U.S. hands off North Africa and the Middle East!

Long live the Egyptian people’s struggle!

Join demonstrations in solidarity with the Egyptian people 

A seemingly all-powerful military, police and media apparatus, that has had the support of the U.S. superpower for decades, is crumbling before the even greater strength of a united people who have first conquered fear and may now push the dictator’s regime into the dustbin of history.

This struggle began in Tunisia in December when a young street vender chose to burn himself rather than face humiliation. It has spread to Algeria, to Yemen, to Jordan and now to the largest and most central state in the Arab world, Egypt. This country, with its rich ancient history and its impoverished population -- with more than 80 million people it is the largest of the North African states -- is now finding its way back into center stage of world events.

Ever since the Camp David agreements, Egypt has been a client state of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. has supplied Egypt with $1-2 billion in military aid over the years since the 1979, second only to the aid the U.S. gives to the Israeli settler state. This aid includes the tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition supplied the Egyptian riot police.

In turn, Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt supported the U.S. war against Iraq in 1991; it blocks the entrance to embattled Gaza today. Because Egypt is the lynchpin of U.S. imperialist foreign policy within the Arab countries, the current revolutionary crisis in Egypt raises the possibility -- even the likelihood -- that Washington will attempt to intervene in Egyptian internal affairs, with a good chance that this will mean military intervention.

Tonight (Jan. 28) President Barack Obama -- realizing the Mubarak dictatorship’s days were numbered, made some statements distancing the U.S. from the 30-year-old regime in Egypt. We should remember, however, that in his State of the Union message, President Obama spoke of the U.S.’s alleged role spreading ‘democracy,’ but he pointedly avoided mentioning Egypt.

As an anti-war and anti-imperialist solidarity group working within the United States, the International Action Center pledges to help build actions in solidarity with the people of Egypt and of all of those countries where people are struggling for democracy and freedom from imperialist domination. Thus the IAC will join the actions of the Egyptian community in the United States protesting the Mubarak regime, and it will build actions to demand that the U.S. desist from intervening in Egyptian affairs and especially that there be no military intervention against the Egyptian people.

Over the next days there are demonstrations planned in cities around the U.S. to show solidarity with the Egyptian people’s struggle. The IAC calls on its supporters to join these actions.

SEE LISTING OF ACTIONS AT iacenter.org/actions/egyptdemos