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We hope you are considering our great low price Z Magazine offer recently described by email and also on the ZNet web site top page at http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm We would love to see a far higher response in coming days. To receive a year of print Z direct to your mailbox for well under the price of a large pizza seems a no brainer. We have to wonder why anyone who frequents ZNet wouldn't jump at that chance. So -- jump at it, please! Get your sub soon! On another matter... At the start of the Iraq War ZNet posted a web page featuring what we called the We Stand Statement. The statement quickly inspired over 90,000 online signatures as well as 25,000 more collected in pen and ink by the Zapatistas in Mexico. Responding to Bush's second inauguration, to the on-going war in Iraq, and to injustice more broadly, we have put the We Stand statement back online at http://www.zmag.org/wspj/index.cfm We hope that if you didn't sign "We Stand" earlier you will sign it now. We hope you will tell others about it, discuss the content with them, and urge them to sign it as well. At the page at http://www.zmag.org/wspj/index.cfm you can see the statement and supporting materials. You can display signers by country or by their name, and of course you can sign up yourself if you haven't already. The We Stand Statement is not just anti war. It isn't even just about dissent. "We Stand" offers positive aspirations to inspire positive projects. Immediately below is the "We Stand" statement. Directly below that is a multi author short article written to promote the statement when it first went online. Please take a look at both the statement and the article. If they resonate with you, please visit ZNet to sign up! === We Stand for Peace and Justice This is the statement we hope you will sign) "I stand for peace and justice. I stand for democracy and autonomy. I don't think the U.S. or any other country should ignore the popular will and violate and weaken international law, seeking to bully and bribe votes in the Security Council. I stand for internationalism. I oppose any nation spreading an ever expanding network of military bases around the world and producing an arsenal unparalleled in the world. I stand for equity. I don't think the U.S. or any other country should seek empire. I don't think the U.S. ought to control Middle Eastern oil on behalf of U.S. corporations and as a wedge to gain political control over other countries. I stand for freedom. I oppose brutal regimes in Iraq and elsewhere but I also oppose the new doctrine of "preventive war," which guarantees permanent and very dangerous conflict, and is the reason why the U.S. is now regarded as the major threat to peace in much of the world. I stand for a democratic foreign policy that supports popular opposition to imperialism, dictatorship, and political fundamentalism in all its forms. I stand for solidarity. I stand for and with all the poor and the excluded. Despite massive disinformation millions oppose unjust, illegal, immoral war, and I want to add my voice to theirs. I stand with moral leaders all over the world, with world labor, and with the huge majority of the populations of countries throughout the world. I stand for diversity. I stand for an end to racism directed against immigrants and people of color. I stand for an end to repression at home and abroad. I stand for peace. I stand against this war and against the conditions, mentalities, and institutions that breed and nurture war and injustice. I stand for sustainability. I stand against the destruction of forests, soil, water, environmental resources, and biodiversity on which all life depends. I stand for justice. I stand against economic, political, and cultural institutions that promote a rat race mentality, huge economic and power inequalities, corporate domination even unto sweatshop and slave labor, racism, and gender and sexual hierarchies. I stand for a policy that redirects the money used for war and military spending to provide healthcare, education, housing, and jobs. I stand for a world whose political, economic, and social institutions foster solidarity, promote equity, maximize participation, celebrate diversity, and encourage full democracy. I stand for peace and justice and, more, I pledge to work for peace and justice." === That's the statement we hope you will sign if you haven't already. Here is the multi-author article that got it all started, including a list of those who signed it. === We Work for Peace & Justice Building a movement powerful enough to stop the war in Iraq or to successfully curb a next war in Syria or Iran or Venezuela, involves many factors. Among these, and perhaps the most fundamental, is sufficient numbers. To successfully challenge those in power, our movement must constantly grow in numbers as well as consciousness and commitment. We must reach out to people who are against the war, but who have not yet acted on their beliefs. We must reach out to people who are troubled by what they are witnessing, but who have not yet decided to oppose the war and the policies behind it. We must reach out as well to those who now support the war, but without full knowledge of the context, history, and implications. A key task therefore, in addition to demonstrating, is to talk to people, to hear their misgivings, their confusions, and their insights, and to provide an alternative viewpoint able to generate critical solidarity that can last. We need to address the people whose addresses we don't have. We need to go door to door in neighborhoods and dorms, and we need to do it over and over. We need to talk to coworkers on the job, to people who we encounter during the day shopping, to our neighbors, and to the person next to us in class or in church or wherever we may be. We need to organize. On a larger scale, our collective efforts can also reach out to audiences beyond our current membership. Our marches can go through neighborhoods instead of only downtown. People on the marches can go and talk with those who will inevitably be drawn to watch such events. Thousands of groups can go into shopping areas and set up tables and then talk to those in the area. Talk. Talk. That is the foundation of building larger demonstrations, deeper commitment, and raising costs for elites, and thus winning change. If 100 or 500 or 5,000 or 50,000 people or more are ready and willing to block streets or obstruct buildings as a means of pressuring elites in a context where support is growing, that's wonderful, especially when the targets are part of the war machine, as in the efforts to block military trains in Europe. But shouldn't as many people, the next day, or the day before, or both, be willing to spread out and talk to the population, facilitating their becoming actively involved as well? Our demonstrations create a context that facilitates reaching out to organize the populace, but as important as they are, marches, rallies, and obstructions won't by themselves do that organizing. To hear views and to change minds requires that we listen and then convey evidence, arguments, and also sympathy and respect for where people are at. It takes talk. To win against this war, the next war, and the causes of war and of injustice more broadly, we need to assemble tens of millions of active, committed movement members. But even if we continually talk to those who disagree with us, how can we know what we are accomplishing, and what can be our point of entry? A possible technique would be for all of us, worldwide, to go to people with a statement for them to sign -- something that's timely but that won't grow stale, something that is concrete and specific, but that is also universal enough for international use and thorough enough so that to get signatures we will have to address all the issues that obstruct people becoming actively involved in a growing movement for peace and justice. Maybe something like this: [And inserted here was the We Stand Statement as it appears above...] Article Co Signers and Initial We Stand Signers, Ezequiel Adamovsky, Argentina Vittorio Agnoletto, Italy Christophe Aguiton, France Michael Albert, USA Tariq Ali, England Bridget Anderson, England Katherine Anger, England Jessica Azulay, USA David Bacon, USA David Barsamian, USA Phyllis Bennis, USA Elena Blanco, Venezuela Nadine Bloch, USA Bill Blum, USA Peter Bohmer, USA Patrick Bond, South Africa Jeremy Brecher, USA Michael Bronski, USA Dennis Brutis, South Africa Paul Buhle, USA Nicola Bullard, Thailand Scott Burchill, Australia Leslie Cagan, USA Alex Callinicos, England Daniel Chavez, Netherlands Noam Chomsky, USA Tim Costello, USA David Cromwell, England Will Doherty, USA Brian Dominick, USA David Edwards, England Barbara Epstein, USA Laura Flanders, USA Bill Fletcher, USA Eduardo Galeano, Uruguay Susan George, France Ted Glick, USA Gie Goris, Belgium Andrej Grubacic, Serbia Marta Harnecker, Chile Betsy Hartman, USA Tom Hayden, USA Evan Henshaw-Plath, USA Doug Henwood, USA John Hepburn, Australia Edward Herman, USA Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistan Sut Jhally, USA Robert Jensen, USA Boris Kagarlitsky, Russia Naomi Klein, Canada Jerry Kloby, USA Sonali Kolhatkar, USA Saul Landau, USA Joanne Landy, USA Rahul Mahajan, USA Dawn Martinez, USA Elizabeth, Martinez, USA Antonio Martins, Brazil Rania Masri, USA Bob McChesney, USA George Monbiot, England Hector Mondragon, Colombia Suren Moodliar, South Africa Jonathan Neale, England Chris Nineham, England Adele Oliveri, Italy Pablo Ortellado, Brazil Cynthia Peters, USA Justin Podur, Canada Vijay Prashad, USA Prabir Purkayastha, India Milan Rai, England Nikos Raptis, Greece Michael Ratner, USA Judy Rebick, Canada Tanya Reinhart, Israel Carola Reintjes, Spain Arundhati Roy, India Marta Russell, USA Manuel Rozental, Colombia Lydia Sargent, USA Roberto Savio, Italy Stephen Shalom, USA Paul Singer, Brazil Norman Solomon, USA James Tracy, USA America Vera-Zavala, Sweden Hilary Wainwright, England Peter Waterman, Holland Mark Weisbrot, USA Robert Weissman, USA Tom Wetzel, USA Tim Wise, USA Howard Zinn, USA ===================================This message has been brought to you by ZNet (http://www.zmag.org). 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