US out of Iraq NOW

From Democracy Now

Between 100,000 and 300,0000 people took to the streets of Washington D.C. on Saturday (September 23rd 2005) to protest the ongoing war and occupation of Iraq. It was the largest anti-war protest in the nation's capital since the invasion and the first in a decade that federal officials allowed to go past the White House.

Suheir Hammad read her poem “Of Refuge and Language” at the pre-march rally:

SUHEIR HAMMAD: I wrote this poem after Hurricane Katrina and the victims of the rescue effort. The rescue effort victims of Hurricane Katrina were viewed on television for all of us, and they were called "refugees." This is a poem for all of the refugees in the world.

"Of Refuge and Language"

I do not wishTo place words in living mouthsOr bury the dead dishonorably
I am not deaf to cries escaping shelters
That citizens are not refugees
Refugees are not Americans
I will not use languageOne way or anotherTo accommodate my comfort
I will not look away
All I know is this
No peoples ever choose to claim status of dispossessed
No peoples want pity above compassion
No enslaved peoples ever called themselves slaves
What do we pledge allegiance to?
A government that leaves its old
To die of thirst surrounded by water
Is a foreign government
People who are streaming
Illiterate into paperwork
Have long ago been abandoned
I think of coded language
And all that words carry on their backs
I think of how it is always the poor
Who are tagged and boxed with labels
Not of their own choosing
I think of my grandparents
And how some called them refugees
Others called them non-existent
They called themselves landless
Which means homeless
Before the hurricane
No tents were prepared for the fleeing
Because Americans do not live in tents
Tents are for Haiti for Bosnia for Rwanda
Refugees are the rest of the world
Those left to defend their human decency
Against conditions the rich keep their animals from
Those who have too many children
Those who always have open hands and empty bellies
Those whose numbers are massive
Those who seek refuge
From nature’s currents and man’s resources
Those who are forgotten in the mean times
Those who remember
Ahmad from Guinea makes my falafel sandwich and says
So this is your country
Yes Amadou this my country
And these my people
Evacuated as if criminal ,br> Rescued by neighbors
Shot by soldiers
Adamant they belong
The rest of the world can now see
What I have seen
Do not look away
The rest of the world lives here too

In America

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