This is the official statement of the Green Party USA
GREEN PARTY USA
226 South Wabash, 6th floor
Chicago, IL 60604
Phone: 1-866-GREENS2
September 13, 2001
For Immediate Release
GREEN PARTY CONDEMNS TERRORIST ATTACKS AND ANTI-ARAB, PRO-WAR HYSTERIA
Last Tuesday, some bully socked New York in the jaw knocking out its two front teeth, causing misery and death to large
numbers of innocent people.
It can’t happen here ... but it has.
The calls for revenge, for “swift” retaliation, will grow in the days ahead as the innocent victims are buried.
The Green Party USA of course condemns this attack. Greens in New York City have joined thousands of others in
organizing blood donations, carrying supplies, and digging through the rubble of what had been the twin towers of the
World Trade Center to help save as many lives as we can.
But we will not join in calls for military retaliation, which will only ratchet-up the misery and death toll, both
abroad and here at home as waves of anger and despair will flood against our shores in the form of new reprisals.
Instead, the Green Party has been active in helping to counter the racist anti-Moslem and anti-Arab hysteria that has
led to mindless attacks against Arab and dark-skinned Asian people in New York City and across the country. We are
asking our members to be vigilant, to protect our brothers and sisters from other countries and to speak out against
racism and anti-Semitism wherever it stirs.
One activist reported how she and her friends intervened in one such situation: “We were coming back from assisting the
rescue teams when we ran into a guy who was spray-painting ‘F**k Islam’. After a few stern words, and a talk about
Moslems who surely were in the World Trade Center when the planes hit, he helped us spray paint over his racist tag.”
Maris Abelson, a Manhattan resident and a coordinating committee member of both the New York State Greens and national
Green Party, added: “The Green Party reminds everyone that in the Islamic faith all life is sacred, and the taking of
childrens’ lives and harming of non-combatants is specifically prohibited. The only positive things to have come out of
this is the selfless spirit of New Yorkers and the cancellation of a planned execution in the state of Texas.”
In addition to addressing human suffering, the Green Party joins with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in
urging New Yorkers to also care for the hundreds of animals trapped in nearby buildings that have been evacuated.
The Green Party also strongly opposes the military strikes that the US government is threatening against other countries
accused of “harboring terrorists.” Mitchel Cohen, a media coordinator for the Green Party USA and a participant on its
international committee, said: "Retaliatory measures have repeatedly led to hundreds and sometimes thousands of innocent
people being killed, just as occurred at the World Trade Center. The government just shrugs it off as ‘collateral
damage,’ same as the ‘terrorists’ do.”
Cohen quoted former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who, when asked whether she had any thoughts concerning the
750,000 children who have died in Iraq from U.S. cluster bombs, landmines, malnutrition and poisoned drinking water
caused by the ongoing missile strikes and sanctions, Albright muttered: “We think the price is worth it.”
“What makes us different from those whose actions we condemn?” Cohen asked, citing US air strikes ordered by President
Ronald Reagan against Libyan President Moammar Qadaffi’s family tent in Libya in the mid-1980s. (In that air strike,
Qadaffi’s 8-month old baby daughter was blown to pieces by a US missile.) “The attacks against the World Trade Center
are profoundly related to the suffering that the US government and multinational corporations inflict on the rest of the
world every day, which is often invisible to U.S. citizens. The death and destruction at the World Trade Center in New
York is horrible enough without the US government compounding it by responding in kind,” Cohen said.
Instead, the Green Party takes its inspiration from one of its founders, Petra Kelly. Kelly was active in Germany but
schooled in the United States. She wrote:
“The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination and non-violence, but a
movement in which politics means the power to love and the power to feel united on the spaceship Earth... In a world
struggling in violence, ... the further development of non-violence -- not only as a philosophy but as a way of life, as
a force on the streets, in the market squares, outside the missile bases, inside the chemical plants and inside the war
industry -- becomes one of the most urgent priorities.”