability, and in 2013, Iraq waged a military campaign ending Kurdish independence efforts within Iraq.

During the Syrian Civil War, a large group of Kurds inspired by the Kurdish Workers Party revolted establishing the autonomous region known as Rojava.

Rojava promised protection to ethnic minorities and women of Syria. They were heavily used to help end the Ba’athist regime within Syria. But then in 2019, Donald Trump had U.S. troops supporting Rojava pulled out, letting the Turkish government invade and end Kurdish independence. 

The empire let Kurdish forces be massacred, which many call the worst betrayal to the Kurdish people in their history.

And now we see our president again, seven years later, asked to do the same with the Iranian Kurdish, trying to arm them to attack the Iranian government. The Kurdish people deserve their independence. They’re not Arab, they’re not Turks, and they deserve their own state. 

But it has been proven that the United States does not want that state for those people. Instead, they want ’em to give their lives for pedophiles to dodge their prosecution, while we boil and die from a lack of health care education and growing racial divides, our administration wants to export our issues to other countries. 

Instead of ending the systematic oppression over Latino, Asian, Indigenous, and Black communities within our country, they wish to see that racial conflict inflicted upon others. We must end this war now because if the United States wins, we’ll never see the chance for true Iranian democracy as it dies with thousands. 

Iran is not a good country. It is a ruthless regime, and I will always support the people who oppose it. But the United States does not want democracy and it does not want peace. Our regime wishes for the death of schoolgirls and brave Kurds who only dreamed of freedom for their people. 

We demand the end of all military operations against Iran immediately because if we do not end this conflict, we’ll be consenting to the deaths of thousands. We must showcase our international solidarity with Iranian people in any way we can.

We can win. Our resistance is not futile. Recently, I was just made aware that the Kurds refused to back Trump in any way as they decided that freedom and democracy is better than any false promises our administration gives.

We’ll resist this regime in any way we can. This administration will never hide from its tyranny against its own people, its extermination of minorities and it’ll never succeed in protecting its ‘Epstein elite’ from the swift and brutal justice they will face. We as a people must lead the charge forward.

Our strength is of unseen power. We can see that the institutions of America weaken as they panic with rapid, nonsensical policy and the creation of war, they’re trying to distract as we raise one of the largest combined movements in our nation’s history. But these failed distractions show simply they have grown rusty and they have grown weak.

We must organize. We must join our unions, our organizations, and our activist communities to move forward. We’ll end this tyranny if the government refuses to give us our necessities. We’ll create them ourselves. We’ll raise the standards we hold for our government officials. We’ll raise a new flag, not in red of blood enslaved workers, but of the prosperous rose.

And together, I don’t just believe, but I know that we will win. Thank you. Let’s fight.

Presenter: From the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Rob Fisette:

Rob Fisette (PSL): Thanks everybody for coming out. I organize with the Lane County Immigrant Defense Network. 

The U.S. Israeli government and their war machines, they bomb hospitals. They bomb schools. They bomb water desalination plants. They bomb electrical infrastructure, infrastructure around the country, to make Iran unlivable.

When countries become unlivable, people have a choice. They can stay in place and struggle for survival in place in perpetuity, or they can migrate, they can evacuate, and they can struggle for survival on the move in perpetuity.

 Of course, these are all war crimes—bombing hospitals, bombing like infrastructure—these are war crimes. We understand war itself to be a crime. War itself is a crime that creates death, creates displacement regardless of whether it is illegal or legal war.

More Republicans enthusiastically support this destruction. Democrats regretfully support this destruction, except for the few who are brave enough to also enthusiastically support this destruction, and a number you can count on one hand who genuinely oppose it.

Mostly you can get them to support a war powers resolution, which is to quickly ask for permission to go to war first, or they say, ‘Yes, of course they have permission, it’s fine.’

So we need to understand that in the majority it’s working people only, it’s us only who in a majority oppose this war. And in a majority we do oppose this war in majorities.,

In response to ICE terror in the United States, we’ve been organizing in the Lane County Immigrant Defense Network and many other organizations around the city, around the state, around the country, rapid response, defensive response to ICE action. Even as we do that, we feel a certain dissonance that like this can’t be enough.

This can’t be enough to truly respond to the scope of this crisis. We feel that dissonance every day, even though, of course, it’s extremely important work. The reason we feel that dissonance is because ICE, even ICE itself, is very far from the root cause of the crisis that we’re facing.

War—war that makes people’s homes unlivable—is closer, much closer to the root cause of this crisis, and that’s why it’s essential that we all come out as much as possible to mobilize against this war.

This is the beginning of a new anti-war movement. And we need to show up wherever and whenever we can. And a lot of people, a lot of people have talked about that today.

So I want to talk about how we’re going to do that. We need to end this war. The political class in the United States, the U.S. government elected officials, the pundit class are not going to end the war. It’s going to be us that ends the war. That’s right. Only a people’s movement can do it.

At the Lane County Immigrant Defense Network in response to ICE terror and other things, the offensive way we are organizing is to build toward the general strike. We are workers. We have our conviction, we have leverage over the system through our work.

We keep it running. Nobody runs it but us. Once that leverage is organized, we have power to shut it down. We have power to shut it down, and if we shut it down, the billionaires can’t get what they want. So this is why we built toward the general strike.

We saw it on Jan. 23 in Minneapolis, while they were under attack from ICE, they shut it down. Jan. 30, they put out the call nationwide, shut it down nationwide, helped us fight back against ICE. And we did it. We did it here around the country, people did it.

The next time ICE invades another city, that city will know Minneapolis, they shut it down. We’re going to shut it down. The war on Iran, we need to shut it down, okay?

So this is the critical organizing task for all of us right now, is to join an organization and be part of organization and push in your own life the people that you know, those organic places of connection that you have, buy in to the idea that the only thing we can do and the important thing and effective thing we can do is organize with each other to get together and shut it down when we need to.

So in the Land County Immigrant Defense Network, we’re organizing alongside PCUN in the state for the ‘Day Without An Immigrant’ campaign, building toward a May 1 day of shutdown, general strike. 

There may be times before that if we’re going to continue this war, that that comes up as a thing. We need to be ready and organizing with our people to make that happen. And May 1 is going to be a huge shutdown around the country regardless.

But we can’t put our eyes out on the calendar two months from now and say, that’s the day. Every day: Every day we wake up and we understand our responsibility that day to do as much as we can to advance the defensive tactic of the working class, the offensive tactic of the working class, the ultimate tactic to shut it down until we get what we need.

And what we need is for children in Iran to stop being bombed by our government in our name with our money. 

Stan Taylor (Indivisible Eugene Springfield): Hello, my name’s Stan Taylor. I am with Indivisible Eugene Springfield. I wanted to announce on the 14th at the old federal building, there’ll be a ‘No Detention Centers in Oregon’ day.

In case you don’t know it, one of the reasons that Oregon has one of the lowest detention rates in the nation is because we do not have any detention centers in Oregon. We need to continue to keep detention centers out.

They’re attempting to put one in over by Newport and Lincoln City. We need to support them in their resistance. They’re also talking about one in North Bend and one down in Coos Bay. This is a real issue. We need to be behind it. Keep detention out of Oregon. There’ll be a rally on the 14th at noon at the old federal building.

Presenter: Anti-war protesters gather at the Wayne Morse Federal Courthouse in Eugene on Saturday, March 7. Field recordings by Todd Boyle for KEPW. You can see the entire rally at Todd’s YouTube channel.