ACTIVIST PROFILE
To mark the upcoming NATO summit to be held in May 2012 in Chicago and the simultaneous G8 summit to be held in Camp David, Maryland, War Resisters League and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance are releasing a new popular education resource.
This participatory workshop explores:
*The story of NATO and G8: who makes them up, what they do, and how they have grown over time;
*How NATO and G8 have worked together to profit from and control most areas of the world, especially the Global South;
*How the countries that control NATO/G8 have imposed an economic and/or military agenda on the people of Afghanistan, Libya, Greece, Iraq and other countries throughout the world, including the U.S.;
*How specific banks central to NATO/G8 countries’ economic policies profit from militarism;
*How struggles against economic austerity, war and militarism are connected across the globe; and
*What we can do make the connections for our networks and communities between global and local struggles for justice.
Now Available!
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Organize This!
A 1955-2011 Retrospective
War Resisters League
2012 Peace Calendar
Edited by Liz Roberts
Foreword by Noam Chomsky
Afterword by Wendy Schwartz
The War Resisters League's famous "pie chart" flyer analyzes the Federal Fiscal Year 2013 Budget (released in February 2012). Perfect for Tax Day!
Each year, War Resisters League analyzes federal funds outlays as presented in detailed tables in "Analytical Perspectives" of the Budget of the United States Government. Our analysis is based on federal funds, which do not include trust funds -- such as Social Security -- that are raised separately from income taxes for specific purposes. What you pay (or don't pay) by April 15, 2012 goes to the federal funds portion of the budget.
by Matt Meyer
From Waging Nonviolence
One hundred years after the birth of human rights icon Bayard Rustin, his complicated legacy pushes us to analyze our own complicated times. Vilified in the 1950s for his open homosexuality and again in the 1960s for “selling out” the radical black liberation movement, Rustin’s own history has been recently rescued by the books and movie correctly extolling his incredible gifts as a grassroots organizer, a charismatic orator and a visionary thinker. As preparations proceed for the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (of which Rustin was the chief architect), and the dreams and nightmares of a new generation are being forged against a backdrop of pepper spray and tear gas, it is time to take a deeper look at the relationship between the movements for peace and for justice — movements which are no more “integrated” now than they were 50 years ago.
Where's WIN? On the way!
We are in the final production stages of a special "double" fall/winter issue covering nonviolence and anti-oppression at Occupy Wall Street, Iraqi civil resistance at the "end" of the U.S. occupation, and radical reviews of books and films you'll want to track down.
If you hurry, you may be able to subscribe in time to receive this very special issue.
While you're waiting, visit WIN's Facebook page for updates as Chicago activists gear up to counter the NATO and G8 summits.
As thousands will converge in Chicago during the international summits of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Group of 8 (G8) this spring, WRL and a group of organizations committed to ending U.S. militarism and its maintenance of economic injustice globally are looking to you and to your organizing networks to help us create and shape our counter-NATO/G-8 summit conference on May 18 & 19 in Chicago.
For information about the counter-summit, including workshop proposal forms, registration forms, and an updated list of plenary speakers, check out the Network for a NATO-Free Future website at www.natofreefuture.org
To connect with groups organizing on-the-ground in Chicago, contact our WRL-Chicago Local.
For more info on WRL at the NATO/G8 summits, check out the NATO/G8 page on our website!
January 25 marked one year since the beginning of the Egyptian revolution. One year after the fall of the Mubarak regime, the Egyptian people are still in the streets, calling for an end to the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) who took power after they nonviolently toppled their dictator. What can people in the U.S. do? Tear gas made in the U.S. by Combined Systems Inc. based in Jamestown, PA, has been shipped to Egypt (among other countries) and used against Egyptian protesters, resulting in many protester deaths and injuries.
War Resisters League in coordination with the Global Justice Working Group of Occupy Wall Street, Adalah-NY, and others has been working to build partnerships with groups who are organizing against U.S. support for the manufacture, sale, and purchase of tear gas, as well as U.S.-based groups focused on the militarization of the police here at home.
Check out this comic written by Ethan Heitner and Greg Horwitch about the business of tear gas.
For more information about U.S. support for the use and manufacture of tear gas, check out this report by written by members of Adalah-NY and reposted to the WRL blog.
On Wednesday, November 30th, War Resisters League joined with Occupy Wall Street activists and United for Peace and Justice for a protest at the Aerospace and Defense Finance Conference, a meeting in which Department of Defense officials met with the CEOs of 30 military contractors, including reps from three of the top five defense contractors: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon. As the U.S. government spends roughly $400 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars each year on weapons systems and military contracts, all of that money goes to the military industry, which pays for two lobbyists for every member of Congress.
So what are DOD officicals doing at an investment conference? They were letting the military industrial complex know that during tough economic times in the U.S., they had nothing to worry about--the 1% will keep making profits. Seventeen WRL and Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested for taking part in a civil disobedience action to attempt to block the front doors of the conference center. Check out the coverage on New York 1 and NBC and this video footage of the action taken by an OWS activist.
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The War Resisters League is the oldest secular pacifist organization in the United States. Since 1923, WRL has been nonviolently resisting war at home and abroad. The police have been spying on WRL in many forms and for many years. If they had been listening, they would have heard concerned people coming together to stand with those directly impacted by US foreign policy.
Calling all social justice videographers! The Network for a NATO-free Future (see member organizations below) is helping put together a counter-summit to the G8 and NATO summits happening this May in Chicago. To help give a U.S.-based community organizers and local activists an idea about what NATO is, its role in the world, and its connection to the global economy (as repped by the G8) to help mobilize people to come to Chicago, we are asking for a brief and exciting video made by you.
For the second time in less than six months, the US Air Force has scheduled a test launch of a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile on a highly inappropriate date. Last year, they scheduled a test of the US' land-based thermonuclear warhead delivery vehicle on September 21. That's just any old day on the calendar, just like most of the other 364 days, right? Wrong. It's the International Day of Peace, recognized by the UN General Assembly as a day for "commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples."
Unemployment, foreclosures, businesses closing, millions hungry, the sick who cannot afford a doctor--this is what we have now, and for our children.
The economic disaster comes from greed and lust for power. All of us are susceptible to those feelings, but those with money and power have almost no restraints. The investment bankers with their fancy ways of making money through lies, the mortgage brokers who lied their way to wealth, none of them are going to jail.
As 2011 gives way to 2012, people’s movements for justice are met with unprecedented global militarization. From Oakland to Egypt, people are demanding democracy and an equitable distribution of wealth while attacked with tear gas and pepper spray, rubber bullets and live ammunition.
Contrary to popular opinion, active-duty members of the military do retain some of their constitutional rights. While there are some military-specific restrictions on these rights, most protest actions are in fact legal.
During this revolutionary moment, we thought it would be wise to keep our nonviolence training resources front and center. Click the link below for a 4-5+ hour sample agenda for a nonviolent action training.
WRL field organizer Ali Issa gets in to the whys and hows of the new South Asia Solidarity Initative/WRL curriculum with Sonali Kolhatkar on her powerful radio show 'Uprising.'
On the day before the 10-year commemoration of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, hundreds of activists who have been working to build up nonviolent resistance to U.S.-led war and occupation and U.S. government support for corporate control over our economy will take to the street. On Oct 6, they will begin a massive occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C.
Click below to read the statement issued by the staff and board of WRL ten years ago, on September 11, 2001. Tragically, it is still appropriate today, and we issue it again in memory of the lives lost on that day and the lives lost since across the world.
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist have established a legal defense fund for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking intelligence documents to WikiLeaks. If convicted of the charges against him, he faces up to 52 years in prison...
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This participatory workshop explores: *The story of NATO and G8: who makes them up, what they do, and how they have grown over time; *How NATO and G8 have worked together to profit from and control most areas of the world, especially the Global South; *How the countries that control NATO/G8 have imposed an economic and/or military agenda on the people of Afghanistan, Libya, Greece, Iraq and other countries throughout the world, including the U.S.; *How specific banks central to NATO/G8 countries’ economic policies profit from militarism; *How struggles against economic austerity, war and militarism are connected across the globe; and *What we can do make the connections for our networks and communities between global and local struggles for justice.
by Matt Meyer From Waging Nonviolence
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The War Resisters League is the oldest secular pacifist organization in the United States. Since 1923, WRL has been nonviolently resisting war at home and abroad. The police have been spying on WRL in many forms and for many years. If they had been listening, they would have heard concerned people coming together to stand with those directly impacted by US foreign policy.
Calling all social justice videographers! The Network for a NATO-free Future (see member organizations below) is helping put together a counter-summit to the G8 and NATO summits happening this May in Chicago. To help give a U.S.-based community organizers and local activists an idea about what NATO is, its role in the world, and its connection to the global economy (as repped by the G8) to help mobilize people to come to Chicago, we are asking for a brief and exciting video made by you.
For the second time in less than six months, the US Air Force has scheduled a test launch of a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile on a highly inappropriate date. Last year, they scheduled a test of the US' land-based thermonuclear warhead delivery vehicle on September 21. That's just any old day on the calendar, just like most of the other 364 days, right? Wrong. It's the International Day of Peace, recognized by the UN General Assembly as a day for "commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples."
Unemployment, foreclosures, businesses closing, millions hungry, the sick who cannot afford a doctor--this is what we have now, and for our children.
The economic disaster comes from greed and lust for power. All of us are susceptible to those feelings, but those with money and power have almost no restraints. The investment bankers with their fancy ways of making money through lies, the mortgage brokers who lied their way to wealth, none of them are going to jail.
As 2011 gives way to 2012, people’s movements for justice are met with unprecedented global militarization. From Oakland to Egypt, people are demanding democracy and an equitable distribution of wealth while attacked with tear gas and pepper spray, rubber bullets and live ammunition.
Contrary to popular opinion, active-duty members of the military do retain some of their constitutional rights. While there are some military-specific restrictions on these rights, most protest actions are in fact legal.
During this revolutionary moment, we thought it would be wise to keep our nonviolence training resources front and center. Click the link below for a 4-5+ hour sample agenda for a nonviolent action training.
WRL field organizer Ali Issa gets in to the whys and hows of the new South Asia Solidarity Initative/WRL curriculum with Sonali Kolhatkar on her powerful radio show 'Uprising.'
On the day before the 10-year commemoration of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, hundreds of activists who have been working to build up nonviolent resistance to U.S.-led war and occupation and U.S. government support for corporate control over our economy will take to the street. On Oct 6, they will begin a massive occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C.
Click below to read the statement issued by the staff and board of WRL ten years ago, on September 11, 2001. Tragically, it is still appropriate today, and we issue it again in memory of the lives lost on that day and the lives lost since across the world.
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist have established a legal defense fund for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking intelligence documents to WikiLeaks. If convicted of the charges against him, he faces up to 52 years in prison...
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