Cornel West Talk:
"Connecting the Dots: Poverty, Racism and Drones"
Sunday, April 27 at 2 pm (doors open at 1:30)
Tucker Missionary Baptist Church, 515 Oakwood Ave., Syracuse map

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List of co-sponsors (in formation)

Rally and March at Hancock Air Base Follow

On Sunday, April 27 at 2 pm (doors open at 1:30), renowned activist and scholar Cornel West will speak as part of the National Spring Days of Actions Against Drones. Admission is free. He will speak on “Connecting the Dots: Racism, Poverty and Drones.”

Immediately following his talk at 4:30, there will be a rally and permitted march to Hancock Air Base (where drones are piloted over Afghanistan and drone pilots and sensor operators are trained). Gather at the OCM BOCES parking lot (6820 Thompson Rd. – near the intersection with E. Molloy Rd. See map). The theme “People’s Orders of Protection Against Drone Terror” alludes to the needs of people around the world to be protected from drone attacks, as well as to the Orders of Protection severed to many activists who have participated in nonviolent civil resistance at the Base. Those activists have been threatened with arrest if they participate on the legal march, an affront to their First Amendment rights of free speech.

Both events are organized by the Syracuse Peace Council and the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, and co-sponsored by many groups throughout New York. For more details see www.upstatedroneaction.org.

See www.knowdrones.org for a listing of events throughout the country.

For more details on either event, contact Carol - carol@peacecouncil.net or 315.472.5478

From Dr. West's keynote speech at CodePink's anti-drones summit last November:

“There is a cloud of witnesses that say that those innocent persons, especially the precious babies, who are killed by US drones in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen have exactly the same value as those priceless white children who were killed in Newtown, CT; as those black brothers and sisters in the south side of Chicago; brown brothers and sisters in barracks; red brothers and sisters on reservations; yellow brothers and sisters. We are here to bear witness and to say we will not allow the kind of callousness toward catastrophe and indifference to criminality to become the norm and routine in America...

We remember the legacy of Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Philip Berrigan, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Grace Boggs these are names that constitute figures in movements that say, it's time to straighten our back up, it's time for us to try to awake our fellow citizens; No More Sleep Walking in America when it comes to militarism, when it to comes to consumer market materialism, when it comes to racism, anti-semitism, anti Arab, anti Muslim, homophobia any form of xenophobia, and most importantly when it comes to imperial crimes that emanate from Washington, DC around the world.”