Award-winning journalist Bill Weinberg will give a report-back in Missoula, MT, this week from an international conference on building solidarity with the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC) held in Tokyo this past summer. The IFC is a coalition of trade unions, women’s organizations, neighborhood assemblies and other civil society groups which have come together to oppose the US-led occupation and demand a secular government in Iraq. The IFC is leading a campaign against the pending law that would privatize Iraq’s oil, and has established self-governing zones, which both occupation forces and sectarian militias are barred from accessing, in neighborhoods in Baghdad and Kirkuk. Recently, their leaders have been targeted for attack by US forces. The Japanese anti-war group Zenko last year raised $400,000 for the IFC to start its own satellite television station, Sana TV, which began broadcasting in April. Can anti-war forces in the US similarly organize effective political and material support for Iraq’s civil resistance?
Bill Weinberg is author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso 2000), and editor of the on-line World War 4 Report. He also co-hosts the weekly Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, an anarchist variety show, Tuesdays at midnight on WBAI, 99.5 FM in New York City.
Wednesday, October 17, 6:30 PM, University of Montana, UC Room 330
Sponsored by University of Montana Students for Peace & Justice and the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
The following evening, Weinberg will speak at a screening of the film Go Forward, Iraqi Freedom Congress!, produced by Zenko adherents in Japan and including first-hand footage and interviews from Iraq.
Thursday October 18, 2007, 5:30 PM & 7:30 PM
At the UC Theater in the University of Montana’s University Center, 3rd Floor
Sponsored by the Montana Peace & Justice Film Series
Listed at MissoulaEvents.net
Good Luck !
Enjoy your time from the big, bad city and make it back safely.
b.
Report from Missoula
Well, a total of four folks showed up for my talk last night. I’m reminded at such moments of the words of a contact in Australia who is one of the few people anywhere in the world who does solidarity work for the Naga tribal people of India. She says she will travel any distance to talk to an audience of one. I’m hoping we will do better at the film screening this evening.
Two of the four were an active-duty serviceman and his girlfriend, so at least I can’t be accused of preaching to the choir. He listened respectfully throughout my talk and the Q&A, but didn’t say anything. I only found out he was a solider when I asked the couple to tell us something about themselves. “I just want to get all points of view,” he said.
The local activists here in the hometown of Jeannette Rankin (pop. not quite 50,000) tell me they actually got out several thousand on Feb. 15, 2003, but have been in something of a slump lately.