Alright, could you introduce
yourself for us?
Yes, my name is Eli Mori.
First name E-L-I, last
name M-O-R-E-Y.
Okay, so what are you guys up here?
Protesting today.
So we're out here to say no to war
with Iran. We're just one of dozens
of protests that are happening
across the country today in
protest against a war with
the Iran that Trump launched on
Saturday morning.
We want to say unequivocally that
the American people, and polls bear
this out just from talking to people
on the street.
People in the United States do not
want this war. People are against
this war, something
like according to polls, 75%
of people are either fully against
the war or unsure whether this is a
good thing. Mostly because they're
not keeping up with the news or
whatever. But I think everybody
knows that, you know, we need to
stop sending all of this money
to the military for these,
like, adventurous wars abroad,
and we need to start spending that
money on making people's lives
better here in Wisconsin and the
United States generally.
So this is early in this
conflict. What do you think people
will know about this war and why it
was started?
Yeah, so I'll give you the
justifications that Trump has given
and that the U.S.
Military has given, and then I'll
you the real reasons.
So Trump has said that the reasons
are, you know, primarily they
want to fear monger about the
Iranian nuclear program.
Iran does not have any nuclear
weapons. They've never said that
they want nuclear weapons,
they are signatories to
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, which the U S is not by the
way. The U S has the most military,
the most nuclear weapons out of any
country in the world.
Iran has always been very clear that
their nuclear program is for
peaceful purposes.
They have been developing it in
order to create energy for their
country.
No country has the right to tell
another country what they are and
aren't allowed to do in terms of
building their energy
infrastructure.
That's the first justification that
he's given, which is nuclear
weapons.
The U.S. And Israel have been saying
for 30 years that Iran is on the
cusp of building nuclear weapons,
you can see headlines from the 90s
about the U. S.
Netanyahu or Bill Clinton, or George
Bush, or whoever's saying...
Iran is on the cusp of building
nuclear weapons, but the fact is
that they have never said that they
want to. So that's one reason.
The other reason is that
Trump is giving, is
that he's worried about human rights
in Iran. And what I would say to
that is the
leaders of the United States need to
take a good hard look in the mirror
before going halfway around the
world in order to try to fix human
rights. We have the most prisoners
per capita and total out of any
country in the world here in the
United states. We have thousands of
people in ice concentration camps.
We have people getting shot and
killed like Alex Preti and René
Goode on the streets for protesting
against ICE.
So you know, the United
States doesn't have the right to
lecture any country in the world
about human rights.
But the fact of the matter is, and
now I'll get to the real reason
behind this, it's not about human
right and it's not about nuclear
proliferation.
The real cause of this conflict
is that the United State's, you know
the Trump administration.
I think that they have the right to
control the energy resources of the
Middle East, that they have a right
to the flow of oil in the Middle
east, and that any country like Iran
that exercises any degree of
sovereignty that does anything that
the United States doesn't like, that
we have the rights to go and
overthrow their government.
So that's why we're out here today
is because we're all people who
believe that's not true.
We don't believe the U.S.
Has the right who's allowed to be
in power in any government around
the world. We should focus on the
problems we have here at home, which
we have plenty of, rather than
running around the world risking the
lives of Americans, risking the
lives you know we've killed i
want to say that the most disturbing
thing that i've seen so far on
saturday morning over
a hundred schoolgirls were killed
in a bomb uh...
We don't know for sure whether it
was an american bombers and an
israeli bomb but one of the two
which struck a girls school in iran
and it killed over a hundreds
schoolgirl between the ages of seven
and twelve nothing justifies that
i'm a teacher i think about my
students i think about how i would
feel if a bomb hit my school and
killed a hundred over a hundred of
my students.
It's devastating. It makes me really
angry and it makes me, you know, it
gives me the energy to come out
here. We were just out here on
Saturday. We're back in the streets
today and we're going to stay out
here until this war is over.
What would you say to those who
believe that the regime in
Iran is oppressive and it needs to
be changed?
I'll say exactly what I just said,
which is that the United States has
plenty of human rights violations
that we're committing here in our
own country.
We have over two million people in
prison, the vast majority of them
black and brown people from poor
communities.
We have people, immigrants, some of
them who came here legally
or some of whom who were on
temporary protected status who are
now rotting in concentration
camps. Some of them are
dying. You know, dozens of people
have died in ICE detention this
year. We don't have any right to
lecture other countries about human
rights. We should deal with our
problems here.
Dropping bombs on Iran,
killing people in Iran by dropping
bombs on them is not going to bring
anybody more human rights, it's only
going to destabilize the country.
If the current government in Iran
falls, it is not gonna be replaced
by a prosperous democracy.
We've heard those lies before.
We heard those lives with Iraq, with
Libya.
Are those countries, is Iraq, is
Libya a flourishing, prosperous
democracy now?
No, they're worse than they were
before U.S.
Intervention. Because U.S.
Military intervention, dropping
bombs on people, does not bring
human rights.
What do you hope to get from them?
This and protest you may.
Have in the future?
Our hope is that with this war comes
to an end as quickly as possible.
We don't want to see any more
innocent people die.
Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you.