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

[Ricky Baldwin]

This is something we need to work a little harder on,
ourselves, in my opinion.  Who wants to brainstorm
(not at a regular meeting)?

Ricky


--- jencart <jencart at mycidco.com> wrote:
> 
>
--------------------------------------------------------------
> 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
> 
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> 


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