Kansas City Groups Join Action Against Caterpillar
Action at local CAT office highlights bulldozers used to destroy Palestinian homes

Kansas City, MO – Citizens for Justice in the Middle East and Kansas City peace groups, including local chapters of Amnesty International, Christian Peacemaker Teams and American Friends Service Committee, will hold a public protest against Caterpillar corporate policy on the sale of bulldozers to Israel. The public protest will be held on Wednesday, April 13 between 11:30 am and 1:00 p.m. at two locations – at the intersection of 31^st Street and Southwest Trafficway in Kansas City and in front of the largest regional Caterpillar sales office, Dean Machinery, 1201 West 31^st Street.

Over 50,000 Palestinians have been made homeless by Caterpillar bulldozers since 1967. CAT supplies equipment used by the Israeli military to destroy Palestinian homes, infrastructure, orchards, greenhouses, agricultural land filled with crops and sometimes lives, including American peace activist Rachel Corrie and Palestinian Suha Sweidan, who was nine months pregnant when she was killed in the middle of the night in a home demolition.

Joe Carr, a Kansas City resident, witnessed the death of Rachel Corrie during the attempted demolition of a Palestinian doctor’s home on March 16, 2003 in Rafah in the Gaza Strip in occupied Palestinian territories.

Citizens for Justice in the Middle East will also be meeting with elected U.S. officials to discuss the policy of U.S. support for the home demolitions. The events are timed to coincide with a national day of action against Caterpillar on April 13, which is the day Caterpillar Board of Directors will consider a shareholder resolution investigating whether Caterpillar is adhering to its own corporate code of conduct regarding sales to Israel.

Caterpillar not only has the ability to monitor the use of its equipment, but after calls from human rights organizations, members of the office of the UN Commissioner on Human Rights, several religious and social justice organizations, and the victims themselves, CAT has the responsibility to investigate the ethics of selling bulldozers as weapons and profiting from human rights abuses.

Information about Citizens for Justice in the Middle East:

Kansas City-based Citizens for Justice in the Middle East (CJME) seeks to educate the American public about the issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to end U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. CJME believes U.S. policy should recognize the rights and aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians, only by respecting the need to provide both parties in the conflict with security and self-determination can a viable and just peace be assured.

CJME web site - http://www.cjme.org
 

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