Plan Colombia

protestrnc2008.org Everyone who wants to end the U.S. war on Iraq should join the massive march planned for September 1, 2008 - the first day of the Republican National Convention. Inside the convention hall, the Xcel Center, the Republicans will nominate a candidate who wants to continue the war.

Outside, tens of thousands will say "No!" The *Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War *invites you - activists and organizers form all progressive movements - to join us for a national conference to help organize the September 1 march. We will also discuss other plans for protest at the Republican National Convention.

The people of Colombia, like the people of Iraq, need us in the streets protesting at the Republican Convention. We need to stop the U.S. sponsored war in their country, to stop spending working peoples tax dollars to prop up a corrupt narco-trafficking regime. The American public is increasingly aware of the U.S. atrocities in Iraq and becoming more adamantly anti-war. This public outrage will manifest itself at the RNC. We have an opportunity to educate the 100,000 plus people who will come to St. Paul, MN to demonstrate at the RNC about how the U.S.' effort in Iraq is not the only example of this country's quest for empire causing death and destruction.

In 1996, a 41-year-old Colombian trade unionist applied at the Canadian embassy in Mexico City to immigrate to Canada. Amparo Torres was well-known in the region. She was a founding member of the Union Patriotica, a coalition of leftist political parties created a few years earlier at the behest of Colombia's then president in order to bring an end to decades of guerrilla warfare. She had also been kidnapped by one of the country's right-wing death squads.

Activists from the Coalition to March on the RNC to Stop the War, the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee and the Colombia Action Network are organizing a workshop to discuss the importance of a massive anti-war march on the first day of the Republican National Convention (September 1, 2008). This workshop will include Q&A and discussion about the demonstration and other events at the RNC. All those interested in taking action against the Republican agenda of war and repression are encouraged to attend. (For more information check out protestrnc2008.org)

Reprinted from FightBackNews.org

By Chapin Gray

Birmingham, AL - On July 26, Drummond Co., a Birmingham-based coal company, was found 'not liable' in the deaths Colombian trade unionists Valmore Locarno and Victor Orcasita - the head of a union local and his deputy - as well as the next union president Gustavo
Soler. The three leaders of the Sintamienergética miners union worked at the Drummond’s La Loma mine in northern Colombia. They were tortured and murdered in 2001.