Statewide Anti-War March in Orlando

Statewide Anti-War March in Orlando Saturday

With the passive and unprincipled President Obama and his Democratic Party sheep supporters dragging our country into a worsening, long term, tragic debacle in Afghanistan and Pakistan, despite that 73% of Democrats and a majority of voters now want the war ended, over 40 Florida peace and justice groups are converging at the entrance of the University of Central Florida at noon Saturday for a mass rally and march to protest Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama’s wars and call for an end to the military economy. The march will culminate at the Central Florida Research
Park local divisions of Raytheon, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, and General Dynamics. This is a critical event here in Florida in the course of the growing Afpakistan debacle that deserves the attendance of 100,000 Floridians. You can contact your local peace group for people to travel with. If you cannot go you can support the march by spreading the word and making a contribution to its considerable organizing expenses.

While the location and message of this march address important issues contributing to America’s growing militarism and provide a “teachable moment”, I am deeply concerned that the event is not addressing, more clearly and effectively, issues more directly related to halting Obama’s wars against Afghanistan and Pakistan. Militarism and these contractors are a marginal issue for the general public that we need to be reaching. This march’s primary message should be demanding an exit from the two countries, explaining its cost, destruction and false premises, and holding Obama and the Democratic Party accountable for what they are doing. The march should send an unmistakable, militant message to the Democratic Party that we are fed up with their wars, we denounce the party and we are abandoning the party (except for support of its few anti-war politicians, the only one of which there is in Florida is Alan Grayson). There need to be speeches and signs at this event denouncing President Obama and politicians like Kendrick Meek and Bill Nelson who are advocating more troops, as are others in the Florida Democratic Party. Silence and deferral to the poor judgments of President Obama by politicians like Debbie Schultz and Robert Wexler, among others, is not acceptable.

The Democrats have to be sent the message that these policies are tearing their party apart, alienating us and will lead to their loss of elections, since this is the highest value of the Party that trumps all ethics. This is the only message Democrats will respect. Until then they will continue playing us for manipulable fools. A more effective location for this march would have been the offices of Bill Nelson or even better, Kendrick Meek, who aspires to a Senate seat and needs to be challenged for his pro-war views and whose ascent to the Senate must be stopped if we are to halt the perpetuation of these wars.

We must be holding Florida’s congressional Democrats accountable for not holding hearings on Afpakistan while allowing the secret deliberations of Nobel winner Obama’s war councils that are not even considering an exit option. We must demand acknowledgment from the Party and its Congressional Budget Office of the ten year projected cost of Obama’s new policies at a time when we have a $1.2 trillion deficit. The deficit financing of these wars and the bloated $700 billion military budget is eroding the future of our country, especially at a time that we need to be digging out of the financial collapse, creating jobs in America and rebuilding our aged deteriorating infrastructure.