Obama to Occupy Protesters: YOU'RE THE REASON I
RAN FOR PRESIDENT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Occupy Harlem to Obama: YOU DO NOT REPRESENT US!
PROTEST PRESIDENT OBAMA!
Denounce Obama when he comes to Harlem's Apollo Theater to raise money for his $ one billion reelection!
When: Thursday, January 19th, 6:00PM
Where: across the street from the Apollo Theater, 253 West 125th Street between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd, Harlem, NYC.
Hold Obama accountable for his lies; illegal wars; free trade agreements that kill jobs, violate human rights, destroy family farms while expanding factory farms, damage the environment, endanger wildlife, and limit access to medications; privatization of public housing; 16 trillion dollars banks bailout; complicity in the coup in Honduras; preventing access to emergency contraception for girls; crackdown on undocumented immigrants; NDAA and other attacks on civil liberties; global military expansion; continuation of the racist drug war; use of torture, sabotaging climate talks; promoting offshore drilling; support for nuclear power and increased gas drilling; scrapping stricter limits on smog; delisting wolves as a federal protected species;
waiver of Pelly amendment requirements for sanctions against Iceland for commercial whaling
& and overturning the US ban on horse slaughter!
Bring signs on these and other issues where Obama has sold out!
Directions: Take the A, B, C or D trains to 125th Street and walk east or take the 2 or 3 trains to 125th Street and walk west.
Endorsers: Occupy Harlem, Harlem FightBack Against War at Home and Abroad, Black is Back Coalition, Occupy Wall Street Trade Justice, TradeJustice New York Metro, Occupy 4 Jobs, & Global Justice for Animals and the Environment. Email
ows@tradejustice.net to have your organization added to this list!
Why Protest Obama?
As a candidate, Obama manipulated the hopes of voters hoping for a candidate who would change the direction of our nation's trade policy with statements like "we can't keep passing unfair trade deals like NAFTA that put special interests over workers' interests." and "NAFTA's shortcomings were evident when signed and we must now amend the agreement to fix them." In November 2007, Obama said “The only trade agreements I believe in are ones that put workers first. Because trade deals aren’t good for the American people if they aren’t good for working people. That’s why I opposed CAFTA. That’s why I oppose the South Korea Free Trade Agreement.” In April of 2008 he expressed his opposition to the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement “because the violence against unions [there] would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.” As a candidate, Obama pledged to crack down on corporate tax havens. But in October 2011, Obama, after doing nothing to reform NAFTA , he instead send the Colombian and South Korea Free Trade Agreements to Congress, along with the Panama Free Trade Agreement, which locks in Panama's status as one of the world's worst tax havens, and then signed all three into law. Now he's pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 9 country free trade agreement that threatens US jobs, the environment, and access to generic medications.
But breaking his promises to fight for fairer trade policies and defend human rights in Colombia is only the beginning of Obama's betrayal of progressive values. From passing the National Defense Authorization Act to sabotaging the Durban Climate Change Conference to expanding offshore drilling after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster to squandering the opportunity to pass single-payer healthcare, Obama has ramped up state repression and sold out the public interest to serve the interest of the corporations whose dollars he is depending on for his reelection
According to Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, “He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.
He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.”
