Racial Justice Groups
Organize Against War

BY TOMIO GERON
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While many new peace groups have sprouted throughout the country since President Bush declared “war on terrorism,” traditional civil rights and racial justice groups are also building the leadership of communities of color in the anti-war movement.

Third World Within, a coalition of grassroots people of color organizations in New York City, marched in the Mobilization Against the War last April in Washington, D.C.

Last month, Jesse Jackson led a coalition of civil rights and women’s groups on a March to Justice in Washington, D.C. to challenge the Bush administration’s budget priorities, its push for war on Iraq, and its attacks on civil liberties.

“Fear and vengeance have driven our budget priorities in the direction of preparations for war and massive military spending,” Jackson said. “The longer you focus on Saddam Hussein…there’s no space left to discuss Worldcom and Enron, the crisis of confidence in the stock market and the loss of 2 million American jobs over the last two years.”

From Albany, N.Y. to Los Angeles to Knoxville, Tenn., racial justice organizations have worked to ensure that people of color are heard in national debates. Racial Justice 9-11, a new national network of groups organized by people of color, coordinated anti-war events in nearly a dozen cities last month.

These groups say that international justice and domestic justice cannot be separated. People of color pay heavily on the battlefields and at home when the government prioritizes the military while drastically cutting spending on public services.
African Americans are disproportionately represented in the military, says Badili Jones of Southern Strategies in Atlanta. And when resources are shifted from essential programs like healthcare and schools to building the war machine, the community suffers tremendously.

Immigrant communities in the United States are also directly affected by war, says Carlos Montes, a Los Angeles activist with Centro CSO that began a Money for Schools Not War campaign.
“The war effort is attacking immigrants, South Asians and Middle East people,” explains Montes, pointing out that the three major anti-terrorist bills- the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act and the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act-all targeted immigrants.

“[War] is not just a side issue for most of our immigrant communities,” says Monami Maulik of New York’s Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), which has been organizing to support the hundreds of immigrants detained by the government since the Sept. 11 attacks. What is happening in Kashmir, Afghanistan or Palestine “is just as important as INS detentions, completely connected to issues of immigration,” and why people come to the United States in the first place, he maintains.

“Now more than ever, we are seeing a convergence of different sectors of the broad racial justice movement,” says Jane Bai, executive director of the Bronx-based CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities. “From anti-prison-industrial complex to immigrant rights, from environmental justice to anti-war, we have no choice but to build unity across issues and communities.” 

Tomio Geron is a New York City-based journalist.