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WRL National Committee Meets in New York

In the opening “go-round” of the National Committee meeting February 13-17 in New York City, 30 or so members of WRL’s leadership shared their histories with the League and talked about why they are part of it. This inventory of WRL’s strengths and contributions would be important throughout the weekend as we dealt with an issue that was sharply dividing the organization’s leadership.

At the last National Committee meeting, held in Asheville, NC, last August, after a difficult and often painful debate, the body decided to grant the request by the task force of its youth program, ROOTS, for autonomy and a “safe space” for their meetings and organizing work (NVA, Sept.-Oct. 2002). But the decision remained contentious, and some interpreted it to mean that ROOTS and its staff coordinator were not accountable to the staff or the Executive Committee. Others thought that was not the spirit of the NC’s August decision, and one of our tasks for the February meeting was to clarify this decision and reconcile misinterpretations and misunderstandings from last August. A portion of the staff and leadership had also come to believe that ROOTS was not adequately promoting nonviolence—especially in AWOL Magazine, which is co-sponsored and partly funded by WRL through ROOTS—and that ROOTS should be separated from WRL.

Some who felt that way therefore submitted and supported a proposal to the February meeting to make ROOTS a separate organization entirely, conceived as an elaboration of last August’s decision to grant the youth body autonomy in its meetings and process. After some discussion, however, the majority of the National Committee either concluded that ROOTS is promoting nonviolence or thought that there needed to be a much deeper discussion before effecting such a drastic measure as cutting out WRL’s current youth work, which is focused primarily on poor and working youth and young people of color.

The proposal to separate ROOTS was defeated, and the National Committee passed a “Proposal for Reconciliation” that affirmed the League’s historic commitment to nonviolence; acknowledged that “in a society characterized by the systematic misallocation of power and privilege by race, white privilege acts to maintain itself in any predominantly white group regardless of whether or not individuals within that group are themselves bigots; and that if we wish to end war, we need to both be more diverse and work with more diverse communities”; reaffirmed the decision to allow the ROOTS Task Force “to meet and deliberate autonomously” but at the same time reaffirmed the Task Force’s ultimate accountability to the League’s governing bodies; and expressed a hope that that would “make the ROOTS program a functioning part of the organization as a whole and presumably bring some of its activists into the WRL leadership.”

Structural Change
Last summer’s meeting also agreed to begin a process of changing the structure of the organization, strengthening WRL’s ability to make and implement decisions and be an effective voice for nonviolence and resistance to war. A reconstituted Organizational Review Committee met between the summer and winter meetings to discuss structure proposals and how to frame discussion and decision making around a new structure for the League. The February meeting looked at four structure proposals that were submitted by individuals and groups and decided that the authors of the more detailed proposals should meet again before next July’s National Committee meeting to develop a single proposal for a new structure.

Much of the discussion about more autonomy for ROOTS and the ROOTS program overall hinged on different perceptions of the relationship between antiwar work and antiracism and different answers to the question of how antiracist perspectives can and should be integrated into our antiwar work. There were strong feelings on every side. At an informal discussion on the Friday night of the meeting, some of us were able to discuss racism and white privilege; staff and leadership were able to challenge each other, ask tough questions and voice concerns about these issues. This healthy and frank discussion was not without strong emotions, but it was a step in the right direction that these issues were addressed out of formal meetings. While no conclusions were drawn from the conversation, there seemed to be substantial agreement that the League must integrate antiracism and antiwar work, just as it learned to view the struggle for women’s equality as part of resistance to war. For many this discussion also helped clarify the importance of the League’s youth work and outreach to young people of color.

While the NC was meeting the morning of February 15, we were well represented at the start of the mammoth World Says No to War rally (see p. 3). Our new Brooklyn/Manhattan chapter organized marchers under the WRL banner, and our new Interim Disarmament Coordinator Brad Simpson played a Herculean role on the United for Peace and Justice Program Committee that staged the event. That afternoon, the National Committee took a four-hour break to participate in the rally and (un-permitted) march. While most of us were not early or pushy enough to get anywhere near the speakers’ stage, we carried broken rifle signs made by San Francisco WRL activist Jim Haber and passed out thousands of “End War” tags and the new income tax pie chart flyers (see p. 24). Then we got back to the meeting.

Even after the long hours of meetings, the critically important work of strengthening WRL internally is just beginning. But it must be done in tandem with the external and historic work of the League: resisting all war. There is a lot to do on both fronts.

—Frida Berrigan

Frida Berrigan is a member of WRL’s Executive Committee, the New York-based portion of the National Committee that constitutes the League’s highest decision-making body and held its winter 2003 meeting in February in New York City.

Epilogue: As Frida notes above, there were strong feelings around the issues raised at the National Committee meeting—so strong that, to the regret of all of the staff and leadership of the organization, David McReynolds decided to resign from the Executive Committee and other posts in the League. His discussion of his feelings and his resignation from those posts is printed below. Given the intensity of opinions, WRL and this magazine welcome more than ever comments from readers and members.

—The Editors

My Resignation: Notes from an Old Bolshevik

When Stalin staged the infamous Moscow Trials in the 1930s (captured well in Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon), the world wondered why men who had been genuine leaders of the October Revolution would confess to crimes they could not possibly have committed.

The answer was that the men, innocent as they were of the charges, hoped the Soviet Revolution might somehow “right itself,” while if they protested their innocence it would only serve the forces of the counter-revolution. So they confessed in open court, and were shot.

I find myself in that situation—though without the risk of being shot—with only about 800 words permitted to explain why I have resigned from all posts in the War Resisters League and from the editorial board of the Nonviolent Activist (though I remain a member of WRL). Silence at this time is not honest. A time for open discussion has arrived, and I hope my resignation will help spark it.

The recent National Committee meeting of the League saw a majority vote to keep ROOTS as part of the overall program of the League, even though some of the material ROOTS puts out is clearly not pacifist (in fact, almost none of it is). The majority set the WRL on a course which I think, unless reversed, will result in the end of the organization. That course was to shift our primary focus from being a peace and disarmament organization working to support all those who in conscience could not cooperate with war and to support all efforts to demilitarize our society, to a “broader focus” in which the League would be not only an “antiwar” organization, but also an “anti-racist organization.”

In one sense we have always been “anti-racist”—but our focus has been social change through nonviolence, as we struggled against war and the causes of war. War has many causes: economic, patriarchy, ideology, nationalism, and sometimes—though not as often as the “politically correct caucus” thinks—racism. We have not been primarily an “anti-racist” organization, any more than the NAACP could be expected to be primarily a “disarmament” organization.

WRL is drifting. With the resignation of Melissa Jameson as Office Director (because the National Committee refused to give her any real authority to direct), with the triumph of a “politically correct caucus” which, most of the time, does nothing for WRL but snipe at it, we lack responsible leadership. All organizations change, some die. In my time I have seen CORE (Congress of Racial Equality, set up by FOR in the 1940s) shift from a cutting-edge group using nonviolence to advance integration to a kind of one-man show run by the reactionary Roy Innis. I have seen Clergy and Laity Concerned, once a voice for peace and social change, vanish after it capitulated to its own “politically correct” group which insisted that if CALC was serious about racism it had to turn over a majority of its board to members of color. It did so, the office moved South, the agenda changed, the finances dried up, and CALC died.

I can’t be a party to the dilution of WRL’s clarity on nonviolence, or to the extraordinary attacks on our history from some members of the National Committee and the ROOTS Task Force, who see our entire history as one of racism—despite the role of WRL, through the work of Bayard Rustin, the heroism of Jim Peck, beaten nearly to death in the Freedom Rides, of Norma Becker who taught in the Freedom Schools in the South, of Igal Roodenko, Wally Nelson, George Houser—all those who are part of our history which sought to affirm a common humanity transcending black and white.

The primitive discussions on “racism” that did occur during the recent NC sounded more like material for a David Mamet play—discussions in which virtually any question was dismissed by charges that the question itself was racist. I saw a “cult” attitude supplant once thoughtful discussions. Space here is too limited to begin to outline the problems in detail. I can be reached at home, 60 East Fourth St., #11, New York City 10003; by phone, (212)674-7268; and by e-mail, davidmcr@aol.com. I hope to write my own “reflections on racism” and will be happy to send that to whoever asks for a copy (don’t send stamps—I haven’t written it and am notorious for being filled with good intentions and poor performance). I hope there can be, in the near future, a meeting of WRL members and friends in the New York City area to discuss what has happened and what might be done.

For someone who worked for WRL for 39 years, and has been a member for more than 50, who has been greatly honored by the League, this step is taken with enormous personal pain, a feeling of stepping out of my role in life. But part of that role has been the willingness to say when I thought something had gone terribly wrong. That, I believe, has happened within WRL.

—David McReynolds

David McReynolds was on the staff of the WRL National Office from 1960 to 1999 and was serving on the League’s Executive Committee until he resigned after the February National Committee meeting. All the League committees from which he has resigned have asked him to reconsider or intend to ask him to do so.

Staff News

In the press of business, we inexplicably failed to announce in our last issue the hiring of Brad Simpson as Interim Disarmament Coordinator. Brad spent his first month or so on staff representing WRL in the United for Peace & Justice Coalition (along with WRL West’s Jim Haber, who had represented the League in the coalition before Brad started working here) and doing the work on the huge February 15 antiwar mobilization aptly described on the previous page as Herculean. Post 2-15, he’s been working on promoting this year’s edition of our famous “pie chart” and creating a directory of nonviolence trainers across the country, along with, of course, facilitating the work of our Disarmament Task Force.

Now the bad news: To the regret of the staff and National and Executive Committees, National Office Director Melissa Jameson has resigned from her job here. To our relief, she is giving us several months to try to replace her and will most likely be here through June.