A CALL TO FIGHT

Please read the attached commentary about the NYC movement against police brutality and Mayor Giuliani as the Boss Tweed type of Tammany Hall sundicate leader.

Then try substituting the "US Military" for New York Police, and Billie Boy Clinton for Mayor Giuliani - which you can do because quite a bit of our military forces have been misused for violence against civilians just as the police here have. And because Giuliani has sold both his soul, AND the City of New York, to his Corporate contributors just as handsomely as Clinton has sold his soul (do they have such a spiritual element, either of them?), AND America, to Corporate PACs and wealthy Democratic and Republican Party contributors.

The national public naively became angry with our military during and after Indochina for basically the same reasons much of the NY public angry with the cops. Naively, I say, because America used to be so infatuated with big Federal power honchos, and had been so conned by their civilian and military brass, that in the 1960s and 1970s they placed the blame for all the immorality, illegality, stupidity and vast bloodshed of the Indochina wars on the easiest targets : the enlisted men mostly, next the below field grade officers. Rather than place that blame where it historically belonged : on the decision making corporate run, money bribed, political bosses; and their careerist centered, selfish and moral cowardly Military general staff. Both of whom kept prosecuting the war, washing each others hands, acting like retro Patriots from world War II while actually promoting their pay grades pay and pensions first and always.., disregarding the degradation of America's previous good international reputation and the fate of the men under them.

Above I requested you to substitute the word Military for the word Police in the attached commentary because it should strike home to any common sense reader - that is, one possessing what is known as good traditional American values - that the cause of our military's declining professionalism, public reputation and internal morale is quite analogous to the decline of the NYC Police professionalism, reputation and morale. The majority of cops clearly detest Mayor Giuliani (verified by me in conversations with many officers) just as strongly as the majority of our military clearly detest Clinton.

And the reason I ask you to make this analogy is because IF the US military keep carrying out orders as inhumane, illegal, stupid and civilian blood drenched as they have in a number of countries from Indochina onwards, the public is finally going to become more and more disillusioned and angry. Once again with the easiest scapegoat becoming just as with Vietnam : the lower echelon military men.

Since the electoral process is too money corrupted to stop electing the likes of Corporate bought politicians such as Clinton - without a Jeffersonian revolution, that is - it will be up to the public to step in and stop the military from continuing to march obediently down this undemocratic, mercantilist path destroying our country's good will abroad and its institutions at home. But how long before that public wakes up to the above noted 'big brass' cause of the problem?

The far more honorable and intelligent solution to restore the professionalism of the military is not to wait for its further international denigration and domestic public disappointment and castigation. But for those morally courageous men connected to the military to assume leadership of a movement to educate and inspire the military establishment into taking a stand, now, against deploying our forces overseas for reasons related to economic power and corporate hegemony. Reasons totally unrelated to our "National Security".

If the military does not act responsible in this regard, as soon as the phony excuses for bombing and killing in Yugoslavia are exposed - or in the next spot our men are sent which is not DIRECTLY to our people's safety and welfare - there will be demonstrations in the streets against not just the civilian leadership but against ALL the military establishment. And, please remember, that if our Balkan's air invasion does not last long enough to explode NATOS's lies and incompetence in the face of America, the cause will certainly be an economic implosion - - when the hyper inflated stocks on Wall Street bursts the present bubble and the now prolonged paper churning "miracle market" greed of our civilian business brass empties the pockets, and dries up the plastic credit, of the 40 to 50 millions of marginalized poor to middle class who have gotten little or nothing from the present boom.

When this economic bubble explodes, you know what's gong to happen, as historically well proven : the corrupt civilians in Washington are going to cover their asses by a quick-time invention of another 'devil' (actually, they have been doing so for several years now) threatening our "National Security". They send the men to fight that devil, go into a budget deficit, gas up the Military Industrial Intelligence complex once again, further kill the unions with the call for sacrifice…, maybe even declaring Martial Law and a suspension of the Constitution. This scenario has been repeated periodically, in small and large theaters, until our now Orwellian Federal system has the people conned sufficiently well enough to finally turn their flaunted "National Security" sysytem of profiteering into a truly permanent part of the post W. W. II economy. Maybe toned down, slightly, once they can "bring the boys safely home". Or once America has become such an efficient military intimidator, when the international fear quotient is high enough, that no country, or "terrorist" group, in the world can stand up to our smart bombs.

This is NOT a movie scenario, but the way we have been heading since the National Security Act of 1947, et. al. - as implemented full force beginning with our Indochina Wars in 1954. And if it occurs, in any analogous form, it will damage the raison d'être of our country, peoples' hope in real democracy, for many years to come. Damage, maybe even worse, for our continued asset-stripping of weaker countries may turn us into a post-modern Orwellian offshore Plutocracy - controlled by corporate fascism trickling down babbles and sprinkling consumer tinsel over the heads of a media indoctrinated, virtually silent, plus dumbed down, majority.

Dave, you and Admiral Moorer are two entities who have already clearly stood up to the lies and corruption and hypocrisies of these cowardly, greedy leaders. All you two men have got to do is stand even taller, by mobilizing your people for a greater effort. If ARAP can take out a $50,000 ++ advertisement on the back page of the NY Times (what other was budgeted I know not) about the lies and cover up falling out of the sky with TWA 800, not counting Pan am 103, is there not the courage and resources available to expose our leader's fiasco in Yugoslavia? BEFORE, they can create another devil "enemy" for our military to once more bloody someone's land?

respectfully submitted,

richard manning

(below are the most relevant excerpts from a long commentary by one leader of the NYC multi-group movement actively fighting police brutality)

By Leslie Cagan

If you read my commentary last month you know I recently was in the center of the organizing for a major march and rally against police brutality here in New York City. The event went well, with somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 people marching across the Brooklyn Bridge into downtown Manhattan. The protest was on a Thursday afternoon and it felt great to completely block traffic and the normal flow of commerce all around the City Hall area.

It was also great to be part of an effort that so completely crossed racial lines. In the more than 2 months of public activities in the aftermath of the police murder of African immigrant Amadou Diallo, New Yorkers from many constituencies found themselves shoulder to shoulder. Our confidence in the correctness of our collective criticisms of the New York Police Department, the energy and commitment expressed in a host of protests, combined with an all-too-rare missing experience of cross-constituency, united action and fed the perception of many long time activists were on the edge of a mass movement.

…What made the work against police brutality feel like a movement was the constant and varied nature of the public protest, the way that activities took place all around the city and the fact that the numbers kept growing. Add to this the diversity of the people coming out to these activities and you couldn’t help but feel like something we haven’t had in New York City for a long time was unfolding: a movement with clear demands expressed in many ways by all types of New Yorkers…

…there is some good news to report. Those community groups that have been doing this work for so long are still hard at work. In fact, the NYC Coalition Against Police Brutality which for the past several years has organized the annual Racial Justice Day demonstration is busily preparing for this year’s march. And again, I want to urge all of you in the New York City area to join this critically important expression of the ongoing, community-led demand for an end to police brutality.

…..I hope that after Racial Justice Day we can sit down and take a long hard look at how to seriously take this work the next step and what it will mean to build a citywide, multi-constituency, community-based movement here in New York City. I just hope this can be done before more lives are taken by the police.