WE ARE MANY - OFFICIAL TRAILER - MAY 21 NATIONWIDE SCREENINGS WITH Q&A, IN CINEMAS MAY 22

To find out where the film is playing visit: www.wearemany.com/cinemas

We Are Many tells for the first time the remarkable story of the biggest protest in history, and how it changed the world.

Eight years in the making, filmed in seven countries, and including interviews with John Le Carre, Damon Albarn, Brian Eno, Danny Glover, Mark Rylance, Richard Branson, Hans Blix and Ken Loach amongst others, it charts the birth and rise of the people power movements that are now sweeping the world, all through the prism of one extraordinary day.

On February 15th 2003, over 15 million people marched through the streets of 800 cities on every continent to voice their opposition to the proposed war in Iraq. This unprecedented global march was organised, against all odds, by a patchwork of peace campaigners in many countries, who reveal how they pulled of the historic demonstration, and whose legacy is only now unfolding.

On May 21 we will hold an exclusive live by satellite event (broadcast from Curzon Mayfair, London), after the film there will be a post screening discussion.
Journalist and broadcaster Jon Snow will host the discussion with guests including the film’s director Amir Amirani, executive producer and comedian Omid Djalili, convenor of the Stop The War Coalition Lindsey German and professor of international law at UCL Philippe Sands.

For more information about the film please visit:
www.wearemany.com
www.facebook.com/WeAreManyMovie
www.twitter.com/WeAreManyMovie



Hell I wish I could get there!

Is this the new Star Wars film?

Shady wrote:Is this the new Star Wars film?

no that will get a decent audience

So I take it Shady and Devil supported the invasion of Iraq? Funny, I thought you guys were required to condemn everything Blair did

Hmmm, I'm not sure that the protests changed the world - the invasion still went ahead.

Ben_Reilly wrote:So I take it Shady and Devil supported the invasion of Iraq? Funny, I thought you guys were required to condemn everything Blair did

The Tories supported Blair on that particular occasion. The LibDems did not, but then didn't say much once it had happened.

Raggamuffin wrote:Hmmm, I'm not sure that the protests changed the world - the invasion still went ahead.

Typical short-term thinking of the right, not realizing the value of laying groundwork.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:Hmmm, I'm not sure that the protests changed the world - the invasion still went ahead.

Typical short-term thinking of the right, not realizing the value of laying groundwork.

What do you mean? It was the Labour Government which ignored the protests here.

Raggamuffin wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:Hmmm, I'm not sure that the protests changed the world - the invasion still went ahead.

Typical short-term thinking of the right, not realizing the value of laying groundwork.

What do you mean? It was the Labour Government which ignored the protests here.

I mean you, not realizing that organizing a force to protest things like the Iraq war is valuable whether it succeeds in stopping the invasion or not.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

What do you mean? It was the Labour Government which ignored the protests here.

I mean you, not realizing that organizing a force to protest things like the Iraq war is valuable whether it succeeds in stopping the invasion or not.

Oh, you were being rude about me.

How was it valuable? Did it stop all those deaths? No. Did it mean that the Labour party didn't win the next election? No.

It's not as if the protests were the first to ever happen.

Raggamuffin wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

What do you mean? It was the Labour Government which ignored the protests here.

I mean you, not realizing that organizing a force to protest things like the Iraq war is valuable whether it succeeds in stopping the invasion or not.

Oh, you were being rude about me.

How was it valuable? Did it stop all those deaths? No. Did it mean that the Labour party didn't win the next election? No.

It's not as if the protests were the first to ever happen.

What Amir makes clear, however, is that the story doesn't end there. While Egyptian activists watched in disbelief as these "white, whisky-drinking infidels" in the West showed them how to mount a civilised protest, they also learned from it - and the fruits were seen less than a decade later, when they made their feelings known about their own situation.

For me, even among the many moving voices of activists, war veterans throwing their medals away, victims of 9/11 and the seasoned tones of Tony Benn, the saddest, sweetest moment was still watching Robin Cook making his dignified resignation from Government, and choosing conscience over self-interest.

Anyone doubting the value of protest should watch this film, for proof that the ripples of political pebbles can spread wide, and far beyond any immediate effects - or lack thereof. As well as a gripping story, 'We Are Many' is a timely reminder that we are still those pebbles, if we choose to be.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/09/we-are-many-review_n_5472690.html

I'm not sure that Egypt is a very good example.

Raggamuffin wrote:I'm not sure that Egypt is a very good example.

Don't you believe in democracy and self-determination?

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:I'm not sure that Egypt is a very good example.

Don't you believe in democracy and self-determination?

It's not a very good example of peaceful protests.

It's a bloody good example. I was there, and I was on anti Vietnam marches. Vietnam would never have been stopped without the protests. No, we didn't stop Iraq, but we made sure people knew Blair was lying and we'll carry on protesting. Come hell or high water I'll be in London on 20th June.

risingsun wrote:It's a bloody good example.  I was there, and I was on anti Vietnam marches.  Vietnam would never have been stopped without the protests.  No, we didn't stop Iraq, but we made sure people knew Blair was lying and we'll carry on protesting.  Come hell or high water I'll be in London on 20th June.

Well the anti-Vietnam-war marches were before the anti-Iraq-invasion marches, so how did the latter change the world?

I think this says it far better than I ever could:

It was an amazing moment — powerful enough that governments around the world, including the soon-famous “Uncommitted Six” in the Security Council, did the unthinkable: they too resisted pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom and said no to endorsing Bush’s war. Under ordinary circumstances, alone, U.S.-dependent and relatively weak countries like Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan could never have stood up to Washington. But these were not ordinary circumstances. The combination of diplomatic support from “Old Europe,” Germany and France who for their own reasons opposed the war, and popular pressure from thousands, millions, filling the streets of their capitals, allowed the Six to stand firm. The pressure was fierce. Chile was threatened with a U.S. refusal to ratify a U.S. free trade agreement seven years in the making. (The trade agreement was quite terrible, but the Chilean government was committed to it.) Guinea and Cameroon were threatened with loss of U.S. aid granted under the African Growth & Opportunity Act. Mexico faced the potential end of negotiations over immigration and the border. And yet they stood firm.

The day before the protests, February 14, the Security Council was called into session once again, this time at the foreign minister level, to hear the ostensibly final reports of the two UN weapons inspectors for Iraq. Many had anticipated that their reports would somehow wiggle around the truth, that they would say something Bush and Blair would grab to try to legitimize their spurious claims of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, that they would at least appear ambivalent enough for the U.S. to use their reports to justify war. But they refused to bend the truth, stating unequivocally that no such weapons had been found.

Following their reports, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin responded with an extraordinary call, reminding the world that “the United Nations must remain an instrument of peace, and not a tool for war.” In that usually staid, formal, rule-bound chamber, his call was answered with a roaring ovation beginning with Council staff and quickly engulfing the diplomats and foreign ministers themselves.

Security Council rejection was strong enough — enough governments said no — that the United Nations was able to do what its Charter requires, but what political pressure too often makes impossible: to stand against the scourge of war. On the morning of February 15, just hours before the massive rally began at the foot of the United Nations, the great actor-activist Harry Belafonte and I accompanied South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu to meet with then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan on behalf of the protesters. We were met by a police escort to cross what the New York Police Department had designated its “frozen zone” — not in reference to the bitter 18 degrees or the biting wind whipping in from the East River, but the forcibly deserted streets directly in front of UN headquarters. In the secretary-general’s office on the 38th floor of the United Nations, Bishop Tutu opened the meeting, looking at Kofi across the table and said, “We are here today on behalf of those people marching in 665 cities all around the world. And we are here to tell you, that those people marching in all those cities around the world, we claim the United Nations as our own. We claim it in the name of our global mobilization for peace.”

It was an incredible moment. And while we weren’t able to prevent that war, that global mobilization, that pulled governments and the United Nations into a trajectory of resistance shaped and led by global movements, created what the New York Times the next day called “the second super-power.”

Mid-way through the marathon New York rally, a brief Associated Press story came over the wires: “Rattled by an outpouring of international anti-war sentiment, the United States and Britain began reworking a draft resolution….Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the final product may be a softer text that does not explicitly call for war.” Faced with a global challenge to their desperate struggle for UN and global legitimacy, Bush and Blair threw in the towel.

Our movement changed history. While we did not prevent the Iraq war, the protests proved its clear illegality, demonstrated the isolation of the Bush administration policies, helped prevent war in Iran, and inspired a generation of activists. February 15 set the terms for what “global mobilizations” could accomplish. Eight years later some of the Cairo activists, embarrassed at the relatively small size of their protest on February 15, 2003, would go on to help lead Egypt’s Arab Spring. Occupy protesters would reference February 15 and its international context. Spain’s indignados and others protesting austerity and inequality could see February 15 as a model of moving from national to global protest.

In New York City on that singular afternoon, some of the speakers had particular resonance for those shivering in the monumental crowd. Harry Belafonte, veteran of so many of the progressive struggles of the last three-quarters of a century, called out to the rising U.S. movement against war and empire, reminding us that our movement could change the world, and that the world was counting on us to do so. “The world has sat with tremendous anxiety, in great fear that we did not exist,” he said. “But America is a vast and diverse country, and we are part of the greater truth that makes our nation. We stand for peace, for the truth of what is at the heart of the American people. We WILL make a difference – that is the message that we send out to the world today.”

Belafonte was followed by his close friend and fellow activist-actor Danny Glover, who spoke of earlier heroes, of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, and of the great Paul Robeson on whose shoulders we still stand. And then he shouted “We stand here today because our right to dissent, and our right to participate in a real democracy has been hijacked by those who call for war. We stand here at this threshold of history, and we say to the world, ‘Not in Our Name’! ‘Not in Our Name!’” The huge crowd, shivering in the icy wind, took up the cry, and “Not in our Name! Not in Our Name!” echoed through the New York streets.

Our obligation as the second super-power remains in place. Now what we need is a strategy to engage with power, to challenge once again the reconfigured but remaining first super-power. That commitment remains.

http://www.ips-dc.org/february_15_2003_the_day_the_world_said_no_to_war/


Bush and Blair tried everything they could to get other countries to join in, they failed, and the protests were partly the reason for the failure, they backed up the countries that refused to take part.