October 29, 2016

What Black Radical Tradition Can Teach Us About Rebuilding Antiwar Movement

"No matter who wins in November, we are going to need a unified mass movement to end wars. ... Despite what our society’s white-supremacist narrative would have you believe, Black people in the United States are historically anti-war and intuitively anti-imperialist."

By Ciara Taylor, www.alternet.org
October 28th, 2016
Posted at popularresistance.org

"Editor’s note: The author uses the terms “womxn” and “folx” to include all gender orientations. The “x” signifies inclusiveness of transgender people and their experiences.

When CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans contacted me a couple of months ago with the idea of hosting a People’s Tribunal on the Iraq War, my first thought was: we’re still in Iraq? Choosing to hide my ignorance, I listened intently to the concept, even though I had already swept the idea into my mental recycle bin. Following our chat, however, the strangest thing happened. The “Iraq war” began to come up in my everyday conversations, from friends and colleagues to entertainment and news stories. As someone who believes in signs, this was enough for me to take the idea of the project seriously.

In preparation for my role in organizing the People’s Tribunal on the Iraq War, I spent a couple of weeks probing into the past 25 years of this illegal war. I was disappointed by the fact that most of the reporting, journalism and history of the war is centered in the perspective of cisgender white men. Understanding the historical shortcomings of the leadership class retaining power and mobility by making decisions on behalf of marginalized groups, I was curious to know how a movement contextualized by a mostly white paradigm will able to imagine sustainable solutions for the larger society.

Being one of only a handful of people of color and one of only two Black womxn attending my first antiwar conference, I was asked more questions about my experience as both a millennial and as a Black womxn navigating a movement defined by older, wealthy, white people, than on my perspective of war. Troubled by the lack of marginalized groups at the conference and by the limited historical understanding of the Black radical tradition’s role in peace movements, I chose to do a little research.

Despite what our society’s white-supremacist narrative would have you believe, Black people in the United States are historically anti-war and intuitively anti-imperialist. In fact, in a Zogby Poll that was released three weeks before the war in Iraq was declared, Black people within the United States were least likely to support an invasion in Iraq.

The September 2003 poll asked: “Would you be willing to support an invasion of Iraq if it resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraq citizens?” According to its findings, 70% of white males said “yes,” 16% of Latinxs said “yes” and only 7% of Black people said “yes.”

This data shows that, when it comes to invasion and war, Black folx are more likely to oppose U.S. incursion. So why does it appear that the anti-war movement is dominated by white folx? Well, I believe there is no such thing as coincidence."...

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