Foresight 2020: December of Dissent

Friends,

They say hindsight is 2020. As we finish up the end of the decade, we say: don’t look back without looking forward. When we look ahead to 2020 and beyond we see struggle, promise, hope, and victory for self determination, from Gaza to Santiago to Hong Kong to Kafranbel to Baghdad.

When you zoom out over the past decade, you notice how more people in more places around the world have been rising up powerfully, consistently, and with a focused vision for self-determination and against settler colonialism and authoritarianism.

From the start of the decade: The Arab Spring in 2011 saw a movement shift against corruption, with weekly protests from towns like Kafranbel quickly setting the tone for cross-border communication against authoritarianism. Occupy Wall Street in 2011 gained grounds for an economy that serves people not banks. Black Lives Matter in 2014 made a powerful shift in public discourse on police brutality in the United States. From South Korea to South Dakota, 2016 gave us the Candlelight Revolution and the NoDAPL movement. In 2017, the work of Tarana Burke took off and women everywhere were saying #MeToo. In 2018 we saw the people of Armenia, Algeria, and Sudan successfully create enough pressure to have Sargsyan, Bouteflika, and Bashir resign. It’s also the same year we saw Palestinians begin the Great Return March, a march which has been ongoing every Friday since it started despite brutal and deadly repression from the IDF. And just this year in 2019, we saw the emergence of protests in October across Lebanon, Iraq, Chile, Haiti, Hong Kong, Catalonia, Georgia, with many reports of protestors learning tactics from each other and uplifting each other’s causes. When we look ahead to 2020, we see: continued cross-struggle communication, courage, hope, and victories. 

GOAL ANNOUNCEMENT: $30,000 TO RESIST WAR

This December we have an ambitious goal of raising $30,000 for WRL’s antimilitarist programs because we know how important it is to keep pushing our work forward. But, we’re totally grassroots funded so when we say we can’t do it without you, we really mean it.

Over the next few weeks, you will be hearing directly from the people we work with across the country to build capacity for people working at the frontlines resisting border militarization, building diaspora-indigenous solidarity, and students from our Demil School.

Since Giving Tuesday, 103 people have given $5,226 towards WRL’s work; that funds a weekend-long Demilitarist School or WRL’s Antimilitarist Events & Actions fund for a year -- that’s money that goes towards WRL supporting art builds, co-sponsoring, and pitching in support for events and actions organized by frontline defenders.

Can you support WRL’s movement-building work today by giving $15, $25, $60, or more?

We need to be honest and say the past decade has also shown us the great challenges we are against: rising fascism around the globe, and fascist creep among moderates and the left of center. Vicious disinformation campaigns whose successes include broadly labelling civilians as terrorists, and have influenced the way we speak about refugee resettlement and migrants in this country.

We need to be well-resourced to gain grounds against fascism in 2020. Can you donate today to make sure we have what we need in the fight?

In solidarity,

War Resisters League