From War, to Peace and Justice

By Damu Smith
Special to SeeingBlack.com

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These are perilous times. The Bush administration is using its unbridled power to threaten and bully nations around the world with unmatched military might, to assault our civil liberties and civil rights, and to eviscerate funding and resources for essential human needs, including affordable housing, health care, education, mass transit, childcare, food, security, jobs and environmental protection.

The administration of George W. Bush includes rightwing ideologues and war hawks whose arrogance and recklessness, I believe, makes this administration one of the most dangerous governments ever assembled in the history of the United States. Bush and his crew believe in political unilateralism (a.k.a, go-it-alone-ism). They believe in hegemony (imperial domination). And, as we all know by now, they believe in the so-called preemptive military strike (let me get you before you get me, if I kind of think you might get me) in conducting foreign policy.

They want to strip innocent citizens and non-citizens of fundamental rights and liberties and weaken the Constitution under the guise of defeating terrorism. They want poor, working class and middle income Americans and their families to eke out a survivalist existence in this country. They oppose genuine affirmative action and fundamental civil rights. And this opposition amounts to a powerful support for institutional racism.

The Bush administration has constructed the Super Warfare State (SWS) that is much more deadly than the so-called “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) that still have not been found in Iraq. The Bush SWS, built on the backs of working people, the poor and people of color, favors arms manufacturers and corporate thieves in unprecedented ways. These multinational corporate giants plunder the world's natural and strategic resources. They economically exploit poor people, at plants and in fields around the world, by paying slave wages and by providing unsafe and life-threatening working conditions.

While millions of people in the less industrialized nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific Islands and the Caribbean suffer and die from poverty, hunger, disease and polluted environments—and children and families in the U.S. suffer from malnutrition, hunger, poverty and homelessness—corporations and the rich get protection from the courts and the military. Meanwhile, the conservative dominated Federal Communications Commission has made it possible for the nation's media conglomerates to further expand their already massive monopolization and control of what we see, hear and read.

There has been an increase in police killings and brutality, racial profiling and the railroading of poor youth into our nation's prisons and death chambers. We are in a crisis of profound severity in the United States and the world as war and violence spin out of control in the Middle East and other global hotspots and the policies and practices of the current U.S. government escalate and continue unabated.

But these dangerous times must be made our time. It is time for the social justice, democracy and peace movements in this country to unite. We must forge a broad-based multiracial, multisector, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-militarist and pro-people movement. Our goal is to build political and economic power that can organize against and defeat the dangerous policies of the current regime in Washington. We must find ways to unite around common interests to radically improve the living conditions of children, families and workers; to fight for peace and justice and to expand democratic rights. In November 2004 we must educate, register and turn out millions of voters to remove the Bush regime from office, as a major step towards economically and politically democratizing the U.S. and the world.

Our movement must be local, national and international. The Bush policies and the anti-people policies of multinational corporations and international finance institutions are global in reach. Therefore, we must build cooperative relationships with people around the world to defeat the policies of the powerful few.

The Black community must play a central role in leading and organizing a national and global strategy to defeat negative corporate policies and work for justice and peace in the U.S. and abroad. We must reject the lies and rationale invented to send young men and women to fight and die in Iraq, and to slaughter innocent men, women and children in the quest for oil and empire. We must oppose U.S. economic and military assistance to sustain Israel's brutal, illegal and unjust occupation of Palestine, as well as U.S. support for repressive, undemocratic and despotic regimes all around the world.

We must the reject the actions of Black people like Colin Powell, Michael Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas and others who are helping to implement undemocratic policies against the people of this nation and around the world. We must never invite them to our meetings and conventions, give them "image awards", or praise them simply because they have advanced degrees and access to power. There cannot be praise and honor bestowed upon Black people who use their education and power to help racist corporate America and oppressive regimes like the Bush administration.

We need to build a powerful movement that will fiercely oppose the Super Warfare State and benefit us all with peace and justice today and a future for our children.

Damu Smith is the founder of Black Voices for Peace and executive director of the National Black Environmental Justice Network.

-- July 3, 2003

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