State News Release

David McReynolds Calls for Withdrawal of US Troops from Iraq.

McReynolds for the U.S. Senate Media Release
http://mcreynoldsforsenate.org

August 09, 2004.

For More Information:
David McReynolds (212) 674-7268; (646) 942-7118
Mark Dunlea (518) 286-3411

David McReynolds, the Green Party candidate for US Senate, called today for a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq; repeal of the Patriot Act; and deep cuts in the military budget.

The Green Party also announced that McReynolds had won the Green Party vote among State Committee members by a vote of 105 to 28. No other candidate received more than 5 votes.

“The overwhelming issue confronting the United States is the militarization of this country,” stated McReynolds. “Currently tens of billions of dollars of national treasure are being drained in Iraq.The lives of our own troops, and the lives of many Iraqis, are being wasted as a result of this criminal adventure. It is just another war for oil and an excuse to curtail our civil liberties at home. We need to withdraw from Iraq and enact a massive cut in our military budget, investing the savings in housing, transportation, living wage jobs and education.”

“The Senate race in New York offers all of us a chance to make this election a referendum on the war - and on the kind of society which American capitalism has become. We need an America which will develop a foreign policy designed with the interests of the children of the world in mind, not the interests of the US corporate structure,” added McReynolds

McReynolds said he supported a UN resolution requiring the dismantling of the illegal security wall by the Israeli government.

“It is impossible for the United States to ‘impose peace’ in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it can end its policy of bias toward Israel. Israel is, far and away, the most powerful military force in the Middle East, a nuclear power. It does not need and should not have any further US military or economic aid. The US can't solve the problems, but it can stop making them worse. It can make it clear it opposes the Israeli Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, that it opposes all of the Israeli settlements in those areas.”

McReynolds said the release of the 9/11 Commission report was a valuable first step in the probe of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., but called for more far-reaching investigation into the failure to discover and prevent the attacks and into the White House's response to the attacks. "We need to see a new, independent Commission to continue to the investigation into the 9/11 attacks, with family members of 9/11 victims given a prominent role," said McReynolds. “Contrary to President Bush's claims that Americans are now safer, the U.S. response to 9/11 has increased the risk of terrorism throughout the world. There has been little discussion of how U.S. policy in the Middle East may have motivated the attacks and may lead to possible future terrorism. These policies are turning Arabs and Muslims against the U.S. Bush rhetoric about 'evil-doers' acting on their own blind hatred of the West has aggravated, not clarified, the causes of terrorism."

Other issues that McReynolds and the Greens will raise in the 2004 Senate race include:

increased action to curtail global warming;
adoption of a single payer universal health care program;
A program of low and middle income housing to reverse the present trend in -which our large cities - New York City being the prime example - become "Disney lands" for the wealthy to live and play, but places where working people cannot afford to live, from which the poor are excluded.
Reform of the police and the prison system, so that there are in place civilian review boards to monitor police conduct, and a court system which does not have a double standard for the rich and the poor, for those who are white, and those of color. An end of the death penalty.
A tax program which would have as one objective the elimination of the present enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of less than 1% of the population by introducing inheritance taxes that would prevent one generation from passing on its billions of dollars to the next
An end to the war on drugs. We need to look toward substituting medical treatment of addiction rather than imprisonment, and with the legalization of the use of marijuana
Defense of a woman's right of choice to abortion - and also to make it possible for women who might want to have children, to feel a genuine safety net of health care and economic support to make that choice an option.
Support for same-sex marriage
Repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, and defense of trade unions in their right to organize and bargain.

David McReynolds, 74, previously ran for President on the Socialist Party line. He has been arrested a number of times in civil rights, labor, and peace demonstrations. He was one of those active in the Vietnam Peace movement. An open gay, he has lived for many years on the Lower East Side. He is currently on the Board of the Mutual Housing Association of Cooper Square, and on the Board of the A. J. Muste Memorial Institute. The Greens are committed to ecology, grassroots democracy, nonviolence and social and economic justice.