War's racial edge: communities of color don't want Bush's war. How will we turn the peace sentiment into a movement against militarism and racial oppression at home and abroad? (To the Point).

In the fall of 1990, as the U.S. amassed troops in the Persian Gulf, preparing for what was to become the Gulf War, a small community organization in Providence, Rhode Island began a discussion that led it to rake its first public position against the war. The organization was Direct Action for Rights & Equality (DARE), and I was a youth organizer with the group at the time.

What led DARE to take an anti-war position then and why, 12 years later, DARE has come out strongly against the current threat of war in Iraq, help illustrate the challenges and significance for communities of color that are increasingly compelled to engage the debate over war and peace today.

Taking a Stand in 1991

Mark Toney, currently the executive director of the Center for Third World Organizing, was director of DARE at the time of the Gulf War.

"I had to be open-minded about our members' views on the war," says Toney of the internal debates and one-on-one discussions the organization went through to develop a position on the war. "Up until that time, war had just never come up as a topic. We focused on local issues."

It was rare at the time for a direct action community organization like DARE to take a stand against the war. Many organizations with a grassroots base come from a tradition, largely associated with Saul Alinsky, that says organizations should avoid issues that might divide their membership and instead focus on the "bread-and-butter" issues facing low-income communities. Since the early 1990s, there has a been a healthy debate in organizations, particularly through forums held by the National Organizers Alliance, and because of work by the Applied Research Center and the Center for Third World Organizing. These groups argued that issues of gender, sexuality, race, and politics are often left off the agenda in traditional community organizations. Today, many organizations, especially in communities of color, have ventured into campaigns on police brutality and immigrant rights as well as engaged in internal political education, all taboos in traditional organizing models.

In 1991, DARE was an innovator. Like many other organizations in communities of color and low-income communities, DARE at first found it difficult for their members to embrace issues that are not immediately apparent to be "their own." Often, people have military members in their families, urgent economic or health crises that take center stage. Also, while many in the community might not support war, they often feel unable to affect its outcome. Organizing is partly a process of bringing people together to exercise their own power. Welfare mothers learn in the course of a local victory that they have some power over their own lives. But convincing people they can affect foreign policy far away in Washington is something else altogether.

At DARE, it helped that a few key leaders in the organization had direct experiences with the effects of war on their families. Mattie Smith, a DARE co-founder who was the chair of the organization at the time, surprised Toney with her anti-war stance. Smith's opposition to the war was very personal. Her brother had died from skin cancer resulting from his experience in World War II. "Having someone with such leadership who had a personal passion against the war had a big impact on the members," says Toney.

Another community leader, Providence city councilwoman and DARE member, Balbina Young, stood up during a community forum and declared that if her son joined the military, she would break his legs herself. These leaders and a number of Muslim members of DARE helped bring the organization--used to raising hell in the fight for city services--to the fight for peace.

DARE'S history is actually typical of many grassroots organizations in communities of color around the country. Founded in 1984, it is a multiracial membership organization made up mostly of black and Latino low-income families. DARE's earliest and ongoing campaigns were fights for city services and economic rights. Being rooted in communities of color of course led DARE to address racial issues. The organization has over the years waged campaigns against police brutality, and for bilingual education and racial justice in education. Up until the Gulf War, DARE had for the most part been an organization focused on the immediate bread-and-butter issues facing its members and constituents. DARE's ability to negotiate the challenges and pressure surrounding taking such an openly political stand back then has put the organization on firmer footing to take on the current war debate.

Ten years after the Gulf War, many more grassroots organizations in communities of color are also taking stands against the Bush administration's so-called "war on terrorism." In his work with organizers around the country, Toney has observed many more community and labor groups publicly condemning the war today than they did a decade ago--and this is before the war in Iraq has even begun. Why are people of color and their organizations increasingly speaking up against war and potentially risking funding sources, legitimacy, and even security? Are organizations moving beyond defining an agenda based on self-interest? Or does the self-interest of communities of color more clearly include issues of foreign policy and war in Bush's "war on terrorism"?

September 11 Changes the Context

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, it became immediately clear that people of color would suffer the consequences of a dramatic shift in foreign and domestic policy. The "war on terrorism" is not just a war in the classical sense, but a set of domestic, foreign, and military policies purportedly aimed at curbing terrorism against the U.S. and its interests worldwide. People of color in the U.S are likely to bear the brunt of many of these policies.

The war puts a bind on spending for domestic programs that benefit low-income people and people of color. Any agenda for living wages, affordable housing, or well-funded schools will certainly be hampered by the massive Bush war budget. This was one of the major reasons DARE came out against the war in 1991. The fight for peace is in the objective interests of any community or constituency that makes demands on government institutions for basic needs and services. But in addition to that, organizers tap into communities' understanding and experience of institutional oppression. People of color have a first-hand experience of U.S. racism and are often mote likely to make the connections between foreign policy and racism at home. Additionally, many immigrants come from countries that were immediately impacted by U.S. imperialism and help make linkages between domestic and global agendas.

The new war on terrorism has several important differences from the Gulf War. While the negative impact of the war on immigrant communities and the acute attack on civil liberties was true in 1991, both issues stand out more starkly today.

Immigration policy was radically changed in the wake of September 11, further restricting migration and immigrant rights, particularly for Arabs, Muslims, and Southeast Asians. Immigrants of various national origins were targeted for questioning, detentions, and deportations. All of this is having a devastating economic and social effect on immigrant communities.

One unique aspect of the war on terrorism is that "Bush and company" have also unleashed an unprecedented campaign of domestic surveillance, spying, and integration of police institutions. All of this adds up to bigger coffers for the prison industrial complex and increased jeopardy for people of color. Muslim organizations around the country were targeted for surveillance and harassment. Just weeks before the massive Washington demonstrations on April 20, 2002, a number of Muslim organizations were raided in the D.C. area. Muslim philanthropies and non-profits were shut down, and feat struck Arab and Muslim communities. In this climate, one would imagine reduced involvement in the peace movement. In some ways, the opposite has happened. The April 20 demonstrations ended up being the largest participation of Muslim people in a political event ever in U.S. history, according to many observers--which is no small fact coming just months after September 11.

The traditional peace movement, which is largely white, has not always been a welcome place for people of color to participate or to share their issues. Racial Justice 911 (RJ911) and other peace organizations for people of color are not so much in opposition to the mainstream peace groups, but exist as an alternative for people of color. DARE leaders say they joined RJ911 because it is a network committed to racial justice as well as peace and because it defines war as including "a wide range of international acts of aggression: economic sanctions, debt, and environmental destruction. It also refers to the low-intensity warfare against people of color communities within the United States (particularly against immigrants, the poor, youth, and women), and increased military spending at the expense of domestic human need."

Taking a Stand in 2001

Organizations coming out against the war also have a number of ways to engage the issue locally and internally. Sara Mersha, the current director of DARE, says that new discussions about the threat of war began immediately after the September 11 attacks. "We were all watching TV, and people had very different reactions at first." Some worried about family members in military service, others were angry that their country had been invaded, and still others felt that war was imminent.

The general membership meeting scheduled for September 12 was transformed into a discussion of the terrorist attacks and the possibility of war. "There were, of course, feelings of sadness and fear," says Mersha. "But people felt that tragic events like this happen all over the world and nobody in the U.S. makes a big deal about it."

Some members voiced concerns that September 11 was being used for another agenda. This began a process that included internal meetings and political education, community forums, and one-on-one discussions. At one workshop, members were asked to write down the effects that war in Afghanistan would have on the organization and on the community. Then they wrote on the board what they were for and against. "They wrote down that they were for access to affordable housing, for jobs, for democratic control of institutions, and against U.S. military domination, and corporate subsidies," Mersha recalls. Out of this workshop, an organizational statement on the war was drafted and adopted at a general membership meeting.

But DARE'S opposition to the war on terrorism was not just a rehashing of its stand in 1991. During the 1990s, DARE had gone from being an organization with mostly black and white members to being truly multiracial, with Southeast Asian and Latino members. Their expanded constituency included many members from the Dominican Republic who had direct experience with U.S. military occupation and had been involved in movements in their home country with a sophisticated analysis of imperialism.

It also helped that DARE had begun a "leadership institute" in the late '90s offering workshops on history, politics, and skills development--so many members were already familiar with concepts of structural racism, colonialism, and war long before September 11.

Developing members' understanding of the issues surrounding the war and raking an official stance against the war has allowed DARE to make clearer connections between foreign policy and domestic issues. It also gives DARE members and staff a clearer mandate to speak out on the war. It helped DARE make decisions to work on campaigns against immigration restrictions, for a livable wage as a solution to economic crisis and against increased shifting of funds toward police, prisons, and "anti-terrorism."

Ways Forward

The weekend of January 16, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco to oppose the war and honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was no accident that protest organizers chose King's legacy to represent their cause. King took a stand against the U.S. war in Vietnam toward the end of his life and connected the fight for peace with the fight for social, economic, and racial justice. Speaking from the stage at the D.C. demonstration, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. recalled a conversation in which King told him that the two critical issues of the day for black people were the war in Vietnam and civil rights. Said Jackson, "Today we have come full circle."

This war, perhaps more than any other, has made apparent the connections between the war at home and the war abroad, the connections between the bombing of Kabul and the cutting of school budgets. And, despite the Bush administration's attempts to prove that the war on terrorism is not a war on Arabs or Muslims, their current bellicose policies make clearer than ever the racist edge of U.S. foreign policy.

An August 2002 Gallup Poll showed blacks opposing the war in Iraq by 53 percent to 43 percent and other "nonwhites" by 48 percent to 45 percent--nearly the opposite of whites polled. But the mainstream peace movement and organizations of people of color who are against the war haven't been able to make their concerns heard in the broader public. The more grassroots organizations who can engage their members in a process similar to the one DARE has gone through, the more likely that the general peace sentiment in communities of color will turn into a real movement against the war at home and abroad. The more people of color stand up against the war, the greater the ability to fight back against racist and anti-immigrant policies at home. As Dr. King taught, the struggle for peace is unavoidably linked to the fight for racial, economic, and social justice at home.

Libero Delia Piana is the former editor of RaceFile, and a former senior researcher at the Applied Research Center.