FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – November 1, 2008

Contact:
Kathleen Dulkoski

Phone: (224) 636-2117
www.campusantiwar.net/
email: ChicagoCAN (at) gmail.com

STUDENTS PUT WAR IN AFGHANISTAN BACK AT THE CENTER OF PROTEST

The Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) will hold a national day of action on Thursday, November 13 at colleges and universities across the country calling for immediate withdrawal of all occupying troops from Afghanistan.

No matter who wins the presidential elections on November 4th, both major candidates have pledged to send more troops to Afghanistan over the coming months. Throughout the presidential campaign, the drumbeat for an escalation in Afghanistan has grown louder and louder as the war in Iraq is deemed unwinnable.

Activists from the Campus Anti-war Network call on all anti-war organizations who have focused primarily on the war in Iraq over the past few years to join CAN in mounting opposition to a new buildup in Afghanistan.

NATO forces in Afghanistan have bombed civilians, placed criminal warlords in power, and through their brutality, driven recruits into the arms of the Taliban, which is increasingly resurgent. Recent months have been some of the bloodiest since the war began for both Afghan civilians and for occupying forces.

Now is the time to cast aside the myth that the war in Afghanistan is a “good war,” and to expose it for what it really is: no less a geopolitical crusade for international domination than the war in Iraq.

The November 13th action is the first in a series of actions that CAN will take over the coming months to build resistance to the occupation of Afghanistan. At our 2008 national conference at DePaul University in mid-October, CAN members voted to make opposition to the war in Afghanistan a central focus of its organizing efforts over the coming year by adopting the call for immediate withdrawal of all occupying and mercenary troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan as a national point of unity.

Campus Antiwar Network Chicago is holding a teach-in at University of Illinois- Chicago at 3:00, followed by a march to a rally in federal plaza at 4:00.

As the war in Afghanistan escalates, the anti-war movement has a critical role to play in bringing opposition to the war into public consciousness. CAN activists encourage all anti-war groups that have not already adopted similar positions against the Afghanistan occupation, to start this discussion and join the movement as quickly as possible. It is up to us to stop the war.