War & Peace

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At this historical juncture, the world is at a very dangerous point. The Doomsday Clock showing the risk of nuclear destruction of the world/humanity is now at 2 minutes to midnight. This is particularly meaningful because people who set the clock, atomic scientists, are well aware of the danger to the world. The US is associated with most of this danger. It has the biggest accumulation of wealth in the hands of individuals, yet according to the recent UN report, 40 million Americans live in poverty. The US has counter-terrorism activities in 76 countries, contributes to the humanitarian crises in Yemen and Palestine, has nearly 1000 foreign military bases around the world, and is ignoring the efforts of 122 countries in the UN to ban nuclear weapons.
Yet, there are hopeful signs: Moral Mondays/Poor Peoples Movement; #meToo; #TimesUp; high school youths from Parkland stopping the NRA; the Families Belong Together movement. There is resistance rising up all over the US and the world. Along with the greatest repression there is the greatest resistance at the present time. But we need to be educated, to know which side we are on, to stand up. Women and children are most oppressed, and men, particularly white men have been oppressive for hundreds of years.
Women for Racial and Economic Equality (WREE) was a progressive women’s peace activist organization from 1975 to 1995 that approached peace through the lens of racial and class issues. The Women’s Commission of the Movement for People’s Democracy is facilitating the revival of WREE as a vital, national organization. The panel will discuss the issues that the revived WREE will address, as well as suggesting appropriate activism in line with its vision of “Women leading the human race in a powerful movement in our communities to advocate for social and economic equality in collaboration with other women’s peace/labor organizations”. Panel members will discuss how WREE can address the issues of women in the workforce, racism, sexism, and world peace.

Discussion will focus on women’s role in saving humanity, and men, from their own stupidity and arrogant behavior. A principal source about WREE is Harriet Hyman Alonso’s book, Peace As a Women’s Issue. As noted in the book, this is a class and race issue, not a man/woman issue. This class war divides us by race, gender, gender orientation, ethnicity, religion, nationality to distract us from focusing on the struggle as a class issue. WREE was destroyed because among all of the women’ organizations, it had more class consciousness than others. We want all to join in this struggle and join with WREE.

In light of the fate of the Syrian Revolution, which has been crushed by the genocide carried out by Bashar al-Assad together with his Russian, Iranian, and Lebanese allies, there has debate in the global left about the meanings of imperialism and anti-imperialism, and the political implications these carry. Many authoritarians claiming leftism cross-over with the white-supremacist right's open support for the Assad Regime by denying its crimes and overlooking the imperialist role played by Russia and Iran in Syria, focusing exclusively on the U.S.'s supposed opposition to Assad's rule. This tendency is a worrisome development, suggestive as it is of a red-brown alliance (or axis) that is not consistently anti-imperialist but rather, only opposed to U.S. Imperialism. It also fails analytically to see how the U.S. has increasingly accommodated Assad's counter-revolution.

In contrast to such approaches, participants on this panel will present anti-authoritarian class analyses of militarism and imperialism. Panelists will discuss the red-brown alliance (or axis) as recalling the “Holy Alliance” and fascism; the concept and reality of imperialism in the Middle East; the current wave of popular protests in Iran; left and right interpretations of geopolitics and political geography both historically and today; the lessons of the Bosnian genocide; and the tragedy of the Syrian Revolution.