Resisting Empire Tour

ITHACA EVENTS:
October 27, 2008
LAILA AL-ARIAN and CAMILO MEJIA
7:30 pm Kaufman Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University.

October 31, 2008

JOE ALLEN and MICHAEL SCHWARTZ
2-3pm. Book Presentation and Signing, Autumn Leaves Books,
115 The Commons, Ithaca

5:30 pm. Plant Science Building, Cornell University

Laila Al-Arian is a freelance journalist and co-author, with Chris Hedges, of Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians (Nation Books, 2008). She has written for The Nation, USA Today, United Press International, The Huffington Post, and The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

“Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with veterans of the Iraq war and occupation, Collateral Damage lays out graphically indeed and in their own words the American system of patrols, convoys, home raids, detentions, and military checkpoints that became a living nightmare for civilians in Iraq.” ‣TomDispatch.com

Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejía was the first veteran to publicly refuse to redeploy to Iraq. He is the Board Chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and is the author of a memoir, Road From ar Ramadi (Haymarket Books, 2007).

“Road from ar Ramadi is the extraordinary journey…of a U.S. soldier, from the front lines of Iraq to military prison…We learn what happens when a young man decides to challenge the entire military establishment in order to follow his conscience. An inspiring memoir.” ‣Howard Zinn

Joe Allen is a Chicago-based activist and the author of Vietnam: The (Last) War the U.S. Lost (Haymarket Books, 2008), which includes an introduction by journalist and filmmaker John Pilger. Allen writes regularly for CounterPunch and the International Socialist Review.

“Joe Allen's book is so needed, and so welcome. Indeed, the following pages amount to a masterpiece in which the author, unrelenting in his research, has reclaimed memory from the organized forgetting that has so bedeviled the very word ‘Vietnam.’ ‣John Pilger

Michael Schwartz is a founding director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, and author of the new book, War Without End: The Iraq War in Context (Haymarket Books, 2008).

“Americans have all along needed a sociologist, not a general, to help them understand Iraq…We have the incredible good fortune that the perspicacious Michael Schwartz boldly stepped forward to cast floods of illumination on the Iraq War and its tragic social costs.” ‣Juan Cole

Here and around the world, people want to see an end to the Iraq War and a change in the reckless direction of U.S. foreign policy. U.S. aggression has inflicted a humanitarian catastrophe— from Iraq, to Afghanistan, and beyond—with millions of people killed or turned into refugees. American troops continue to suffer and die, while schools and hospitals fall apart. A new resistance needs to be built from the ground up. To build it, we need to hear the stories the mainstream media refuse to tell: the stories of war resisters, unembedded journalists, and activists.

Resisting Empire starts with us.

Open to all Ithaca Community. Open to all Cornell Students.
Contact: Hector TP. e:http1917@gmail.com. c: 607-262-0428. Organized by the International Socialist Organization, Cornell CAN, Ithaca College CAN, IC SDS, Catholic Workers, GIAC, Southside Community, Watermargin. Endorsed by Latino Living Center, La Asosiación Latina, Watermargin, United for Peace and Justice in Palestine. Ithaca Pro-Palestine Coalition.