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LOCAL News :: Peace

Monday, 9-19: George Galloway Comes to Chicago

Monday, September 19, 7 PM
Thorne Auditorium, Northwestern Law School
375 E. Chicago Ave. (east of the Chicago Red Line El stop)
galloway.jpg
George Galloway in Chicago
Galloway's Chicago engagement is sponsored nationally by The New Press, the Center for Economic Research and Social Change, International Socialist Review, the National Council of Arab Americans and In These Times.

Tickets are $10.
Call 1-800-595-4849
Or online go to www.tix.com -- keyword: Galloway
Call 773-551-5780 for more information.

George Galloway has only recently become a widely recognized name amongst American anti-war activists, but he has earned a reputation as a determined advocate for Arab and Muslim rights, especially amongst people living in Europe or the US who are victims of racist discrimination. After a long day of TV and radio interviews on Thursday, we went out to dinner on East 6th Street in Manhattan’s East Village at Panna restaurant (the best, in my opinion, Indian restaurant on a street packed with wonderful Indian restaurants). George recognized the owner’s Bangladeshi accent and asked him what village he was from (there are 50 or 60,000 Bangladeshi residents in Galloway’s district in East London). The owner replied, and George mentioned that he had been there earlier in the year giving a speech. The owner asked “what’s your name?” When George told him, the owner’s face lit up, “You are George Galloway? What an honor to meet you! Many of the people on this street are from Bangladesh and they will be proud to know that you came to eat here.”

Last night Mr. Galloway spoke to 1300 people at Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto and tonight will address a crowd of 3,000 at the conference of the Canadian Muslim Association and the Islamic Circle of North America. James Clarke from the Toronto Stop the War Coalition called to say the event has really stirred up debate.

Canada’s largest daily paper, the Toronto Star, reported:

‘Canada needs to stop fooling itself and pretending that it’s not involved in the “illegal” war on Iraq, British MP George Galloway told a boisterous crowd gathered last night to hear him speak at the University of Toronto.

“There is a certain myopia in countries like Canada about the way in which they are perceived by the victims of this so-called war on terror,” said Galloway, an internationally renowned speaker and firebrand who’s also a leading figure of the peace movement.

“You can’t send 1,000 Canadian soldiers to join Bush’s coalition of the killing and occupy the people of Afghanistan and claim to be neutral,” the maverick politician told more than 1,000 people at Convocation Hall.

Galloway’s speech was jointly organized by the university’s undergraduate student union and the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War. Many in the crowd, which included NDP Leader Howard Hampton and City Councillor Olivia Chow, cheered when he criticized American foreign policy. But there were a few who jeered when he said the attack on the World Trade Center emerged out of “injustice” created by the Western world.

Galloway was kicked out of the Labour Party in October 2003 for his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq. But in May 2005 he was re-elected to Parliament as the first MP for the newly-formed anti-war party called Respect The Unity Coalition, defeating the pro-war Labour incumbent.
Not a bad report from Canada’s version of the New York Times.

Tomorrow, Sunday, Mr. Galloway will fly in for a speech at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Tickets are going fast. The unfortunate news for the day is that, due to medical complications from a recent surgery, Jane Fonda is under doctor’s orders not to fly, so she won’t be able to come to Madison and Chicago.

But on the good news side, legendary working class hero Studs Terkel will be sitting down with Mr. Galloway for an interview with him to be aired on radio in the near future. At 93-years-old, Studs recently became the oldest person in history to have major heart surgery. The doctors are amazed at how quickly he’s bouncing back. For his part, Studs reports that he “feels like he’s 90 again!”

In other tour news, San Francisco City Supervisor Chris Daly plans on presenting Mr. Galloway with a commendation for his tireless opposition to the war and occupation in Iraq. The presentation will take place at a press conference on Wednesday, September 21 on the steps of City Hall hosted by Green Party Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi to publicize Mr. Galloway_s speech that night at Mission High School, as well as the September 24 mass march in San Francisco.

--Todd Chretien is the Galloway National Tour Coordinator and a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review.
 
 

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