NOW ON: CSPAN--MASSIVE UPRISING - MILLIONS-- INAUGARAL PROTEST PLANS/GRPS.

The Bush administration’s invasion & occupation of Iraq has violated a contravention of legal standards & international law, the Geneva convention, the Nuremburg code, the UN charter.

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It’s an illegal adventure & a direct form of economic theft (by) Halliburton who is making mega profits financed by taxpayers to the tune of $270million each day for the occupation of Iraq.

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A recent announcement in the NYTimes stated that 4,000 educators would be laid off in Detroit because of a budget deficit of $198 million that could not be met -- equivalent of 14 hours of fighting in Iraq. Priorities for society should be to pay for teachers so students can learn, rebuild schools, provide uninsured people with healthcare, provide housing for the homeless, give workers who are losing their benefits a decent pension & decent benefits. The money that is earned by workers in this country is being looted by the government in order to finance a war of agression abroad & this war, not coincidentally, benefits the corporations & banks that are closest to George Bush, & that would be all of them.

Those banks & corporations have formed together to give more than $40 million in donations to the presidential inaugural committee -- a private organization, not a public organization, not a governmental organization. The pick is a Who’s Who of the Fortune 500 -- (each paying $250,000) to have unfettered access to PA Avenue on January 20th.

The ANSWER coalition, representing all those people in the United States who are fed up & tired with the war in Iraq, the assault on economic & social rights, civil rights & civil liberties at home, applied for permits to demonstrate at the site of the inauguration all along PA Avenue between 3rd Street & 15th Street eleven months ago.

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We knew that the people of the United States would want to come out on January 20th -- a day that really belongs to everyone -- & reflect the massive opposition that still exists, & we believe that is growing, in opposition to the war in Iraq. We applied for permits at Freedom Plaza at 14th Street & PA Avenue. We applied for permits at the Navy Memorial at 17th Street & PA Avenue. We applied for permits on the sidewalks in front of the Justice Department & the FBI Building between 9th & 10th Street on PA Avenue. We applied for permits on Pershing Park, which is between 14th & 15th Street on PA Avenue. And we applied for sidewalk space so that those who represented a view other than that promoted by the Bush administration would have an opportunity to come to PA Avenue & exercise their First Amendment right to speak out.

<…>One of the most despicable aspects of this administration is the unremitting & cynical use of the term national security as a pretext to carry out an assault against free speech rights in the First Amendment in the United States. At the Republican Convention, they tried to relegate protests to the far edges of Manhattan, almost in the Hudson River. At different campaign appearances all around the country, whenever George Bush spoke, the Secret Service was there acting as a proxy under the pretext of national security to screen the crowd & make sure there would be no signs that said “get out of Iraq” or “money for jobs & education & housing, not war”.

January 20, 2005 is shaping up to be the next battle, free speech battle, whereby the Bush administration, working through the National Park Service, the Interior Department, & with Secret Service,is illegally & constitutionally trying to deprive the ANSWER coalition & others from the public who wish to voice their anti-war opinion from gathering together on Pennsylvania Avenue on the parade route, on what the White House website describes as “America’s Mainstreet.”

We have just been informed prior to this news conference & after a meeting with the National Park Service that took place on Monday, December 13th, that any fact that the National Park Service, on behalf of the Presidential Inauguration Committee -- again, a private committee representing the banks & corporations -- is effectively moving to deny the right of the ANSWER coalition & others to gather together in anti-war protest at Freedom Plaza at the Navy Memorial Yard, on the sidewalks in front of the Justice Department & the FBI Building, & in almost all of the sidewalk areas between 3rd Street & 15th Street along Pennsylvania Avenue.

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He concluded the press conference with, essentially, “We will not allow Pennsylvania Avenue to become privatized (by the wealthy & the corporations).”