Linking anti-racism to peacemaking

“Attending different [peace] events, I saw displays of different peoples of color, children of color, needing to be ‘saved,’ rescued or ‘helped’—yet, never seeing any people of color at the table as equal partners in the process,” observed Paulette Sankofa, co-director of Women Against Military Madness (WAMM), sharing her experiences and explaining what inspired the 20-year-old organization to declare September “Anti-Racism Month.” “We began talking about the interconnections between poverty, racism and militarism ... Heather Foster [WAMM co-director] had some solid ideas about that. It was complementary because she’s a young European-American woman and I’m a, shall we say, ‘seasoned’ African-American woman.”

Sankofa noted that in her experience of the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements, “there was a lot more true solidarity and contact” among diverse communities than there is in Minnesota’s peace and justice movements today. National demonstrations this spring reflected a significant presence of people of color. This diversity was absent in Twin Cities’ rallies. CSPAN showed recurring signs quoting Martin Luther King’s ‘evil triplets’ to counter Bush’s “hit-list” of Iraq, Iran and North Korea: “The REAL Axis of Evil: Poverty, Racism, Militarism.”
There is a “poverty draft.” Unemployment is twice as high for people of color as it is for whites. Military recruitment targets high schools with poor and ethnic minority students. Half the U.S. military is made up of people of color. Adding the “war at home” to foreign policy analysis, WAMM’s September events include films, dialogues and planning for an October 18 Healing Circle. (See calendar.)

“It’s unfortunate that war and acts of violence become a place for people emerging from post-slavery and people facing poverty—that THAT is where you can ‘be all you can be’ and have your piece of the American pie,” Sankofa said. “Going overseas to kill other people of color in the name of the United States—yet, they can’t even get healthcare and education at home. It makes me think, ‘It’s a mad, MAD world!’”

Pentagon promises of education are often broken, a trend escalated by the $25 billion cut from Veterans Affairs, Bush’s wealthy tax cuts, and his $85 billion price-tag for the Iraq Occupation. Public schools and scholarship cuts, coupled with college tuition hikes, intensify the “poverty draft,” that is disproportionately African-American, Latino and Native American. The virtually all-white peace movements here have focused primarily on militarism, Sankofa underscored, while avoiding a confrontation on poverty and racism which underpins U.S. foreign policy and its domestic impacts.

“WAMM’s Anti-Racism Month and the Healing Circle is a real opportunity for white people to participate in undoing racism,” says Erika Thorne, a white anti-racism activist. “In my experience, working on my own racism, I’ve found I must get out of my chair and bring my body, mind, soul and heart to situations where racism is being dealt with. This is scary for many white people, but it’s KEY to us playing our important role in dismantling white supremacy.”

Conservative discourse touts “color-blindness” as a false “solution” to ongoing, but denied, racial disparities in distribution of resources, health care, homelessness and education/job-opportunities. By ignoring racism and poverty, white progressives have inadvertently replicated this “color-blind” denial. WAMM’s September activities will address this shortcoming of the anti-war movement. Through her endeavor, Future Now, Thorne facilitated a retreat for WAMM’s self-reflection.

“It’s crucial that other mostly-white peace organizations do the same,” she emphasized. “Organizations and individuals in the peace movement need to respectfully listen to communities we’ve excluded, engage in dialogue and change actions as a result.”

“Green card soldiers” are another invisible aspect of poverty and racism bolstering militarism. Immigrants (primarily from Latin America) who are promised “fast-track citizenship” to the United States, make up 2.5 percent of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but have been 10 percent of those killed. Often put in frontline positions, these Latinos are four times more likely to die in combat than whites, because immigrants are “security excluded” from technical support positions. (See James Gooder’s “Green Card Cannon Fodder” at english.aljazeera.net.)

On the home front, Sankofa exposes contradictions like the University of Michigan affirmative action cases at the Supreme Court. Gen. Norman Schwartzkoff and other military briefs supported affirmative action; they saw it as the only way to maintain an “integrated” military leadership since state colleges provide much of their recruiting base for officers.

The unequal education that most people of color receive results in an underclass of “working poor” stuck in service industries or participants in the “underground economy.” This has resulted in a population of 2.5 million in America’s prisons—the largest on earth. In the United States, African-Americans make up 12.5 percent of the general population; compare this with the prison population which is 40 percent African-American. There are similar disparities in the Latino community in the United States which makes up 13.6 percent of the American population and 25 percent of the prison population. Drug charges (even for first-time offenders, under 18) makes youth ineligible for state grants for college, further narrowing alternatives. These are the conditions creating the American “volunteer” military.

“Manning Marable wrote ‘How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America.’ The nature of our society requires a certain amount of people in poverty, a certain amount of people to be consumer-driven not production-driven. In order for militarism to succeed, you have to de-humanize lots of people,” Sankofa said. Recognizing that white peace groups see racism in creating “foreign enemies,” she adds the historical necessity of WAMM’s expanding mission. “When[anti-war groups] say you’re anti-racism, THAT’s when you come under attack. It was when Dr. King spoke about poverty, racism and militarism, interconnecting them—THAT’s when he was killed. But, we have to pull together across color lines working on this TOGETHER as equal human beings.”

“We need everyone to flower to achieve a just and peaceful world,” says Penny Ives, European-Descent Group member, which offers support and accountability for white people’s anti-racism internal process and activism, which she asserts are equally needed. “The world is so deprived when some people are shut out of the picture and marginalized. It’s wasteful of human intelligence and creativity.”
Ives recognizes that white people experience difficult feelings and “make mistakes” when confronting racism. It can feel easier to deal with people of color in countries threatened by American militarism, than homegrown oppressions. “But, we can’t change things overseas if we can’t change things here.”

“If we start looking at our common humanity, uniting around poverty, racism and militarism—THAT’s a force to be reckoned with.” Sankofa sums up the aim of WAMM’s project: “Gandhi, King and others called it the ‘love-force,’ dismantling systems of oppression and having heart-to-heart connections.”