On Thursday, May 28th, the National Day of Resistance to U.S Torture, World Can’t Wait and others held protests across the country. We were out at the Chicago Theater demanding that Karl Rove be prosecuted for his war crimes.
War criminals must be confronted and opposed whenever they show their face in public. We were out in force, with banners, signs, huge versions of Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib series of paintings, orange jumpsuits and black hoods and the latest issue of Revolution newspaper challenging people to stand up and oppose torture and other war crimes being committed in their names. The police forced us to shut off our sound system after it was said that it could be heard all the way inside the Chicago Theater, so after that we chanted nearly non-stop for an end to torture and the prosecution of war criminals like Karl Rove and all the others in the former Bush regime and the current Obama regime.
Several comrades made it inside the theater and unfurled a large orange banner reading “Torture=War Crime – Prosecute” and shouted “Torture is a war crime! Prosecute war criminals! Rove is a war criminal!” during the program. After they were forced out of the theater, two other comrades confronted Rove during the event inside the theater, yelling “Waterboarding is torture! You’re a war criminal!”
Many people thanked us for being out there, a few even tried to justify the use of torture, but no one there could turn a blind eye to reality and say that they don’t know that people have been and continue to be tortured by the U.S. government in their names. Silence equals complicity. Demand prosecution of war criminals! Demand an end to torture, indefinite detention, rendition, warrantless surveillance, and wars for empire!
Posted in ThoughtsA torturous tableau of naked, bloodied and bound prisoners writhing in agony on the floor of a cell at Abu Ghraib prison hangs from the neck of a hooded figure in an orange jumpsuit—this is how world-renowned Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib series of paintings made their debut at the opening ceremony of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing. Organized by the Chicago Chapter of The World Can’t Wait, Botero’s acclaimed works—which most major art museums in America, including the Art Institute of Chicago, refused to show—displayed on the streets of Chicago viscerally encapsulated the horrific crimes committed by the U.S. in furtherance of its imperialist agenda of global domination and the urgent need for people in this country to stand up and oppose these crimes.
Calling on people in the streets to refuse to allow the perpetrators and architects of torture in the Bush regime to remain unpunished for their crimes against humanity—and to stop the continuation of torture and escalation of war for empire under Obama—we struggled with people over the mic not to turn a blind eye to the torture being committed in their names. As I stood in an orange jumpsuit I explained to them that many of those being held and tortured for years by the U.S. government were simply out walking on the streets of cities around the world just like they were, when they were snatched off the street, a black hood shoved over their head, chained, and put on an airplane to Guantánamo or some unknown black site.
We took up the challenge put forth in Revolution newspaper (The Torture Memos) to “challenge people and wage sharp struggle with those who have been silent or indifferent to not turn their heads away when confronted with the horrible reality of what their government is responsible for.” I reminded people of the complicity of the German people to the crimes of the Nazis, and urged them not to be “Good Americans” and to confront and oppose these monstrous crimes that have been—and continue to be—committed in furtherance of U.S. imperialism. And I thought of my comrades still caged in the hellholes of the American prison system, and that tens of thousands of people right within this country are being subjected to the same kinds of torture that the ruling class of the U.S. has been exporting across the globe.
The world does not have to be this way! Humanity needs revolution and communism, and we must stand up and take up the challenge to emancipate humanity and get beyond all oppressive and exploitive relations and ideas.
Stand up on May 28th – National Day of Resistance to U.S. Torture
