Award-winning journalist Bill Weinberg will give a report-back in Missoula, MT, this week from an international conference on building solidarity with the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC [1]) held in Tokyo this past summer. The IFC is a coalition of trade unions, women's organizations, neighborhood assemblies and other civil society groups which have come together to oppose the US-led occupation and demand a secular government in Iraq. The IFC is leading a campaign against the pending law that would privatize Iraq's oil, and has established self-governing zones, which both occupation forces and sectarian militias are barred from accessing, in neighborhoods in Baghdad and Kirkuk. Recently, their leaders have been targeted for attack by US forces. The Japanese anti-war group Zenko [2] last year raised $400,000 for the IFC to start its own satellite television station, Sana TV, which began broadcasting in April. Can anti-war forces in the US similarly organize effective political and material support for Iraq's civil resistance?
Bill Weinberg is author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso 2000), and editor of the on-line World War 4 Report [3]. He also co-hosts the weekly Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade [4], an anarchist variety show, Tuesdays at midnight on WBAI, 99.5 FM in New York City.
Wednesday, October 17, 6:30 PM, University of Montana, UC Room 330
Sponsored by University of Montana Students for Peace & Justice and the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center [5]
The following evening, Weinberg will speak at a screening of the film Go Forward, Iraqi Freedom Congress!, produced by Zenko adherents in Japan and including first-hand footage and interviews from Iraq.
Thursday October 18, 2007, 5:30 PM & 7:30 PM
At the UC Theater in the University of Montana's University Center, 3rd Floor
Sponsored by the Montana Peace & Justice Film Series [6]
Listed at MissoulaEvents.net [7]
