[Peace-discuss] Fwd:[ANSWER]: Black Commentator: An Anti-Racist Peace Moveme

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AN ANTI-RACIST PEACE MOVEMENT

 From The Black Commentator
http://www.blackcommentator.com/26/26_issues.html

The A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition is serious about creating a 
genuinely multi-racial movement against the pirates who  control the U.S. government. Of the 30 or so speakers that  addressed hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters in  Washington, January 18, at least 17 were African 
Americans. Native-born whites were a distinct minority on  the microphone, also sharing the historic moment with an  international cast of activists from Latin America, Asia,  the Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.

A.N.S.W.E.R. is the acronym for Act Now to Stop War and  End Racism 
(http://www.internationalanswer.org/news/update/011903j18rpt.html).  Folks with experience in coalition building understand 
that nothing, nothing is more politically sensitive than 
compiling a speakers list for a tightly scheduled event. 
It is the public face of the movement - or the movement  that is envisioned - an irreducible statement. 
A.N.S.W.E.R. stated plainly, for all the world to see, 
that anti-racism is a core principle of the movement they  seek to build.

The crowd, which organizers numbered at 200,000 by noon,  before many contingents had even arrived, was 
predominantly white, although otherwise quite varied by  age, region and lifestyle. We at The Black Commentator 
have no problem with the preponderance of white marchers.  After all, there are a lot more of them. Blacks ushered in  the modern era of Washington mega-demonstrations in 1963  and held the nation's capitol as if we owned it in the 
1995 Million Man March. African Americans are the most  consistently anti-war demographic, by far. African 
American representatives comprise the core of the Peace  Party in the U.S. Congress. Ten thousand Colin Powells 
could not alter the anti-war character of Black America.

What is most important - and what the anti-war movement of  a previous generation failed to fully understand - is that  white people who seek to build a movement must be prepared  to accept leadership from the ranks of those who have 
always been in motion. There can be no hint of privilege 
in the struggle against Power.

The Black contingent - a majority on the speakers platform  - was, itself, a coalition, comprised of politicians, 
religious leaders, union activists, students, scholars - 
veterans of a thousand marches against a multitude of 
grievances, a non-sectarian reflection of Black America as  a whole.

George Bush was elsewhere, shielded from the bitter cold,  but his ears must have burned red. "You can't rob us of  health care, by spending billions of dollars on this dumb 
war in Iraq," declared Mahdi Bray, of the Muslim American  Society Freedom Foundation.

"We must fight the terrorism of lack of economic 
development in our communities," said Brooklyn City 
Councilman John Barron.

Everywhere, placards like "Money for Jobs, Not War" 
proclaimed the class issue. So did 18 year old 
A.N.S.W.E.R. Youth and Student Coordinator and Howard  University freshman Peta Lindsay: "We are not the 
executives of Exxon and Mobile, and this war is not in our  interests."

Black labor grapples with issues of race and class, daily.  "Workers and working people want jobs, but we want jobs in  an economy that is built on peace, not war," said Fred 
Mason, AFL-CIO statewide president for Maryland and 
Washington, DC.

New York City Labor Against War co-convener Brenda Stokely  sees the connections, clearly. "Our fight for justice in 
the workplace has to be part of our fight for justice in 
the world."

Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, displace