KZ: What advice would you give the U.S. peace movement and Americans opposed to the Iraq occupation at this difficult time?
DJ: I feel the two single greatest things people can do to help end the occupation are to support Iraq Veterans Against the War, and to continue to organize locally. IVAW is the spearhead, I feel, of any movement that will be effective in ending the occupation, and organizing locally for local, national, and international issues is paramount for building the infrastructure necessary to radically change the collapsing system we find ourselves in today. (Iraw Veterans Against the War can be found at www.IVAW.org . If you want to get involved in local organizing contact the author at KZeese@DemocracyRising.US.
KZ: I understand you have participated in deep ecology workshops with Joanna Macy (see www.JoannaMacy.net) who is a long-term activist and is now involved in what she calls "The Great Turning" from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization. Do you see connections between the Iraq occupation and issues like climate change and the ecological crisis?
DJ: They are inseparable. The runaway train that is this Late Stage Capitalism, of infinite growth at the cost of human rights and our ecology, brings us the latest symptom, which is Iraq. The U.S. military is one of the largest polluters on the planet-thus the direct link of the ambitions for U.S. global empire, using the military to enforce this, runaway corporatism and all the destruction to the ecology that that growth entails, and thus, our global climate change crisis.
Kevin Zeese is Director of Democracy Rising (see www.DemocracyRising.US) and Voters for Peace (see www.VotersForPeace.US).
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