Declare It Now: Wear Orange! Drive Out the Bush Regime!

The following was gathered from reports on the World Can’t Wait web site:

Launching a new campaign on Friday, July 27, World Can’t Wait put out a challenge to all those who are against the Bush program: “If you want the war to end, if you want the Bush regime driven out, if you’ve had enough of the torture and police-state laws: Declare It Now: Wear Orange!”

At Orange Friday actions around the country, tens of thousands of orange buttons, ribbons, armbands, bandanas, and shirts went out to people. In Houston and San Francisco banners were hung over freeways; in Bakersfield, San Diego, and Louisville, “honk for impeachment” street corner actions turned orange. At San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, tourists found “Bush” in a portable jail cell under a sign saying “international war criminal.” A dentist in Florida ordered orange scrubs for himself and his staff for the day.

In New York City, about 1,000 people gathered over several hours at Union Square, and hundreds of orange bandanas were distributed. Speaking at the rally was Cindy Sheehan, who was at the end of her “Journey for Humanity” which started weeks before at Camp Casey in Texas, and included a sit-in at Rep. Conyers’ office demanding impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Chilean activist Victor Toro, wearing bright orange, said, “We are doing this in solidarity with those detained without rights in Guantánamo.” World Can’t Wait had published full-page ads in five weekly newspapers in the city to announce the launch of Orange Fridays.

At the new National Impeachment Center in Los Angeles, a press conference began with a dramatic reading of the Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime by actor René Auberjonois, currently appearing in the network TV show Boston Legal. He was joined by three people who were hooded and wearing orange jumpsuits like the prisoners in the U.S. torture center at Guantánamo. The event was prominently featured in La Opinión, the largest Spanish newspaper in the country. Also speaking were West Hollywood Mayor John Duran, who recently led the City Council’s passing of a resolution calling for impeachment of Bush and Cheney, and attorneys Peter Thottam and Steven Rohde. Wayne Kramer (formerly of the band MC5 and co-founder of the White Panther Party) performed a song.

World Can’t Wait activists are going out widely to reach millions to join the Declare It Now campaign. They are raising funds for internet and print ads and organizing public service announcements by well-known people. Outreach crews are going to conferences of sociologists and psychologists, churches, concerts, and elsewhere to call on people to take responsibility to act and challenge others to act. World Can’t Wait will provide 60 ushers dressed in orange at the Rock the Bells hiphop show in San Francisco.

Dennis Loo, of the World Can’t Wait Steering Committee, wrote after the campaign’s launch: “People taking up orange and wearing it DAILY is designed to be both a statement against all of the horrid things that this regime is responsible for AND a statement to the rest of the people. It’s designed to provide people a vehicle to express their too long suppressed sentiments and to bring to life the people’s political potential. It’s designed to bring home to people the fact that we are the majority and it will be you and I and the rest of us in our millions who will make history, not the criminal president and vice-president, not the culpable and complicit Congress and the Democratic Party leadership, and not the corporate media who are largely merely the scribes to power.

“The choice all of the people now face is whether we are going to go along with torture and war crimes and so on, or are we going to condemn it, speak out against it, and fight it. Taking the moral high ground is itself a form of asserting leadership. To the extent that the people make the conscious choice to declare themselves against the horrid things that this regime is responsible for and represents, they are becoming part of that competing legitimate authority.” (From “Shifting the Center”)

For more info and updates about the Declare It Now campaign, go online to declareitnow.com and worldcantwait.org.

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.