[Peace-discuss] RESIST the killing of Muslims and North Africans

[David Swanson]

The Next Step in Caring
By David Swanson
http://davidswanson.org/node/5429

Airport resistance is the biggest step forward by the U.S. public in years.

Why do I say that? Because this is unfunded, largely unpartisan activism
that is largely selfless, largely focused on helping unknown strangers,
driven by compassion and love, not political ideology, greed, or vengeance,
and in line with activism around the globe. It's also targeted at the
location of the harm, directly resisting the injustice, and achieving
immediate partial successes, including very meaningful successes for
certain individuals. It's gaining support from people never before engaged
in any activism. And it shows no signs of any significant undesirable
side-effects. This is a movement to be built on, and I have an idea what a
next step should be.

Of course it is not at all uncommon for people to selflessly act for
strangers. Much of the charity industry is driven by that sort of
generosity year after year. But activist organizations are constantly
telling themselves that this is not the case, for example that ending the
bombing of distant unknown families can only be accomplished by advertising
the financial cost of it or instituting a draft or making known the harm to
veterans of the military doing the bombing. Yet when the peace movement in
the United States has been stronger, in the 1920s in particular and also in
the 1960s, acting on behalf of others has been central, as it was to the
first big activist campaign, that begun against the slave trade in London,
and as it has been in countless campaigns. Working to protect the natural
environment is work for future generations. You can't get more selfless or
enlightened than that.

But what's unique about this moment of sympathy and solidarity with
refugees from nations the United States has bombed (plus Iran which it has
gone after in other ways) is that it runs counter to U.S. government
propaganda, it replaces fear with courage, hatred with love. This isn't
just love stepping into a void. This is a transformation into love from its
opposite. This is why I think another major step might be possible.

When I listen
<https://ia601508.us.archive.org/2/items/BATTERYPARKRallyAndMarch/BATTERY%20PARK%20Rally%20and%20March.mp3>
to people interviewed at New York protests, or look
<https://photobyted.smugmug.com/Other-2/No-Muslim-Ban> at the signs they
bring to the White House and to airports around the country, I'm struck by
the expressions of love and concern for others, more than by the presence
of partisanship or hatred for Donald Trump (though it certainly is a
factor). And I'm bowled over by the widespread recognition of the lesson
from history of the damage done to European Jews by U.S. immigration
policy. Protesters' signs indicate an awareness that Jewish refugees were
rejected by the West, that Western governments met and refused to accept
their mass eviction from Germany, that the U.S. Coast Guard chased a ship
away from Miami many of whose passengers later died in the camps, that Anne
Frank's visa application was rejected by the U.S. State Department. I had
no idea people knew these things, much less learned and applied a lesson
from them.

Of course, some protesters have personal connections to those put at risk
by Trump's Muslim ban (and that's what it is, based on his campaign
promises and his renaming
<https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3415371/Read-the-draft-of-the-executive-order-on-CIA.pdf>
of the Global War on [of] Terrorism to the Fight Against Radical Islamism).
And others find ways to identify themselves with those at risk, such as:
"We're a nation of immigrants. My great-grandparents were immigrants." But
this doesn't make the movement less altruistic. Identifying with people in
some way, even as fellow human beings, is a common part of coming to care
about them and to act for or with them.

There are indications that this sentiment is not limited to those
protesting and resisting at airports. The ACLU has never raised more money
before. And check out this tweet:

*John Paul Farmer @johnpaulfarmer <https://twitter.com/johnpaulfarmer>*

I'm 20 minutes from landing at JFK. Pilot just warned us about delays due
to #NoBan <https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NoBan> protests at T4. The
passengers' response? Applause.

There are also protests happening around the world, outside of the United
States, allowing us to build a global movement against global injustices
even when those injustices are headquartered in Washington, D.C. And in
Washington D.C. and around the U.S. we see unprecedented resistance from an
Acting Attorney General and from judges -- a group that seemed to be mostly
asleep for the past 16 years.

And Canada, which has resisted U.S. wars, aided those enslaved, given
shelter to conscientious objectors, and protected people from all variety
of U.S. injustice for centuries, stepped up too:

*Justin Trudeau @JustinTrudeau <https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau>*

To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you,
regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada
<https://twitter.com/search?q=%23WelcomeToCanada>

There are elements of partisanship in this uprising that could hold it
back, and of nationalism as well. Some liberals are not so much concerned
about human cruelty as about Trump disrespecting
<http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-trump-already-showing-signs-major-disrespect-us-military?akid=15164.22822.eJiUsC&rd=1&src=newsletter1071426&t=4>
their sacred U.S. military. Where were these crowds when President Barack
Obama was setting records for deportations, or when he was bombing the
nations that Trump is now banning refugees from, or when he was purporting
to create the presidential power to do what Trump is now doing?

Our task is not to erase mistakes of the recent past but not to focus on
them either. Our task is to move forward with what we now have. And I think
the way forward involves taking one additional major step beyond where the
resistance is right now. Once people have come to resist injustices to
refugees from wars, to identify with them, to contemplate lives lived in
horror of immigration police, to consider the suffering of family members
in distant lands suddenly blocked from visiting their loved ones, it seems
to be a quite achievable step to begin opposing dropping bombs on those
family members. If you're going to oppose harm to refugees, why not oppose
the destruction of their homes that makes them refugees in the first place?
If you are willing to question government fear-mongering, you are ready to
question the government dogma that says more weapons sales and more bombs
and more troops will make things better rather than worse.

If that step is taken, then this becomes a movement that cares not only
about that fraction of suffering populations that finds some tenuous
connection to U.S. shores, but about that whole 96% of humanity that lacks
any such connection. Then we really have something new under the sun. Then
we really transform U.S. policy. Then the trillion dollars a year wasted on
preparing for more wars can be cut into a little bit to fund human and
environmental needs beyond our wildest imaginings.

I was heartened by this recent tweet:

*Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof <https://twitter.com/yarotrof>*

Number of US citizens who traveled to Iraq, Syria to kills locals on behalf
of ISIS: 250. Syrians or Iraqis who carried out attacks in US: 0

I replied:

*David Swanson @davidcnswanson <https://twitter.com/davidcnswanson>*

What about number who went there to kill locals on behalf of US military?

photo by Ted Majdosz
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