People across the U.S. mobilized on April 14-15 to demand an end to U.S. wars around the world. In dozens of cities, including New York, Oakland, Washington DC, and Atlanta, protesters rallied as part of the “Spring Action to End U.S. Wars at Home and Abroad.” Several hundred U.S. organizations participated in the actions to demand the following:

• End U.S. overt and covert wars, drone wars, sanction/embargo wars, and death squad assassination wars. 
• Close all U.S. bases on foreign soil.  Dismantle all nuclear weapons. 
• Bring all U.S. troops home now. Self-determination, not military intervention. U.S. hands off the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. End military aid to apartheid Israel. Self-determination for Palestine. The U.S. cannot be the cop of the world. 
• Trillions of dollars for human needs… for jobs and social services, quality debt-free education and single payer health care. No to anti-union legislation. For $15 and a Union Now. 
• Defend the environment against life-threatening fossil fuel-induced global warming. For a just transition to a 100 percent clean, sustainable energy system at union wages for all displaced workers.
• No to white supremacy, police brutality/murder. End racist mass incarceration. Black Lives Matter 
• No human being is illegal. No to mass deportations. Yes to DACA and TPS (Temporary Protective Status)

The nationwide action followed on the heels of the most recent bombing of Syria by the U.S., France and the United Kingdom. Trump ordered the launching of over one hundred missiles and justified the airstrike as “a strong deterrent against the production, spread and use of chemical weapons.” He warned, “We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents.”

Protesters declared the attack illegal under international law. “We strongly denounce the U.S., UK, and France for using fabricated evidence to justify the illegal bombing of Syria,” said Reverend Kim of the Justice Committee of The Least of these Church and June 15 U.S. Committee for Reunification of Korea at the New York City action.

No one has presented credible evidence to back the widespread chemical weapons charge against the Syrian government. The U.S. led the bombing attack before the United Nations’ Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ (OPCW) fact-finding mission even arrived in Syria to conduct its investigation. The only thing that is clear is that the U.S. violated international law by attacking a sovereign country on charges of international crime without conclusive evidence.

(Video by ZoominKorea)

In addition to demanding an end to unjust and illegal attacks in Syria, protesters called on the U.S. to stop military interventions in other parts of the world, including the Korean Peninsula. “The U.S. needs to stop joint military exercises with South Korea, which simulate bombings against North Korea,” said Korean American activist Yuri of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development.

Alex Kwanho Choi of Minjung Solidarity of New York said the “root problem” of the tension on the Korean Peninsula is “U.S. hostility against North Korea.” The U.S. military, he said, should concede that it can no longer bully North Korea as it has other countries it invaded in the last fifteen years: “The U.S. should know that North Korea will not be the same case scenario, like what it was able to do in Libya and Iraq.”

Korean Americans demanded an end to the provocative joint military exercises and economic sanctions against North Korea, a Peace Treaty to end the Korean War and the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea.

By ZoominKorea staff