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“Both Democrats and Republicans appear
to have decided that talking about the wars is not in their best
interest,” observed Helene Cooper in her Oct. 28 New York Times
article, “In 2010 Campaign, War is Rarely Mentioned.” Coop-er’s
commentary highlights one of the many painful contradictions of the
2010 election cycle. Despite the fact that the world as a whole is
riveted by the horrendous revelations contained in the latest
Wikileaks, and newly outraged by evidence that the U.S. government is sabotaging any Iran-Afghanistan
antiwar discussions, the U.S. political class is, by and large, mum on the
wars.
This silence is a slap in the face to the tens
of thousands of rank-and-file unionists and community activists who
marched on D.C. on Oct. 2 sporting T-shirts and carrying signs calling
for money for jobs and education, not war.
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC),
the group that hosted a July antiwar conference in Albany, N.Y., that
drew 800 participants, is working to counter the electoral embargo on
discussion about the war and its impact on working people by organizing
a series of campaigns leading to national antiwar demonstrations on
April 9, 2011, in New York City and San Francisco.
While the Democratic and Republican contenders
have not been eager to address the debacles unfolding in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine, and other sites of U.S. and
U.S.-backed military aggression, important new forces have been eagerly
seeking out antiwar organizations for joint activity.
On Nov. 6, at a New York City conference to launch the organizing effort
for the April 9 bicoastal demonstrations, UNAC will be joined by
leaders of a new formation, the Muslim Peace Coalition-USA. Initiated
just in time to endorse the Oct. 2 jobs rally in D.C. by Iman Malik
Mujahid, a Chicago civic leader and broadcaster, the Muslim
Peace Coalition brings together Muslim organizations from 14 states
under the mission to “stand with those who stand with us!”
The formation of the MPC-USA is an indication
that a growing number of Islamic leaders in the U.S. recognize that the best response to
Islamophobia includes a good ideological offensive against the
so-called “war on terror,” accompanied by defense campaigns rooted in
the broadest civil liberties and peace communities.
New contacts with the large Muslim-American
community have, at the same time, awakened layers of the antiwar
movement to the dangerous and growing number of U.S. government attacks
known as preemptive prosecutions. In the great majority of the
cases tracked by Project SALAM, especially vulnerable and victimized
targets in the Muslim-American and African-American communities are
identified, befriended by provocateurs, and lured into saying or doing
something that allows the government to claim that they could become
a “terrorist” threat. Successful preemptive prosecutions and the
incarceration of hundreds of Muslim-Americans in 23-hour lockdown units
called Communication Management Units, or CMUs, are then used to
justify U.S. wars in the Middle East and South Asia,
as well as increasingly Orwellian restrictions on civil liberties.
Muslim Peace Coalition spokespeople have been
joined in UNAC activities by the women of Desis Rising Up and Moving
(DRUM). This group, founded to empower low-wage South Asian immigrants,
has been targeted by ICE and Homeland Security for deportation and
preemptive prosecution. DRUM activists have been combining the fights
against raids, Islamophobia, and social service cuts since before the
invasion of Iraq began. In a certain sense, they embody the
character of a new antiwar movement in formation, a movement in which
activists feel the multipronged impact of the war and economic crisis
as low-income workers, as immigrants, as people of color, and as those
most vulnerable to the wrenching cuts in social services expected to be
proposed in December by Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility.
DRUM’s decision to build the Nov. 6 meeting in
New York has the potential to strengthen the peace
movement immensely. DRUM activists have encouraged the participation of
youth from Vamos Unidos, a group that has been prominent in the fight
of Latino youth in New York City against the DREAM ACT, a piece of
legislation that purports to trade permanent residency for military
service.
These forces promise to animate the movement
to bring the troops and war dollars home now in truly new ways. In that
task they will be working together with speakers at the Nov. 6
conference in New York who include Kathy Kelly of the Center for
Creative Nonviolence, Mark Johnson of the Fellowship of Reconciliation,
Transport Workers Union leader Marvin Holland, Larry Hamm of the
Peoples Organization for Progress, Margaret Kimberley of the Black
Agenda Report, Nada Khader of Wespac, Pardiss Kebriaei of the Center
for Constitutional Rights, Adaner Usmani of Action for a Progressive
Pakistan, Teresa Gutierrez of the May 1 Coalition, Maggie Zhou of the
Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, Marty Nathan of
Northampton Bring Our War Dollars Home, Rachel Smolker of the Biofuel
Watch/Energy Justice Network, Steff Yorek of Stop FBI Raids, and many
more.
Antiwar organizers are finding that the
demands approved by the Albany UNAC conference in July are important
tools in attracting new forces: Bring the Troops, Mercenaries, and War
Dollars Home Now from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. No War or Sanctions on Iran! Trillions for Jobs and Education, Not Wars
and Bank Bailouts! No to the Racist Attacks on Muslims, Immigrants, and
Communities of Color! Civil Liberties for All! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Aid to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine!
The latter demands have had particular
resonance in the San Francisco Bay Area, where UNAC, along with the UC
Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, the UCB Muslim Student
Association, and the Middle East Children’s Alliance, is hosting a Nov.
30 teach-in at UC Berkeley to educate around the interconnected themes
of the war, Islamophobia, and the fight for justice for the Palestinian
people. The students who led the Berkeley struggle to force the
university to divest, whose group is the largest activist group on
campus, have voted to build the UNAC-initiated teach-in as part of
their struggle to bring the issue of Palestine into the mainstream of
the U.S. antiwar movement.
The vote to include a strong Palestine demand
at the Albany conference won the approval of allies from the African
American community as well. Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report described
the Albany conference in July as the birth of an antiwar movement that
“won’t cave to Obama or Israel.” In an article about this year’s “Black
is Back” Nov. 13 march on the White House to demand an end to U.S. wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to U.S. military aid to Africa, Ford
noted approvingly that in the past year the BiB coalition had built
“relations of solidarity and mutual respect with non-Black strugglers
for social justice and peace.”
Christine Gauvreau, a member of the UNAC
Coordinating Committee, was recently invited to speak on the topic, “We
Demand Butter, Not Guns!” at the annual Harlem Tenants Council
Conference, and shared the stage with Mark Torres of the Coalition to
Save Public Education, Dr. Matthew Hurley from the physician’s union at
Harlem Hospital, and Chino Hardin of the Institute for Juvenile Justice
Reform, a group grappling with the impact of the prison-industrial
complex.
Nearly all sections of the antiwar movement,
recognizing the way in which the economic crisis and war spending are
inextricably intertwined, have also begun to organize under the banner,
“Bring Our War Dollars Home!”
Bring Our War Dollars Home campaigns
originated in Maine by Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network
Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and were led to success
in that state by Lisa Savage and Mark Roman. These campaigns are now
being taken up by in one way or another by a number of local and
national antiwar organizations.
On Oct. 7, after a five-month campaign that
involved petitioning, public forums, media debates, engagement with veterans
and their families, and city council hearings and votes, the Alliance
for Peace and Justice was able to celebrate a vote by the Northampton,
Mass., city council that called on their senators to oppose “further
funding of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” and “to bring our troops
safely home and redirect our federal tax dollars to pressing
educational, employment, housing, nutritional, infrastructure, energy,
and environmental needs of our city, state, and country.”
From Harlem to Northampton, organizers are
beginning to consider or experiment with grassroots campaigns designed
to engage and empower the victims of the U.S. wars at home.
The potential power of these elements of the
newly emerging antiwar movement is clear. If brought together into unified
and independent mass marches this spring, the U.S. movement will have
gone a long way toward overcoming the period of demobilization and
demoralization wrought by the Obama administration’s pursuit of endless
war.
For more information on the United National
Antiwar Committee and the Nov. 6 meeting at St. Marks Church on the
Bowery in New York, see www.nationalpeaceconference.org.
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