Ramsey Clark IAC Gala Celebration

ICNA BEST WISHES TO

RAMSEY CLARK at his 85th birthday HE IS A GREAT CHAMPION OF HUMAN RIGHTS at HOME and ABROAD WE SALUTE HIM WE SUPPORT HIM ISLAMIC CIRCLE OF NORTH AMERICA 166-26 89th Ave. Jamaica, NY 11432-4254

Please Join the International Action Center at our

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Celebrating the 85th birthday of ramsey Clark & the 20th anniversary of the iaC keyNote SPe aker

ramsey Clark

Founder of the international action Center Former u.S. attorney General human rights lawyer & international advocate of people’s rights 5 P.m. horS d'oeuvreS 6 P.m. ProGram & diNNer buFFet (halal and vegetarian foods included) tickets HOST must be COMMITTEE reserved in advance tickets and sponsorship opportunities: iacenter.org and ramsey85iac20gala@gmail.com Chair: Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann

President, U.N. General Assembly, 2008-2009; Foreign Minister of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, 1979-1990 Gala Coordinators: Teresa Gutierrez Sara Flounders LeiLani Dowell From Behind the Walls:

Berthony Dupont Haïti Liberté

Dr. Agha Saeed American Muslim Association

Mumia Abu-Jamal Revolutionary journalist

Bernadette Ellorin BAYAN USA

Professor Sami Al-Arian Palestinian activist

Frances ‘Sissy’ Farenthold Founder, National Women’s Political Caucus

Dr. Asha Samad Matias CUNY Women’s Studies Program

Harvey ‘Tee’ Earvin Texas death row activist Leonard Peltier Native American political prisoner Lynne Stewart Attorney ...

Pam Africa & Suzanne Ross Intl. Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal Kazem Azin SI—Solidarity with Iran Rev. Luis Barrios IFCO/Pastors for Peace Tom Burke National Coalition to Stop FBI Repression William Camacaro Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle Nicholas Camerota Springfield Technical Community College Professional Association Shahid Comrade Pakistan USA Freedom Forum John Conyers U.S. congressperson Steve Downs National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms

Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton Archdiocese of Detroit Lawrence Hamm Peoples Organization for Progress Abdeen Jabara Atty.; past president, AmericanArab Anti-Discrimination Committee Alicia Jrapko International Committee to Free the Cuban Five Kadouri Al-Kaysi Iraqi activist Imam Ashrafuz Zaman Khan Islamic Circle of North America Joe Lombardo & Marilyn Levin United National Antiwar Coalition Holly Maguigan Professor, NYU School of Law Cynthia McKinney Former U.S. congressperson Mauri Saalakhan Peace Thru Justice Foundation

Lucy Pagoada Quesada Colectivo Honduras USA Resistencia Roberto Quesada Author, Colectivo Honduras USA Resistencia Dr. Muhammad Shafique Pakistan USA Freedom Forum Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui Aafia Movement United for Peace, Justice, Freedom Jose Maria Sison International League of Peoples’ Struggle; exiled Filipino leader Imam Al-Haj Talib Abdur Rashid Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan N.Y. Clarence Thomas International Longshore & Warehouse Union, Local 10 Victor Toro MIR co-founder; Chilean activist fighting deportation Michael Tarif Warren Attorney Bernard White Community Public Radio Metro; former program director, WBAI Pacifica

Ramsey Clark 85 International Action Center 20 Gala

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Ramsey Clark: A life of action

by Deirdre Sinnott Ramsey Clark was born Dec. 18, 1927, in Dallas. In 1945, at the height of World War II, Clark quit high school (at age 17) to join the Marines. He served as a courier in Europe.

He returned to school and got his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas, then a master’s degree in history and a law degree from the University of Chicago, all within four academic years. After graduating, Clark joined the Clark family law firm in Texas, as had his father, Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark, and specialized in antitrust work.

At 21, he married Georgia Welch, a classmate and sweetheart at the University of Texas. They were married for 61 years until her death in 2010. Georgia Clark was a mainstay in his law offices in New York City and assisted in researching and drafting his legal documents. They had two children, Tom C. Clark II, born 1954 and presently working at the U.S. Department of Justice in the Environment and Natural Resources Division; and Ronda Clark, born 1952. Ronda Clark still lives with her father, much to his delight.

A unique Attorney General In 1961, Clark was appointed by President John Kennedy as assistant attorney general for the Lands Division. He worked with the Indian Claims Commission and, with the encouragement of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, changed the Department of Justice’s policy of fighting the claims of Indigenous tribes to making settlements, including the then-largest settlement in history.

During his term, in 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that University of Mississippi had to allow African-American Air Force veteran James Meredith to attend classes. Meredith became the first African-American to attend the school in its 118-year history. Racist riots broke out in Oxford, Miss. Clark supervised the presence of nearly 6,000 federal personnel sent in to maintain order. He then traveled throughout the

New York press conference calls for amnesty for the 8,000 people arrested during the Los Angeles rebellion in 1992.

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southern U.S. investigating segregation in education. He played a key role in drafting the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson promoted Clark from deputy attorney general to attorney general. Clark had already been acting attorney general after his predecessor, Nicholas Katzenbach, became one of Johnson’s under secretary of state.

Right after Clark was nominated to be attorney general his father retired from the Supreme Court to avoid any potential conflict of interest.

Tom Clark’s resignation opened a seat on the court that was filled by Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American associate justice. Before his appointment, Marshall had won more cases before the Supreme Court than any other person.

Marshall was one of Clark’s legal mentors and close friends.

In July 1968, Clark became the first attorney general to seek the abolition of capital punishment while still in office. He testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures and said in part, “Our history shows the death penalty has been unjustly imposed, innocents have been killed by the state, effective rehabilitation has been impaired, judicial administration has suffered, crime has not been deterred. Society pays a heavy price for the penalty of death it imposes.” He ordered a moratorium on federal executions.

After the murder of three Black college students in February 1968, Clark attempted unsuccessfully to prosecute nine South Carolina state highway patrolmen. He also pushed for strong gun-control legislation.

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

Clark, still attorney general, had declined yet another request

by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to wiretap King just two days before the murder. In the uprisings after of the assassination, Clark threatened to prosecute Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley, if the mayor’s announced “shoot to kill” or “shoot to maim or cripple” order was used. Daley painted the people as “looters” or “arsonists,” and later denied that there was a shoot-to-kill order.

Clark facilitated a permit for Resurrection City, an encampment of 3,000 people set up on the Washington, D.C., Mall to protest poverty. It was a project organized by Dr. King and the

Poor People’s Campaign and was carried out in the aftermath of his assassination.

Later that year, despite great pressure, Clark opposed preventive detention, particularly in the lead-up to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. After the demonstrations and police riot, Clark refused to indict the organizers of the demonstrations. He called the indictment of Bobby Seale by the Nixon Administration, as part of the Chicago 8 conspiracy trial, “a scandal.” After leaving office he offered to testify for the defense for the Chicago 8. He and Roy Wilkins investigated the police attack that killed Fred Hampton, the deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party in Illinois. The investigation resulted in a book called “Search and Destroy: A Report from the Commission of Inquiry into the Black Panthers and the Police.”

Clark challenges Vietnam War While he was attorney general, many people urged Clark to resign in protest of the Vietnam War. “I opposed the war in Vietnam as early as I became aware of it,” said Clark. But because his work involved the Civil Rights struggle, and that work was under attack by those who wanted to shrink his resources, he felt that he should stay on. “I believed in all the causes in which I was involved, that [resigning] would have let a lot of people down.”

In 1972, several years after he left office, Clark traveled to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to see for himself the effect of the U.S. bombing campaign on the people and the civilian infrastructure. Before going, he told the audience at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati that “Martin Luther King told me once that the Vietnam War was a civil rights issue. I couldn’t accept it then, but now I know he was right.”

In Vietnam he saw damage and destruction in villages, cities, schools, hospitals, churches, and in the water and irrigation systems vital to the country’s survival. “To see the survivors of bombed villages was almost unbearable. If the dikes do not hold thousands can drown, rice crops will be lost and if seawater enters, the land will be unusable for six or eight growing seasons. ... The Lan Sluice is a key water-control facility servicing 48,000 acres of land ... and some 600,000 people live in the area affected by its operation. It was ringed by bomb craters. The superstructure and steel frames, engine houses, lifts and cables were demolished.” He has been invited and will return to Vietnam to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords in January.

During his visit, Clark urged DRV officials to release American military prisoners of war. Three prisoners were released due to his efforts. He returned from Vietnam to a firestorm of criticism that continues to this day.

The wars at home and abroad As a civilian lawyer, Clark represented the Alaskan Indigenous peoples in their land claims against the federal government. He taught a Howard University course called “Law as an Effective Instrument of Social Change” and at Brooklyn Law School.

In 1974, he ran an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate.

He called for a 50 percent cut in defense spending and refused to take any donation over $100. He garnered almost 2 million votes, but lost to Jacob Javits. In 1976, he lost in a five-person Democratic primary, coming in third behind Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Bella Abzug.

The federal government threatened to prosecute Clark after he traveled to Iran in 1980 during the hostage crisis. He attended an international conference on U.S. interventions in Iran called by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the time, Clark said the trip was “to achieve a reconciliation with the Iranian people” and that “dialogue between all peoples is essential for understanding.”

This journey was not at the behest of the new Reagan Administration, unlike an earlier unsuccessful delegation involving Clark that the Carter Administration had sent. He had also been in Iran during the lead-up to the revolution that overthrew the despised and brutal regime of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

In the present crisis, where U.S. and Israeli covert operations have assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and threatened Iran with attack, Clark has said, “No to another war for oil, Ramsey Clark 85 International Action Center 20 Gala

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no to foreign government domination and foreign corporate exploitation of Iran, or any other country.”

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and to discuss the release of detained foreign civilians.

On April 16, 1986, in the cover of night, planes took off from British bases in England, and attacked Tripoli while jets from U.S. aircraft carriers bombed Benghazi, Libya. Hundreds of people were killed in surprise attacks which were, in part, an assassination attempt on the then Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi. His youngest daughter was killed in the bombing. A year after the U.S. bombing, Clark filed lawsuits against the U.S. and British governments seeking compensation for the victims and their families. Clark also opposed the recent U.S.aided overthrow of the Libyan government.

Clark returned to Iraq in February 1991, while the U.S. was running 3,000 bombing sorties a day. He traveled more than 2,000 miles throughout Iraq with documentary filmmaker Jon Alpert and long-time activist and friend Kadouri Al Kaysi. They recorded evidence of war crimes committed by the coalition led by the U.S. The resulting film, Nowhere to Hide, was a vital tool for activists around the world.

Over the decades, Clark has traveled to Cuba and called for an end to the United States’ brutal economic blockade. He has led delegations to Cuba that brought medications in short supply. He has called for freeing the Cuban Five, a group of men who, in defense of their country, came to the U.S. to stop counterrevolutionary exiles in the Cuban community from provocations and attempts to foment a war between the U.S. and Cuba. He supported efforts by activists to defy the blockade by bring material aid without permission from the U.S. government.

Clark has met with former Cuban President Fidel Castro on many occasions and was part of the call for solidarity with Cuba that resulted in a historic rally organized by the International Action Center at the Jacob Javits Center in 1992 that brought over 5,000 people to New York City. He continues to speak out and travel to Cuba in defiance of the U.S. blockade.

U.S. out of the Middle East In 1990, Clark helped form the National Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East to oppose the first Gulf War. In September of that year, Clark traveled to Iraq in a delegation with boxer Muhammad Ali and others to meet with the

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In 1992, Clark convened the Commission of Inquiry for an International War Crimes Tribunal and wrote a 19-point indictment. The Commission found President George H. W. Bush and generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, among others, guilty of war crimes. The resulting report called for the formation of an organization which would be “in place” to protest and organize against U.S. interventions in the future. That led to the founding of the International Action Center in 1992. He remains the IAC’s chairperson and has remained deeply involved with the IAC and its many campaigns.

In subsequent years, Clark repeatedly visited Iraqi schools, mosques, hospitals, factories and vital infrastructure to document the ongoing bombing campaign and the devastating effects of the U.S./U.N. sanctions, which only ended with the start of the second war against Iraq in 2003. Clark led three larger delegations to Iraq to bring in much-needed medicine.

The documentary Genocide by Sanctions was filmed during one of Clark’s many trips to Iraq. He sent letters to the U.N. Security Council members each time the sanctions, which by the U.N.’s own estimates killed more than 1.5 million people, came up for renewal.

Out of his work and investigations into the wars in Iraq, Clark has led the international IAC Campaign to Ban U.S. use of

Depleted Uranium, a radioactive toxic weapon that has been implicated in Gulf War Syndrome and an increase in cancers in Iraq. DU weapons have armor-piercing capabilities much used in recent U.S. conflicts. Depleted uranium is also an issue of concern in Vieques, Puerto Rico, where such weapons were extensively tested.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Clark led demonstrations to stop the George W. Bush Administration’s buildup to war against Afghanistan. He was instrumental in leading the massive protests organized by the ANSWER Coalition, which the IAC was a founding member of, against the ongoing “war on terror” and the March 2003 attack on Iraq referred to by the Bush Administration as “shock and awe.” After the war began, the ANSWER Coalition initiated the “Vote to Impeach” campaign and later a campaign to indict President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft for war crimes.

In 2005, Clark testified with Professor Francis A. Boyle before a committee called by Rep. John Conyers on impeachment.

Conyers filed a resolution to consider forming a committee to investigate impeachment. Later, Representatives Dennis Kucinich and Robert Wexler introduced 35 articles of impeachment into the House. No subsequent actions were taken by Congress.

For 30 years, Clark was the attorney in the U.S. for the Palestine Liberation Organization. He litigated against attempts to close the PLO Mission to the United Nations. He has traveled to Palestine repeatedly over the course of his work as the PLO’s attorney, and communicated closely with Chairman and then President Yasser Arafat. In 2011, he led a solidarity delegation to Gaza and saw the destruction from the blockade begun in 2006 and the massive bombing of Gaza in 2008 and 2009. After that delegation Clark said, in the introduction to Gaza: Symbol of Resistance, “People of good will must do all within their power to bring a united, strong, independent, secure and prosperous Palestine into existence now.”

Solidarity missions Time and again Clark has, at great personal risk, jumped on a plane to stand in solidarity with people who have been targeted by the Pentagon during the moment of attack, whether in Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Iran, Yugoslavia, Syria, Palestine, Libya or other places. Besides leading almost yearly delegations to Iraq, including the Iraq Sanctions Challenge, he has led IAC fact-finding delegations to the jungles of Colombia to meet with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia— People’s Army (FARC–EP); to Chiapas, Mexico, to meet with

the Zapatistas; twice to Yugoslavia during the U.S./NATO bombings; and to Sudan after U.S. the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant.

During the Ronald Reagan/CIA Contra war against the Sandinista government, Clark led a delegation to Nicaragua to investigate how the Sandinista government treated imprisoned Contras. The group’s two weeks in Nicaragua included two days trapped in trenches near the Honduran border as Contra rebels shot at them.

Clark and Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, a former priest who was the foreign minister for the Nicaraguan government from 1979 to 1990, became colleagues in the struggle to stop the anti-communist Contras, a U.S.-financed proxy army, and their death squads that kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands in Nicaragua between 1979 and the early 1990s.

When the Sandinistas lost power in an election to an opposition heavily financed by the United States, Clark said that the U.S. “basically stole Nicaragua from the Sandinista government by pumping in money to the opposition, unifying it, and sending in death squad terrorists. ... They were trained and financed to destroy villages and kill Nicaraguans. The U.S. then told them that if they wanted peace and ‘prosperity’ they had to elect the opposition. In the meantime, the media was given over to the opposition and they were given money and other communications resources. It worked, the opposition won, and now the Nicaraguans are living in abject poverty.”

Clark supported the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador’s struggle for independence from a Washington-backed military junta. He has traveled in solidarity to Venezuela and met with President Hugo Chávez, and made recent visits to Bolivia and Ecuador.

Clark has supported the reunification of Korea and finalized the indictment for the Korean International War Crimes Ramsey Clark 85 International Action Center 20 Gala

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Reception for recipients of the United Nations Prizes in the Field of Human Rights, 2008.

Tribunal at the behest of the Korean Truth Commission. He has visited both north and south Korea. He has also been involved with the defense of Jose Maria Sison, a leader-inexile of the struggle for human rights in the Philippines.

In 2008, Clark received the prestigious United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights. The U.N. announcement described Clark as “a veteran human rights defender and rule of law advocate [who] played a key role in the civil rights and peace movements in the U.S., and more recently has spoken out against abuses committed in the name of ‘counterterrorism.’”

Recently, Clark testified at three trials against U.S. drone wars.

The three cases were begun near the bases in the U.S. from which drone missions are operated. “These are CIA summary executions,” said Clark recently. “You rely on what the intelligence agency tells you. You decide the guy must die. And you kill him. It’s a violation of international law. You are judge, jury, and executioner.”

Defense of clients challenges U.S. legitimacy Clark is much criticized for the clients he represents. In interviews he is repeatedly pressed to answer, why? Why defend a person who has been seemingly universally condemned, like former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, Dr. Elizaphan Ntakirutimana of Rwanda, Sheik Omar Abdel El-Rahman, Lyndon LaRouche, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or the survivors and families of the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms massacre victims in Waco, Texas, the Branch Davidians?

In some of these cases, the decision was neither easy nor taken lightly. Each offered a chance to question the legitimacy of the body running the trial or the laws allegedly violated.

Each case gives a chance to see if the law, which Clark holds

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dear, is functioning equitably or is being applied based on power, money and politics. Clark has said, “If no one else who is capable will take a case, I will,” and “If you can’t protect the right to a fair jury trial for somebody who’s unpopular, you can’t expect to have one where it’s needed the most.” He also said, “When we abandon our quest for equal justice, we abandon the last hope of man on the earth.”

Often in lists of controversial clients some are missed, like Lori Berenson, who was imprisoned in Peru; the Attica prisoners, after the massacre ordered by New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller; Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Ocalan; New York City Police Officer Frank Serpico, who testified before the Knapp Commission on widespread police corruption; the Harrisburg Seven, including Father Philip Berrigan; U.S. Army Captain Lawrence Rockwood, who tried to save Haitian political prisoners from a Haitian jail in 1994; Army Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, who deserted to avoid killing civilians or torturing prisoners in Iraq; the Romani Holocaust Victims; Leonard Peltier; death penalty cases in Texas; and the Vietnam Veterans Against War. The majority of his legal work is done on a pro bono basis.

A salute to Ramsey Clark Clark has done his duty over the years. He is one of the most recognized opponents of war, racism and repression. He inspires others who want to get involved for the struggle, be it for lesbian/gay/bi/trans/queer liberation; the end of the death penalty; the rights of workers; the environment; veterans; self-determination; the rights of indigenous people; women’s rights; the release of political prisoners; justice for all prisoners in U.S. jails, foreign or domestic or secret; immigrant rights; for justice, peace and equality.

The International Actions Center salutes Ramsey Clark and wishes him many more years of activism and leadership.

The International Action Center: 20 years of linking struggles, building unity

by LeiLani Dowell The International Action Center originated 20 years ago out of two small rooms in Ramsey Clark’s law office. From the very beginning, we have organized ourselves to educate and mobilize around the most difficult issues in the U.S., pushing forward people’s movements during some of the most politically challenging times. We consistently linked the struggles against imperialist war and plunder abroad with the antiracist, pro-worker and anti-bigotry struggles at home.

International campaigns In 1991 the IAC was formed by key activists of an anti-war coalition to oppose the first Gulf War. In the aftermath of that war and the ensuing U.S. atrocities against the people of the Middle East, we held international hearings and tribunals in 25 U.S. cities and 19 countries around the world. These mass events helped form the IAC’s network.

Since then the IAC has continued its defense of the Iraqi people, through years of deadly sanctions and a second war against an already debilitated country. The IAC helped organize international civil disobedience to the sanctions, with large international delegations taking much-needed medical supplies to the country. These overt delegations presented a political challenge to the sanctions and exposed the horrors the sanctions inflicted on the Iraqi population. We also held actions at the United Nations in New York to condemn their approval of the sanctions against the people of Iraq.

We opposed U.S. intervention in Somalia, which was being carried out under the guise of “famine relief.” In 1993 the world witnessed the resistance of the Somali people to that intervention. Tens of thousands of mostly civilian Somali people fought off an attack by U.S. commandos in capital city Mogadishu, downing a Black Hawk helicopter in the process.

against Serbia and Kosovo in 1999. The IAC sent delegations to Yugoslavia during the bombings, and wrote a number of books on the hidden U.S. corporate interests in the war — a view almost entirely absent in the political debate.

The IAC has stood steadfastly in defense of the socialist island of Cuba, sending countless activists to witness the Cuban Revolution’s successes and bring material aid.

The IAC has spoken vociferously and mobilized against the drone attacks currently killing peoples in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We helped organize the Korea International War Crimes Tribunal in June 2001 with sessions in Seoul, Pyongyang and New York City. And we have participated in campaigns against U.S. bases in the Philippines and countless other countries.

In January 1994 the IAC organized an immediate solidarity delegation to Chiapas following the uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), which had rebelled against the U.S. neoliberal encroachment into Mexico as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In 2001, IAC activists participated in an EZLN-led caravan throughout Mexico. The IAC has organized delegations to Colombia, where more labor unionists are killed annually than any other country in the world.

Solidarity with Palestine is a key issue for the IAC, which has helped raise understanding about the Zionist state of Israel and its horrific repression of the Palestinian people. The IAC has been a major organizing force in demonstrations, rallies and meetings in support of Palestine. We traveled on several delegations in support of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in 2000. When nine Turkish participants were killed

We denounced the U.S.-backed coup against democratically elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1994.

When the U.S. enabled a second coup against him in 2004, IAC activists travelled to the Central African Republic to expose the U.S. kidnapping of Aristide and meet with him in exile.

The IAC opposed the U.S.’s aggressive plans for U.S.commanded NATO expansion into every country of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics following the Cold War. The conscious policy of the U.S. and NATO to break apart Yugoslavia and occupy the Balkans resulted in two wars — Bosnia in 1994 and 78 days of NATO bombings Ramsey Clark 85 International Action Center 20 Gala

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by Israeli commandoes on a Viva Palestina caravan to Gaza in 2010, activists around the world, including IAC activists, continued to build and participate in the Viva Palestina caravans in defiance of Israeli terror.

Often, the IAC has spun on a dime to respond to world events.

When Israel attacked the southern border of Lebanon in 2006, the IAC sent eyewitnesses on a fact-finding delegation days later to see the highly organized resistance of the Lebanese population and their determined rebuilding of the area.

When President Manuel Zelaya was ousted and held captive, a delegation of IAC activists traveled to Honduras to show their solidarity with the burgeoning people’s resistance there.

As the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela was gathering momentum — and being denounced by the corporate media — the IAC held a gala Evening in Solidarity with Bolivarian Venezuela. IAC activists have also traveled to Venezuela several times to bring back news of developments there.

In 2006, as the U.S. government and corporate media intensified its war propaganda against Iran, the IAC helped form Stop War on Iran. The international grassroots campaign organized each time the US has raised new threats of war and increasingly harsh sanctions with emergency marches, rallies, vigils, teach-ins, honk-for-peace picket lines and leaflet distributions to protest U.S.-Israeli war threats against Iran.

We have also raised attention to the role of the Pentagon as the greatest polluter in the world through its use of toxic and radioactive weapons. In 1997 the IAC produced the book “Metal of Dishonor: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers and Civilians with DU Weapons,” and produced, with the Peoples Video Network, the full-length documentary Poison DUst. Both the book and video expose the use of depleted uranium weapons and the tragic effects for generations of those exposed to the weapons.

Coalition building Since its inception, the IAC has sought to work in coalition with other organizations in an attempt to build unity against U.S. war and repression, both at home and abroad.

In the days immediately following 9/11, the IAC sprang into action with the awareness that the U.S. would use the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as a pretext for more imperialist war. We helped form the ANSWER Coalition, which held its first protest a few short weeks after the 9/11 attacks to denounce the bogus “war on terror” against Afghanistan as well as Muslim communities in the U.S. As a part of the ANSWER Coalition, we organized major inter-

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national rallies of hundreds of thousands against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2005 the IAC organized the Troops Out Now Coalition at a major demonstration in New York’s Central Park. The coalition aimed to go “from protest to resistance” by holding encampments in Washington D.C. during debates on military appropriations bills. Youth activists from TONC marched through the halls of Congress to demand that their anti-war voices be heard.

As new U.S. wars appeared on the horizon, the IAC helped initiate the United National Antiwar Coalition in 2010.

UNAC held protests to denounce the imperialist war in Libya and rallied forces from around the country to challenge the 2012 summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was held in Chicago. As the military arm of the 1 percent worldwide, NATO has laid waste to sovereign nations and destroyed the planet through sanctions and numerous other forms of violent wars. For the past 20 months the U.S. and its NATO allies have armed opponents of the Syrian government and fomented a reactionary, sectarian civil war.

The IAC also participates in numerous ad-hoc coalitions and coalitions against repression, such as the National Coalition for the Protection of Civil Freedoms, and in international anti-imperialist coalitions and solidarity conferences, such as the International League of Peoples Struggles and the International Anti-imperialist Coordinating Committee.

The war at home The IAC has always recognized that the same U.S. imperialist forces waging war abroad are simultaneously waging an acute war against the people of the U.S. In 1993 we organized a People’s Assembly. We are continuing this legacy with today’s People’s Power Movement, which

recently held a national assembly in Baltimore to denounce police terror in communities of color.

The IAC has also led a key role in mobilizing in defense of the U.S. Muslim communities in the face of the many racist, right-wing campaigns against them. We have defended political prisoners such as Aafia Siddiqui and Sami Al-Arian. We organized rallies on 9/11 to challenge arch-racists like Pamela Geller, drowning out reactionary mobilizations organized by Geller to attack the building of an Islamic Center in the World Trade Center area. When these same racist forces placed ads on the New York City subways linking Muslim peoples to “savages,” the IAC protested the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s decision to run the ads and raised money for its own ad, which stated: “Resist Another War: No to Racism & AntiMuslim Bigotry, Tool of 1% Rule. We — the 99% — Need Unity & Solidarity!” The IAC is currently in a legal battle with the MTA, which unfairly tried to diminish the ad by taking up a fourth of it with a disclaimer.

The IAC organized a delegation to New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, exposing racist negligence at every level of government.

The IAC has always been a strong supporter of women’s and lesbian/gay/bi/trans/queer rights. Indeed, many of our leaders are members of these communities. In 2008, the 100-year anniversary of the women’s march that led to International Women’s Day, IAC activists in the Women’s Fightback Network held a march “to honor all the women who have fought for our liberation by continuing the fight for freedom today.” The WFN has held marches annually in March ever since. In 1997, we participated in the 14th Congress of the Women’s International Democratic Federation, held in Caracas, Venezuela.

The IAC also mobilizes for and participates in LGBTQ Pride marches in cities throughout the U.S. every year. We have

supported the cases of LGBTQ anti-war resisters Stephen Funk and B. Manning, and have raised solidarity with CeCe McDonald, a Black transwoman currently incarcerated for defending herself against racist white bigots. IAC activists helped initiate Rainbow Flags for Mumia, a coalition of LGBTQ people and organizations that came together in 1999 to demand a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal, as well as Rainbow Solidarity for the Cuban Five, a multinational, multilingual group of LGBTQ activists in the U.S. demanding freedom for five Cubans being unjustly held in U.S. prisons.

We also have a long history of supporting labor, both unionized, nonunionized and the unemployed. We have worked closely over the years with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, a militant trade union on the West Coast that has held work stoppages against apartheid South Africa, police brutality, and more. When workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory occupied their plant — the first workers’ occupation seen in the U.S. in decades, and a precursor to Occupy Wall Street — IAC activists traveled to Chicago and raised awareness of the occupation throughout the country. When a second occupation occurred in Madison, Wisconsin, in response to a union-busting bill, IAC activists set up their own tents and sleeping bags inside the halls of the Capitol.

We have walked countless picket lines, big and small, from the Stella D’Oro factory in the Bronx, N.Y., to the grocery workers picket lines in California. In 2008 we helped form the Bail Out the People movement, holding marches on Wall Street to demand that the money used to bail out the big corporate banks be used instead for people’s needs. We have been an active force against home foreclosures and the predatory lending practices that particularly target communities of color.

The IAC helped initiate a Rosa Parks Day in honor of the legendary fighter for civil rights. We also hold annual events

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on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday to commemorate his legacy and continue his struggle for social and economic justice.

In 2005 the IAC, along with organizers in the Million Worker March coalition, revived the spirit of International Workers Day with a May Day march through the streets of New York.

One years later, we would join forces with immigrant rights organizers to form the May 1 Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights, which held marches of millions on both coasts to demand legalization for all immigrants in the U.S. May Day marches have been held throughout the country every year since, denouncing the increasing raids and deportations against immigrant communities and stating that “immigrant rights are worker rights.”

When Occupy Wall Street galvanized youth and the unemployed in New York and around the world in 2011, the IAC was there to provide our constant support and solidarity.

Working with OWS, we helped promote marches against police brutality that highlighted the role of racism in the antiworker attacks of the 1%.

We also organized and mobilized for protests against both the Democratic and Republican national conventions in New York (RNC) and Boston (DNC) in 2004; in Denver (DNC) and Minneapolis–St. Paul (RNC) in 2008; and in Charlotte, N.C. (DNC) and Tampa, Fla. (RNC) in 2012.

Each year, the IAC mobilizes people on the East Coast to attend the Day of Mourning, an event held at Plymouth Rock on the so-called “Thanksgiving” holiday to recall the outright slaughter, ongoing repression, and continued resistance of Indigenous peoples.

We have come to the defense of the movement itself when it faced attack by the U.S. government, including Occupy activists incarcerated after mass arrests and anti-war activists facing grand jury subpoenas.

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Ramsey Clark 85 International Action Center 20 Gala

We have also supported a large number of campaigns in support of U.S. political prisoners, from the Cuban Five to Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, Sami Al-Arian and more. In each of these cases, we have tried to clarify the issues at hand and explain the urgency of demanding their freedom. In 2000, the IAC helped organize a Day for Mumia Abu-Jamal at the legendary, 6,000-seat Madison Square Garden in New York City. We have helped build major mobilizations in support of Leonard Peltier, the Native American political prisoner who remains in U.S. prison despite the call of more than 50 million people worldwide for his freedom. The IAC has stood in solidarity against frame-up cases such as the Holy Land 5, Lynne Stewart, Imam Jamil Al Amin and Fahad Hashmi, and participated in numerous campaigns against the death penalty, such as Troy Davis and countless state-sponsored executions in Texas.

20 years and counting From then to now, the work of the IAC has been carried out by a dedicated staff of volunteers, working in coalitions and networks with other people’s organizations. The IAC mobilizes for change through rallies, demonstrations, classes, fact sheets, books, videos, internet, web sites, intern programs, skill training, and more to challenge corporate rule and disinformation. Our offices are used for free on a daily basis by many activist and resistance organizations.

The IAC is committed to the building broad-based grassroots coalitions to oppose to U.S. wars abroad while fighting against racism, anti-Muslim bigotry, growing repression and mass incarceration, and the economic exploitation of workers here at home. With every mobilization or campaign, the IAC strives to draw from the leadership, connect the struggles, and bring together communities of color, women, lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer people, youth and students, immigrant and workers’ organizations in order build a progressive movement for social justice and change. Ultimately it is our goal to work towards the liberation and freedom of all peoples living in the U.S. and around the world.

Today — as the threats against Syria are heightened; as the U.S. recently announced the deployment of troops to 35 African countries; as the Palestinians continue to resist terror attacks against them by the racist Israeli settler state; as the capitalist economic crisis is used as a bludgeon against the peoples of the U.S.; as stop-and-frisk policies and police killings terrorize Black and Brown youth; as so many U.S.fomented atrocities continue — we are proud and honored to continue in the struggle for justice and liberation.

Mumia Abu Jamal honors Ramsey Clark & the Int’l Action Center Recorded Dec. 30, 2012, by Noelle Hanrahan, prisonradio.org.

It is fitting that we gather today. As icy winds whip against the walls of Riverside Church, we celebrate the work and life of Ramsey Clark and the International Action Center— Ramsey’s 85th year and the IAC’s 20th.

It is fitting that we gather here at Riverside, for even as I surprise myself, as I praise a former U.S. attorney general, I am also a student of history, and I know that he is far more than that.

For here, at Riverside [on April 3, 1967], was where the Rev. Martin Luther King had perhaps his finest hour and his greatest public crisis. For here, at Riverside, King made his biggest and boldest speech against “the evils of capitalism,”which he likened to the evils of militarism and the evils of racism.

At Riverside, King denounced America’s “puppet”(King’s words) in Vietnam, so-called “president,”Ngo Dinh Diem, as “one of the most vicious modern dictators,”and the U.S. “concentration camps”throughout Vietnam.

At Riverside, King said America is siding with “the wealthy and secure while we create a hell for the poor.” At Riverside, King said, “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.”

Here, he said, “We must get on the right side of the world revolution.” He said that here at Riverside, “down by the river side.”

And, although he felt lifted by his speech, the liberal elites went on the attack. Whitney Young, a leader of the Urban League, condemned him. The New York Times called his remarks “reckless.”The NAACP put out a resolution saying civil rights and peace movements shouldn’t be linked. Black columnist Carl Rowan, working with the White House, wrote an article designed to “take out”King as a dupe of communists.

And the Washington Post, long the house organ of the CIA, wrote a blistering editorial saying, in part, that King’s speech was “unsupported fantasy,”further, that King “has done a grave injury to those who are his natural allies and an even greater injury to himself. Many who have listened to him with respect will never again accord him the same confidence. He has diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country and to his people. And that is a great tragedy.” (April, 6, 1967) And those were the liberals!

Fast forward. 2013. Today, a gala celebration for Ramsey Clark’s 85th birthday and the 20th anniversary of the International Action Center.

Here, from this post, it is entirely possible that he has done more against injustice than when he was the head of the U.S. Department of Justice.

For here, at the IAC, we find the strongest voices against the evils of racism, the evils of militarism and the evils of capitalism (as King said, here at Riverside). When millions of people were in the streets in the spring of 2003, the IAC was holding rallies, putting out leaflets, manning and womanning websites, staging protests against the coming Iraq war. Who was on the right side of history? George W. Bush? Or Ramsey Clark and the IAC? When the bombs were being readied for Afghanistan, and the White House was swearing vengeance, who dared to stage rallies, predicting disaster? Abu Ghraib, Pakistan, Palestine, drone strikes and wild Islamophobia, fueled by fear and ignorance. Who opposed these developments at every step?

And as capitalism sent jobs abroad, hollowing out the middle class, causing dystopian hells in inner cities, who spoke out against the rapacious greed of Wall Street and the resultant prison industrial complex and the death industry of Death Row? Ramsey Clark and the organization he helped found in two small rooms of his law office, the IAC 20 years ago.

Ramsey Clark, as a former attorney-general, indeed, the son of an attorney-general and a U.S. Supreme Court justice, Tom C. Clark, could’ve gone to any law firm or gotten a sinecure at a think tank and made his “pile.” He could’ve made millions.

That he took some of the toughest cases in the nation and with the IAC, fought some of the toughest battles against the might of the Empire, is telling and high tribute.

A final thought: If King were alive today, he’d be a year younger than Ramsey—84.

But, where would he be? At a vast, multimillion dollar cathedral in Atlanta? Or at that place where he could speak his heart’s truth, where his spirit and his politics merged into one?

He would be with the People! With Ramsey Clark! With the International Action Center! He’d be with us all at Riverside!

Thank you!! Onamove! Long live John Africa!

From imprisoned nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Ramsey Clark 85 International Action Center 20 Gala

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Lynne Stewart: Ramsey ‘my friend and warrior’ Lynne Stewart is a human rights attorney serving 10 years in a Texas federal prison.

not sure at that point if I even wanted the case, but out of respect for Ramsey and Abdeen, I went.

Ramsey Clark and I have known each other for a long time but we only became face to face and personal friends after 1994.

Everyone knows that first interview sparked the kind of attorney-client chemistry that was to last for the next fifteenplus years, but on that day, I still wasn’t sure. I had a heavy schedule. I knew what a lengthy trial can do to a healthy law practice. Most importantly, I am a compulsive preparer with a great memory, who always knows the case before the trial better that the agents and the prosecution, and I would have no time to do so in a case in which my co-counsel had been getting ready for months if not years. The judge would grant no adjournments. I felt I just couldn’t do it.

In the 1960s Ramsey represented government enforcement and I was very anti-government, so you can draw your own conclusions! By 1976, I had hung out my law practice shingle and he was once again a private citizen and a lawyer defender.

I was aware of his worldwide work as an ambassador to less than popular regimes, his candidacy to the Senate and of some of his cases — Ruchell Magee and the action at the Alameda County court house, Leonard Peltier, the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. However, it was not until 1994 that we embarked on our professional and personal relationship, which has now widened and deepened into something rich and fine.

The story of my meeting with Ramsey in 1994 is one that I have repeated often and love to tell. I had learned from a number of sources that a search was underway for a lawyer to represent Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in his upcoming sedition trial (better known as the landmark case). I got a call from Abdeen Jabara at my office asking if he could bring by some of the materials and talk to me about the case. Apparently Ramsey had been approached by a concerned group of Egyptians here in the U.S., because the Sheik was representing himself with the “help” of an appointed ex-U.S.-Attorney lawyer, and they believed it was less than desirable for trial.

He was blind, unfamiliar with English and would require an interpreter and, finally, was unfamiliar with the legal/courtroom procedures.

The point was also made to me that Sheik Omar was a person of extraordinary religious repute and integrity — a highly respected Muslim scholar; a Ph.D. graduate, despite his disability, from Al-Azhar University in Cairo. We would be viewed with contempt throughout the Middle East and the world if the progressive community in the U.S. could not arrange to have him defended with one of our very best political lawyers.

Numerous candidates had gone to the jail behind the federal court and interviewed the Sheik. There was a very limited amount of money available to provide a retainer in a case that was projected to last for at least six to eight months and that was due to begin shortly. I too went down to speak to him—

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I remember going with my husband, Ralph Poynter, to Ramsey’s beautiful loft office in the Village on a Saturday afternoon in November to tell him so. I learned that day what had made this man the dauntless and persuasive attorney general of Selma and the South of the 1960s. He listened to all my reasons patiently, and then unfolded his long lean Texas frame to stand and to say, “Lynne, you are the only one who can do this. There is no one else. I know how difficult it is, but if you are going past a burning building and there’s a little child in there, you can’t stop to say, I need my fireman’s boots, my fireman hat, my tools, my ladder—you know you have to save that little one. You must do your best. There is no choice.

You are it.” Well, after Ralph murmured his concern about my safety — not a real problem, except for the government — I accepted and was committed and have remained so ever since.

Ramsey Clark and Abdeen Jabara made up the rest of this “dream team,” but I was lead counsel. The judge, Michael Mukasey, a Zionist, gave us no quarter pre-trial, during the trial or after, but we carried the fight. Ramsey and I had differences over trial tactics but, committed as we were to client-centered representation, the final decision was always the Sheik’s. After the bitter ending of the trial, in which the defense was not allowed to be presented to the jury (one of the few times I have wept in a courtroom), we still went forward. There was no question that we would continue our representation, but that Ramsey and Larry Shilling would take over responsibility for the appeal.

I can say with complete honesty that I have never had the good fortune to work with a better or more committed attorney than Ramsey Clark, and I have worked with many. He was always generous, always understanding, always brilliant. The next years saw a deepening of our regard for each other. The phone

calls, the long distance visits, meetings with the persons who had been concerned initially about the Sheik’s representation; we did all we could to zealously represent him.

Faced thereafter with the devastating loss of the appeal and the imposition of the Special Administrative Measures on the Sheik, by the government, we still went forward, although our agenda was limited. We realize now that the prison conditions first at Springfield, Miss., and later in Rochester, Minn., were tantamount to extreme solitary confinement. Our client deteriorated physically and mentally and we fought for him, including keeping him from being “disappeared” off the world political scene.

Ramsey did more than I could. He visited the client, fielded most of the prison calls and went to Egypt to keep supporters and family up to date. We both made press releases on the Sheik’s behalf, notwithstanding the attempt by the government to stifle his voice.

There was one occasion where the government in Afghanistan had made contact and offered to exchange a group of U.S. missionaries for Dr. Rahman. The date of our discussion and making of plans for Ramsey to go to Washington was Sept. 10, 2001. Needless to say, after the events of the following day, the world had shifted and that offer was never acted upon.

Six months later, my own world shifted when I was arrested for a press release I had made on behalf of the Sheik in May/ June 2001 that the government now characterized as material aid to a terrorist organization.

In all the years that have followed, Ramsey Clark has never wavered in his loyalty to me or the cause we both served as attorneys. He never hesitated to make known that he had equally, if not more so, done all that I had done, but was never even admonished, much less prosecuted. He took the witness stand and testified at the trial. (I will tell you parenthetically that it was some of the most riveting testimony I had ever heard in a courtroom, when, speaking in his soft Texas drawl, he recounted his dedicated work in the South — Selma, Birmingham, Little Rock—as attorney general of the United States. You could have heard a pin drop when he ended by saying, “All those people wanted to do was vote.”)

Since the trial, Ramsey Clark has remained a stalwart for me.

He has written letters to the Judge at BOTH sentencings.

After I was hustled off to prison, he has always been available to my family and supporters and he came to Texas to visit me, to the adoration and respect of all the old-timers on the prison staff.

I am still fighting the injustice of my prosecution and sentence and I know he is with me every step of the way. Our professional regard from 1994 has continued to grow and our personal relationship can only be described as loving — not in the Hollywood sense, but in the love one shares with a comrade, a brother. A tribute to him cannot hope to measure up to the stature he has maintained for a lifetime — my friend and warrior in the fight against injustice, my dear compadre Ramsey Clark.

Ramsey Clark 85 International Action Center 20 Gala

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• Thank You! • The contributions of many people made the production of this journal possible.

• Donors • Janet Akullian

Ann Ferguson

Patrick Boylan (Italy)

Francis Maxwell Flynn

Gregory Butterfield, in memory of Alberto Ramos

Jeri Gimbel and Mike Gimbel

Nina Byers Peter Cook Dolores Cox CROWING ROOSTER ARTS Lisa Davis Carole Driver and Rod Driver Frances “Sissy” Farenthold

Marsha Goldberg, in memory of Pat Chin Roger D. Harris, Task Force on the Americas Mares Hirchert and Chuck Hirchert Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee, NYC Bob McCubbin Rael Nidess, M.D.

Maryvelma Smith O’Neill, in memory of Kurt Vonnegut and his anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five Mike Powers (Sweden) David Rolde, in memory of Dave Cutter Elizabeth H. Sarfaty, in memory of Rev. Dudley E. Sarfaty, PCUSA (1927-2009) Jim Wallace Workers World Party: Buffalo, San Francisco/Oakland branches

• Friends • Atlanta International Action Center Mara Bard Sharon Black, Organizer, Baltimore People’s Power Assembly Archie Wayne Blumhorst Morton K. Brussel Buffalo International Action Center Ellen Catalinotto and John Catalinotto Paddy Colligan and Gregory Dunkel Sue Davis Kathy Durkin Sharon L. Eolis Joanne Gavin, Pat Hartwell, Gloria Rubac: A fellow Texan we are proud to claim!

Gavrielle Gemma Larry Hales Imani Keith Henry Alex Hernandez Majumder

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Larry Holmes June Kelly and John Kelly, People against War Network, Ireland Labor-Community Forum/South Bronx Community Congress La Peña del Bronx Dianne Mathiowetz Janet R. Mayes, Ph.D. Dr. Nick Medvecky Monica Moorehead, in memory of Consuela Lee Las Mujeres Trabajadoras por la Paz Sabah Al-Mukhtar, B.A., LLM Wynn Murrell, in honor of Vince, Libby and Key Ernest G. Nassar Frank Neisser John Parker, West Coast Coordinator of the International Action Center

Ramsey Clark 85 International Action Center 20 Gala

Lee Patterson, All Peoples Congress, Baltimore Andre Powell, AFSCME delegate, Baltimore Metropolitan AFL-CIO Council Dr. Thomas Riggins Jerry Rivers Gloria Rubac, in memory of Carlos Santana (executed March 23, 1993) Molly Rush, Plowshares 8 Paul Stein, Ph.D. Paul Teitelbaum, Tucson International Action Center Phil Wilayto, Editor, The Virginia Defender Rev. Cortly “C.D.” Witherspoon, President, Baltimore Southern Christian Leadership Conference WRFG 89.3 FM Progressive Community Radio/Atlanta

Support the International Action Center!

For 20 years, the IAC has been organizing against war, occupation, racism and anti-immigrant bigotry, as well as for jobs and human needs. In this effort, the organization has also produced many books and videos and sent out many informational emails and petitions internationally.

All of this work has been done by volunteers, lending their time and skills to assist the IAC’s campaigns, doing whatever was needed to mobilize for demonstrations, tribunals, conferences, national speaking tours—and everything else.

The IAC’s rich history and international solidarity can be seen in this journal’s pages.

Every endeavor ever taken on by the IAC has been financially aided by donors from around the country who saw the need for this organization to stand up in a principled way on every issue and forge ahead with activism. The IAC must continue on its course at a time when the U.S. government is sending more troops, bombs and drones around the world. It is crucial. Please donate to this vital organization.

See www.IACenter.org/donate to contribute. There is also information on how to make tax-deductible donations to IAC-initiated educational projects.

Champion of the People

by Sami Al-Arian To find a truth-teller among statesmen Is like trying to find A needle in a haystack Impossible But for every implausibility There is an exception That proves the rule For those who advocate Human Rights Global Justice World Peace He is their spokesman The conscience of the universe An elder statesman A truth teller A thorn in the eyes Of those who espouse Domination and hegemony Arrogance and oppression War and aggression

Unfazed in his pursuit of Truth and justice Willing to strip up The hornets’ nest To expose the guilty powerful The lying liars The modern sorcerers With unparalleled zest Representing the finest America has To offer the world The apex of moral clarity The fist that thwarted the sword Unbroken record of championing The causes of the people The great problems of the world Apostle of peace Messiah for justice Redeemer of truth Deliverer of light from the dark If you wonder who he is, He is Ramsey Clark

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Solidarity Messages From Egypt To Mr. Ramsey Clark, in solidarity It is with great pleasure that I send my 85th birthday greetings to you from Cairo, Egypt, today on my 89th birthday. You earned my unwavering respect in the early 1980s when you traveled to Cairo to defend Communist political prisoners, including myself, in a legal case brought against us by the regime. Even though the regime eventually succeeded in keeping you from becoming involved in the trials we have been grateful for your efforts ever since.

I continue to applaud your ability and willingness to fully appreciate the difficulty and promise of political struggle against all forms of oppression in the Middle East.

Fawzi Habashi Architect, political activist Author of the memoir Prisoner of All Generations: My Life in the Homeland (2011) To Fawzi Habashi Warm greetings of solidarity on your 89th birthday. On this special occasion we salute your fortitude and perseverance in the face of repeated imprisonments for your political vision and for your activism on behalf of Egypt’s people. Your strength and refusal to give in sets an example for all those fighting imperialism, Zionism, and class society—in Egypt and in the U.S. as well. May you live another 89 years!

Sincerely, Joyce Chediac For the International Action Center and its founder Ramsey Clark

From India Dear Ramsey, The International Anti-imperialist Coordinating Committee (IACC) congratulates you on your 85th birthday. The IACC is deeply appreciative of your consistent anti-imperialist position in opposing US military intervention in foreign countries. You have defended the rights of the people fighting for justice in different countries. The oppressed people of the world are confident that they can always depend on you in the hours of trials and tribulations. The IACC wishes you many more years of active life and hopes for your guidance in its anti-imperialist activities.

With warm regards, On behalf of IACC Manik Mukherjee General Secretary

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Solidarity with Hugo Chávez and Venezuela The International Action Center sends its utmost solidarity to President Hugo Chávez and all the people of Venezuela during the difficult health crisis of this beloved world leader. We send our deepest thanks to revolutionary Cuba where President Chávez is receiving superior treatment. We are confident that President Chávez is in the good hands of Cuban doctors and health care workers.

President Chávez has brought a renewed hope to all the peoples who desire and fight for social and economic justice in every corner of the planet. He has become a symbol of humanity and the real possibility of a better society that tends to the basic needs of all, but particularly of the most disenfranchised. Together with Revolutionary Cuba, Venezuela, under the leadership of Chávez, has launched a new era in the Latin America region where unity, solidarity and the betterment of the masses are the bond and also the vehicle to move forward, away from United States’ imperialist aggression and domination.

We stand alert to U.S. imperialist and Venezuelan rightwing opposition’s maneuvers to use President Chávez’ health crisis as a mandate for escalated aggression in their attempt to destabilize the Bolivarian Revolution.

We are ready to organize our voices for Venezuela in opposition to U.S. intervention.

Chávez is more than a president, more than a single man, he now represents a living, dynamic process of integration and progressive revolution.

Berta Joubert-Ceci, Teresa Gutierrez, Sara Flounders International Action Center Co-Directors January 6, 2013

Berta Joubert-Ceci at IAC-sponsored event in New York, Nov. 2005

Rev. Luis Barrios, IFCO/ Pastors for Peace, at New York solidarity event, Nov. 2005

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International Action Center Book Projects Truth vs. Power: Building an International Action Center, by Ramsey Clark, International Action Center, New York, 2013.

Gaza: Symbol of Resistance, edited by Joyce Chediac, foreword

by Ramsey Clark, World View Forum, New York, 2011.

We Won’t Go: The Truth on Military Recruiters & the Draft—A Guide to Resistance, by LeiLani Dowell, Sara Flounders, Dustin Langley and Walter Williams ( Jan 2005) Haiti: A Slave Revolution 200 years after 1804, by Ramsey Clark and others, International Action Center, New York, 2004.

War in Colombia: Made in USA, by Ramsey Clark and others, International Action Center, New York, 2004.

Hidden Agenda: U.S./NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia, by Ramsey Clark and others, International Action Center, New York, 2002.

War Lies & Videotape: How Media Monopoly Stifles Truth, edited

by Lenora Foerstal, International Action Center, New York, 2000.

NATO in the Balkans: Voices of Opposition, by Ramsey Clark and others, International Action Center, New York, 1998.

Challenge to Genocide: Let Iraq Live, by Ramsey Clark and others, International Action Center, New York, 1998.

Metal of Dishonor — Depleted Uranium: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers & Civilians with DU Weapons, by Ramsey Clark and others, International Action Center, New York, 1997 (revised edition 1999).

The Children Are Dying: The Impact of Sanctions on Iraq, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, with Introduction by Ramsey Clark, World View Forum, New York, 1996.

The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, by Ramsey Clark, Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, 1992, reprinted by International Action Center, New York, 2003.

The U.S. Invasion of Panama: The Truth Behind Operation ‘Just Cause’, by Independent Commission of Inquiry on the U.S. Invasion of Panama, South End Press, Boston, 1991.

For information on how to order International Action Center books, see www.IACenter.org or write to: International Action Center 55 West 17 St. 5th Floor New York, NY 10011

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Ramsey Clark 85 International Action Center 20 Gala

New!

We salute the many years of work and dedication of the InternatIonal actIon center and its founder, ramsey clark.

Workers World/Mundo obrero workers.org

Muslim Peace Coalition USA honors Ramsey Clark and his love for Peace and Justice at home & abroad.

Muslim Peace Coalition USA

r Jobs o F y e n Mo War Not For

Walk Like An Egyptian

Dear Ramsey Clark, On behalf of Solidarity with Iran (SI), we wish you a most healthy and happy 85th birthday. The peoples of the Middle East including those of us in Iran, in over a century of struggle for independence and in opposition to Western imperialism have rarely witnessed such a brave political figure speaking out in defense of their rights.

Your courage to speak the truth when others have remained silent has truly earned you the love and admiration of those who have been wronged.

We also salute International Action Center on its 20th anniversary, an organization initiated by you.

It goes without exaggeration that the IAC for the last 20 years was a major organized force which carried the struggle against war and aggression in the United States defending people of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

• Lift economic sanctions against Iran.

• Recognize the right of Iran to develop and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

• Stop military threats against Iran.

Long live Ramsey Clark!

Long live IAC!

www.iran-si.com

Doing Time for Peace: Resistance, Family, and Community Edited by Rosalie G. Riegle www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com Courtesy of Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, Archdiocese of Detroit The Committee to Stop FBI Repression www.StopFBI.org and the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms www.CivilFreedoms.org

Million Worker March MoveMent east The Philadelphia IAC extends our warmest congratulations to Compañero Ramsey Clark on his 85th birthday and to the International Action Center on its 20th Anniversary, both known and well respected around the world.

In memory of Philly IAC members Betty Smith, Bill Hill, Bill Smith, Ray Ceci, Rosemarie Hill, and William Mena.

Celebrates Ramsey Clark’s birthday & salutes both his and the International Action Center’s consistent dedication to those most oppressed & the stopping of all imperialist wars.

Happy birthday Ramsey!!!!

It feels good to know that there are people in this world like Ramsey Clark, consistently advocating justice. I was so proud when Ramsey Clark positively responded to my invitation, as President of Middle East Section, to give a talk at the American Anthropological Association. He irritated so many people. What a great man. I am proud to support Ramsey Clark at all times. Happy Birthday.

Love you and thank you for all that you do to bring peace and justice to the world.

Elba Matos In memory of my beloved mom, Consuela Lee To an 85-year- young Ramsey Clark: You have been, to quote Che,

‘guided by great

feelings of love’

for the oppressed from Baghdad to rural Snow Hill, Ala.

Professor Fadwa El Guindi

With deepest respect & admiration, Monica Moorehead consuelalee.com • workers.org Above, Monica Moorehead & Ramsey Clark

at anti-Star Wars press conference in1985

Environmentalists Against War

Hearts Full of Thanks to

Ramsey Clark from

the Plowshares Movement Cheers for Ramsey!

Cheers for the International Action Center!

www.envirosagainstwar.org

Congratulations and best wishes to ramsey Clark & international aCtion Center Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (mecawi.org) and Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions & UtilityShutoffs (Moratorium-Mi.org)

“Please subscribe to the Nuclear Resister, supporting jailed war resisters since 1980.” ~ John Schuchardt Plowshares Eight, AVCO Plowshares

the Nuclear Resister POB 43383 Tucson, AZ 85733 www.nukeresister.org

In Memory of Key Martin Estela Vazquez

The International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5 salutes Ramsey Clark and his legacy as a fighter for peace and justice.

Lynne Stewart & Ralph Poynter 2012, Carswell Federal Prison, Texas

Join us for “5 days for the Cuban 5” in Washington DC, May 31- June 5 www.thecuban5.org

The National Network on Cuba sends greeting and congratulations to Ramsey Clark on his 85 years of struggle for justice.

Congratulations to Ramsey Clark & the IAC for their service to humanity.

From the Springfield, Mass. Rosa Parks Day Committee: Professor Nicholas Camerota Arlene Rodriguez, Ph.D. Catherine Donaghy, W. Mass IAC City Councilor E. Henry Twiggs Dr. Ruth B. Loving & The Freedom Choir Springfield Technical Community College Mobilization Against Poverty, Racism, and War

“And I always thought the simplest words must be enough. When I say what things are like, everyone’s heart must be torn to shreds. That you’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself–surely you see that?”

– Bertold Brecht

Dear Honorable Ramsey Clark, I would like to thank you massively for creating this wonderful opportunity for us to celebrate your unique works and selfless contributions to human equality.

In this world of injustice and unfair treatment in our society, your presence among us to enable us to overcome this struggle is highly appreciated specially overseas and in America as well as the Muslim

world. I wish you to live long for over thousand years in order to promote your great message of peace and justice for all.

Happy birthday to you once again!!

And may everything you touch become a success.

Regards, Raja M. Yaqub, Chairperson Coalition of Pakistani Organisations Chicago, Illinois

The Board and Staff of the Center for Constitutional Rights are proud to congratulate Ramsey Clark on the occasion of his 85th Birthday!

The struggle for justice has never had a more committed, principled and unwavering warrior.

Kudos also to the IAC. Happy 20th — Keep Fighting!

666 Broadway, Floor 7 | New York, NY, 10012 | 212-614-6424 | www.ccrjustice.org

“In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.”

Albert Einstein

The IAC says: ‘FREE CECE MCDONALD!’ an African-American transwoman who FOUGHT BACK against racist bigots in Minneapolis.

Learn about CeCe’s struggle:

Ramsey: Congratulations on your 85th birthday. We extend deep gratitude to you for your commitment to building a world based on peace and justice. I am proud to walk in solidarity with you.

Bishop Tom Gumbleton

www.supportcece.wordpress.com

Ramsey Clark, prosecutor, and judges at the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in New York City, June 2000. The Tribunal found Clinton, the generals and NATO country leaders guilty.

It is a great honor to salute Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. Attorney General and the founder of the International Action Center who has consistently opposed U.S. intervention abroad and fought for peace and justice in the world. I am profoundly grateful to this great American who stood courageously in defense of the Serbian people from demonizing, intervention and 78 days of horrific bombing by NATO led by the United States.

Radmila Milentijevic, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of History The City College of the City University of New York

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Ramsey Clark — Congratulations on your 85th birthday and the 20th anniversary of the IAC, which from its birth at the 1992 War Crimes Tribunal till now has been a constant influence toward peace and justice.

We salute Ramsey Clark for his lifetime of work in support of peoples’ struggles for justice all across the globe.

San Diego International Action Center P.O. Box 33447 San Diego, CA 92163

Phil and Lee Booth Detroit Workers World Party

For Ramsey Clark and IAC, who fought with us and were friends at the terrible time when there were not many friends.

HAPPY 85, Ramsey, our hero!!!

May people united win for freedom and social Justice! May love win!!

VIVE LA VIE!!!

Nadja and Milos Serbian/Yugoslav artists New York

We celebrate IAC’s 20th Anniversary with our thanks for always graciously offering us space, time, and resources when they were most needed. We applaud you for your consistency in the struggle over so many years, for being long-distance fighters, and for your commitment to building the movement for social justice. May you have many more years of INTERNATIONAL ACTION! The Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) & International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Everyday, every minute people around the world are dying. In Palestine from bombs and bullets paid for by the U.S. In Haiti from lack of food and clean water. In South Africa from workers’ oppression. Everywhere women are trying to assert their rights. Everywhere LGBTQ people are killed for being themselves. And prisoners are dying from abuse, solitary confinement and executions.

Ramsey Clark is a hope the world over for ALL of us.

In memory of Carlos Santana, we thank you Brother Clark.

Panthers United for Revolutionary Education (PURE), Texas Death Row Harvey “Tee” Earvin Howard Guidry Paul Storey Raphael Holiday

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER FOR 20 YEARS OF BUILDING UNITY AND MOVEMENT May 1 Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights salutes and congratulates our Compañero Ramsey Clark on his 85th Birthday. We profoundly “Un derecho no es lo appreciate his unconditional solidarity and que alguien te da; es defense of the rights of immigrants and lo que nadie puede workers around the world. quitarte.”

“A right is not what someone gives you; it’s what no one can take from you.”

DRUM- Desis Rising Up & Moving is honored to stand with you.

We look forward to working and struggling alongside one another in the years to come…

72-18 Roosevelt Ave., 2ND Fl., Jackson Heights, NY 11372 Tel. (718) 205-3036 | info@drumnyc.org | www.drumnyc.org

Ramsey Clark

www.may1.info

From the Michigan Campaign for the Freedom of the Cuban 5 To Ramsey Clark for all you do around the world and especially for the Cuban 5 — We salute you on your birthday and wish you many more.

Judge Claudia House Morcom Cheryl LaBash (Free the “5” Detroit Committee)

Pat Chin, Jan. 13, 1949 – May 16, 2005

On the IAC’s 20th anniversary, we honor the late Pat Chin, an IAC leader and anti-imperialist, anti-racist fighter.

This beloved Jamaican-born journalist, photographer and activist visited Haiti many times and fiercely advocated for the people of that Caribbean nation. She co-edited the IAC’s book, Haiti: A Slave Revolution.

Among her many political contributions, Pat represented the IAC at a war crimes tribunal in Yugoslavia on U.S./ NATO aggression there.

We move forward, carrying the memory of Pat Chin with us, to organize against war, racism and economic inequality.

The International Action Center

sends warm birthday greetings to Atty. Ramsey Clark, our great ally and true friend of the Filipino people.

Here’s to many more years of walking sideby-side in our common struggle against imperialism and all forms of reaction!

Mabuhay ang IAC! Mabuhay sila Ramsey Clark!

Long Live International Solidarity!

Kenbe la! Pa lage!

Haiti Liberté 1583 Albany Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11210 718-421-0162

Congratulations from American Iranian Friendship Committee (AIFC)!

AIFC has worked closely with IAC and Ramsey Clark, on issues of justice in the Middle East, standing together to oppose war and defending the sovereignty of the peoples of the Middle East. Justice for the Palestinian People! No to war and sanctions on Iran and Syria!

Bernard White, Program Director Don DeBar, Producer and Chief Engineer

Greetings & Solidarity on the 20th Anniversary of the International Action Center!

VENCEREMOS!

Happy 85th Birthday Ramsey Clark!

Haiti Liberté 3, 2ème Impasse Lavaud Port-au-Prince, Haiti (509) 3407-0761

Working Together to Build a United Antiwar & Social Justice Movement Across Borders!

www.mawovancouver.org

Happy 85th to Ramsey Clark!

Co-Founders, Ardeshir and Ellie Ommani

We at CPRMetro.org, an independent, non-commercial community-based media outlet, are grateful to be a part of the celebration of Ramsey Clark’s 85th birthday. Mr. Ramsey is a rare treasure who has devoted his life to the betterment of humanity. In troubled times he has remained steady in his vision of justice for all. He has paid close attention and we are grateful for him.

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Vancouver - Canada

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salutes the IAC

for its 20 years of arduous movementbuilding against U.S. imperialist war and occupation, economic and racial injustice and inequality, and for rights and welfare of working people in the U.S.

All of us at Haiti Liberté and the International Support Haiti Network (ISHN) salute the invaluable solidarity that Ramsey Clark and the International Action Center have provided to the Haitian struggle over the past two decades. In delegations, congresses, conferences, and demonstrations, they have always stood shoulder to shoulder with the Haitian people.

MAWO

Mobilization Against War and Occupation

Over the past several months there has been a steady stream of emails from all around the globe in response to the 85/20 Gala. Many have been persons recalling their specific connections with Ramsey Clark. Others highlight the concrete support and inspiration they have gained through the work of Ramsey and the IAC. Thank you to all who have contacted us. And please continue the connections.

The IAC Email Team iacenter@iacenter.org

In solidarity and with admiration, The National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter

We cover what the corporate media won’t touch.

Sue Harris, Co-Director, Peoples Video Network www.youtube.com/peoplesvideo

Happy Birthday!

Pamela & Blanche Barr To Ramsey Clark:

Happy Birthday Ramsey!

Thank you for being our expert witness in our trials against the drones.

We love you.

Thank you for the courage to talk to everyone, no matter what they are accused of.

Holly & Abdeen

Ann Wright (retired Army colonel and former U.S. diplomat)

Greetings from WAMM (Women Against Military Madness)!

We celebrate Ramsey Clark’s 85th birthday and his lifetime of heroic and steadfast work in the struggles against U.S. wars at home and abroad. Your leadership and that of the International Action Center has inspired the antiwar movement.

WAMM has a long relationship with you and the IAC including traveling to Iraq during the sanctions, participating in the Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal, and opposing the criminal wars on Libya and U.S. intervention in Syria. We salute your work for peace, justice and political prisoners and look forward to working with you in the future.

In Solidarity,

Veterans for Peace / Chapter 021 We are women and men living in Northern New Jersey who are veterans of the various branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, the Iranian Armed Forces and the Israeli Defense Forces.

As military veterans one of our most important missions is to prevent the U.S. government from intervening, overtly and/or covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations.

Tonight we congratulate our brother and fellow military veteran (USMC) and peace activist Ramsey Clark on his 85th birthday and the International Action Center on its 20th anniversary! We all share the same mission and will continue to work together in our fight for peace and social justice. www.veteransforpeace.org www.vetsforpeace21.blogspot.com

To Ramsey Clark— We pay tribute to a tireless and dedicated fighter for the people of the world.

Naomi Cohen and Fred Goldstein The Boston IAC salutes Ramsey Clark and the International Action Center for 20 years of uncompromising resistance to war, racism and economic injustice and for their strong stance against the political persecution of Boston African-American City Councilor Chuck Turner by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Bishop Filipe Teixeira, Ramsey Clark and Chuck Turner, Dec. 17, 2008.

www.iacboston.org

Peace Action Manhattan celebrates Ramsey Clark

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Where’s our money?

Gone to war!

Move our money from the Pentagon back to our neighborhoods.

Join Peace Action Manhattan (PAM) Your hometown peace group Phone: 212-580-1054 Email: peaceactman@gmail.com

VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS Exhibits, Lectures, Audio Visual Presentations 

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www.Farrakhanphotos.com

As healthcare workers, we salute Ramsey Clark for his special efforts to meet the health needs of oppressed people under attack from Washington and the Pentagon, at home and abroad.

For instance, after the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. government imposed harsh sanctions on Iraq, denying the people medicine, and leading to the death of 1.5 million people. The IAC, led by Clark, not only demanded the end to these unjust sanctions, but it also organized the Iraq Sanctions Challenge, which gathered medicine and medical supplies and defied the blockade by bringing these necessities to Iraq’s people.

Toni Arenstein, RN, Certified Diabetes Educator

Dr. Marjaneh Haghpassand, Pediatric Dentist

Sharon Black, RN

Bev Hiestand, RN

Ellen Catalinotto, Midwife

Nina Howes, RN, Delegate 1199

Joyce Chediac, RN

Rosie Martinez, RN, Former Vice Pres. SEIU Local 660

Phebe Eckfeldt, LPN Sharon Eolis, Retired Family Nurse Practitioner, Former Grievance Chair, New York State Nurses Association

Andy Katz, RN Alice Sutter, RN, Retired Family Nurse Practitioner Jill White, Registered Nutritionist

Colectivo Honduras USA Resistencia=Partido libre salutes our honorable compañero Ramsey Clark, founder of the International Action Center, a permanent bastion of solidarity with the heroic Honduran Resistance, on his 85th birthday.

Resistimos y Venceremos!!!

Colectivo Honduras USA Resistencia=Partido libre, NY

Lawyers celebrate Ramsey Clark on his 85th birthday and his keeping up the good fight.

We salute his contribution to the struggle for justice and equality in the U.S. and around the world.

Michael Avery Judith Chomsky Hugh Davis Tod Ensign James Fennerty William Goodman Cynthia Heenan Julie Hurwitz Abdeen Jabara Barbara Kessler Sylvia Law Alan Levine Holly Maguigan

Carlin Meyer Daniel Meyers Ernest Nassar Bruce Nestor Margaret Ratner Ron Reosti Franklin Siegel Michael Steven Smith Richard Soble Geoffrey Stewart Martin Stolar and Elsie Chandler

Postbus 475, 3500 AL Utrecht, Netherlands Tel.: +31-30-8895306 Fax: +31-30-2322989 Email: ilp515@runbox.com Web URL: http://www.ilps.info

GREETINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE OF PEOPLES’ STRUGGLE (ILPS) We, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), consisting of hundreds of member-organizations in more than 40 countries, welcome the Jan. 12 gala event to honor and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the International Action Center (IAC) and the 85th birthday of its founder Ramsey Clark and we express most heartfelt and most militant solidarity with the honorees and all the gala participants.

We have the highest appreciation for the brilliant track record of the IAC and Ramsey Clark in the antiimperialist and democratic struggle within the U.S. and abroad. We are proud of being their close allies in the struggle and are ever thankful for their cooperation and support. We wish them to achieve evergreater victories in the struggle of the people for greater freedom, democracy, social justice, all-round development and world peace.

For the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, Prof. Jose Maria Sison Chairperson International Coordinating Committee

If people had unselfish love for their dependent children and animals, they would find out the real reason for war and poverty. True morality is doing good without some reward.

Thanks to Ramsey Clark and the International Action Center.

Phyllis Lucero

Ramsey Clark So few achievers of power decide to use their talents to further the needs of all humanity—as you have. Many more years of caring and sharing!

Amanda Porter OZEES PRINTING & GRAPHICS SALUTES RAMSEY CLARK FOR HIS GREAT WORK CONTACT US FOR ALL YOUR PRINTING NEEDS TEL: (917) 576-7790 EMAIL: OZEESPRINT4U@GMAIL.COM The International Action Center thanks the Journal Production Team: LeiLani Dowell, G. Dunkel, Kathy Durkin, Alex Hernandez Majumder, Lal Roohk Photo credits: Sharon Black, Greg Butterfield, John Catalinotto, Ellen Catalinotto, Pat Chin, Paddy Colligan, LeiLani Dowell, G. Dunkel, Liz Green, Dustin Langley, Monica Moorehead, Alan Pollock, Brenda Ryan, Gabrielle Senft (we apologize for any omissions)

To Ramsey Clark Happy 85th Birthday - You inspire us with your integrity, honesty and courage in the face of imperialism.

With deep appreciation, West Coast International Action Center 5278 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90019 323-306-6240