Camp Liberty

Because America is our country.

Camp Liberty | 1.30.06

Those who make peaceful protest impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
- John F. Kennedy, 1962

America is in grave danger.

Many Americans believe their country is under siege - and it is - but not from what they read about in the newspapers. Not from what they see on their TV’s.

The single biggest threat to their country and their futures comes not from foreign “terrorists” or Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden or other adversaries, but from the Administration of George W. Bush.


A Runaway Train of Abuses
The damages caused by this Administration are far-reaching and difficult to summarize in a brief manner, but include a severe tarnishing of America’s reputation in the world through the illegal occupation of Iraq, support for torture and “extraordinary rendition”, maintaining a gulag of secret prisons similar to the well-known Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The bellicose and arrogant actions of the Administration have enraged a multitude of people’s around the world, and especially in the Middle East. The warmongering actions of this Administration have placed Americans in harm’s way deliberately. This is why “terrorists” want to damage us.

Here at home there is a severely damaged economy, relentless spying on Americans, and a wholesale muzzling of our press. There is sufficient evidence that the election process has been compromised, to engage in polite understatement. The Bush Administration has laid siege to our rights and freedoms as enumerated in the Bill of Rights. They use the American media and press to spew lies and deceit and to distort reality in the most Orwellian fashion. They have succeeded in placing rightwing extremist judges on various important Supreme Courts, creating a generation’s worth of slanted decision-maiking in a coordinated effort to eliminate the progress made in the 20th Century. They seek to outlaw dissent and any other opposition to their agenda.

These actions collectively spell out a crystal clear and very present danger to American Citizen’s immediate futures as well as our attempts to intervene in a Federal Administration that is now completely out of control and above the law.

There are very important mid-term elections coming this November and there are many unanswered questions and currently no way of getting these resolved by the legal means available to Americans.


Necessary Intervention
What I think is needed and what I am proposing is a Camp Casey-styled “sit-in” protest against the Bush Administration as well as the GOP-controlled government and it’s horrendous and destructive agenda.

Call it what you want, the bottom line is the need for a sustained presence of over a million Americans in Washington DC long enough to get the attention of the news media and the People of the USA.

The protest would necessarily have to take place in Washington DC as this is the epicenter of most of the problems. We have to protest INSIDE the “Beltway”.

There’s little need for discussion about what to protest – protest whatever you want. As progressives are not defined by a fascist-style “lockstep", such as that which defines the GOP, there are constant disagreements about how to do this or that. Really, folks, we don’t have the luxury of time to ferret out such trivia. We need a mass of warm bodies occupying a very prominent area of Washington DC for an extended, indefinite period of time. Team Bush is a bigger threat than anything else.


Keeping it simple
I am suggesting 2 very simple actions - Camp Liberty in Washington DC, as near to the Steps of Congress as we can get, and ongoing collaborative/solidarity protests in every city near media outlets. (Such as CNN in Atlanta)

Camp Liberty should run indefinitely – this is why I make a comparison with Cindy Sheehan’s Camp Casey sit-in. A one-day march won’t do anything for us. Team Bush enjoys de facto control of the media (despite the incessant blather of the right that somehow liberals control the media) and that media marginalizes, downplays, minimizes and explains away what the people on TV see happening.. The necessary protest absolutely has to be indefinite. A month or 2 or 3, I don’t know and that’s also unimportant. Getting a huge number of Americans to gather in Washington DC for more than a weekend would be the most general and simplest way to describe what its intended.


Protesting in Shifts
This has a lot of advantages. It will allow for many, many people to come and join in and will facilitate “protesting in shifts”. I believe many people were excited about Camp Casey because they could actually go on and work within the schedules of their busy lives. People can come and go as they wish and as they need to.

There would be needs for all sorts of supports such as food and water, sleeping arrangements, trash and waste disposal, and more that I cannot think of. I suppose, since we are so “free” there would have to be some sort of “permit”, a process that would clearly get used to deny such an action, but it has to happen, permission or not. There are a lot of very experienced organizers who know more about this than I probably ever will; my point in this writing is not to recreate that wheel, but to throw out the suggestion that we do this and get started.

After Camp Casey there was a period of time where Ms. Sheehan and the Iraq War Veterans for Peace toured the country on their way to the “big” Anti-War demonstration in DC on September 24th. People were arriving in DC well before the actual protest march. That’s the model for this idea: people just showing up in DC and gathering together near Congress. I am unfamiliar with DC but I imagine protesting anywhere near the White House is impossible and Bush doesn't care anyway. Congress is where the law makers are. They will HAVE to see us.


Protesting the Media
The media is the other component of this huge problem. Scared, apathetic, embedded, or fully in agreement with the Administration’s systematic takeover of our country, the media has failed so miserably in reporting what is happening. It is abject failure and should be the focus of study in the future to ensure it never happens again.

The media is the apparatus that has marginalized and downplayed the actions of We the People when we have attempted to protest this administration’s drive to the invasion of Iraq.

Basically, there should be regular protests in every American city with a significant media outlet. It should be at least weekly or more - as well as definitely every weekend - and they should endure as long as Camp Liberty. Think of it as a temporary lifestyle adjustment - a new hobby - not an isolated one-time event. Team Bush doesn’t give up.


If we build it the People will come
It should not take too long before the effort garners attention in a roughly similar manner to that of Camp Casey. It will likely take off on the internet first where the flow of information has yet to be significantly compromised. American media will ignore it or denigrate it at first – that’s the media’s “job” now.

But if we hold out for even a few days, and get a few celebrities and “important people” (such as good Democrats running for office – hell, I’d welcome “good Republicans” because there are even some of them who are quietly as disgusted as we are, but are not allowed to express themselves) we will get media attention. Global media attention will be good but is not as important as getting the attentions of Congress and our fellow Americans.

It's too soon to suggest a concrete date or a place. I only want to ‘catapult’ the idea of what might make an impact on the problem at hand. This is a general call to action but it is essential that people understand that in order for the “rubber to meet the road” with this the Activist Community in Washington DC probably needs to make the suggestion for the best-fitting date.I am asking for them to begin talking about this.Spring might be good and sooner rather than later seems like a wise idea.

A site will emerge to begin coordinating the best date and location and other logistical information.

So please, spread this around. I am posting it on Smirking Chimp as well as Daily Kos. Info will get posted at those locations when it becomes available.

Time is running out.

Set it off.

Doc
xxdr_zombiexx@yahoo.com

Postscript

Before I posted this publicly, I did request the feedback of a few people I trust to understand the dynamics of activism and making something like this work. I very much would like for this to get off the ground and believe that it can but I believe the activist communities would be much better at picking a date and a place far better than I can.

Whenever I have seen large protests scheduled and advertised I have noticed a lot of peripheral carping and hair-splitting about that is organizing what and what this is and that means and this group doesn’t want to protest with that group. We don’t really have time for that anymore.

What seems missing and what I intend to come from this is a growing consensus that a People’s Occupation of Washington DC is a viable and desirable - and (hear me!) non-violent - avenue to address the threats being presented to our country at this time.

The Bush Neocon Cabal – whatever you want to call it/them – is the single biggest threat to our lives and freedom: both our immediate and long-term futures. If we do not stop the juggernaught, if we cannot interrupt their plans to dismantle our country, there won’t be protesting ANYTHING. You can just kiss those freedoms good-bye.