Ali and Tara here. We wanted to let you know about a season of change for War Resisters League, as we’ve transitioned out of our staff roles as National Organizers and into non-staff WRL members like you!
We’re writing today to ask for your support as we search for a new Organizing Team to carry on the work we’ve built at WRL. Building on the legacies of former WRL organizers, our main project while on staff was to create strategic, intersectional wins for the antiwar movement by building WRL’s base and centering those most impacted by war and militarism.
We carried this work out in a variety of ways. We focused on resisting forms of domestic militarism that Black communities have been resisting for decades through our No SWAT Zone campaign, with the specific goal of making connections between the forces that drive warmaking internationally with those that drive militarization domestically. We built the No SWAT Zone campaign out in multiple cities, from Chicago to Syracuse, and developed awesome counter-recruitment materials and curricula for the movement. We seeded the Stop Urban Shield coalition that kicked the training first out of Oakland, and now out of the Bay Area all together. We strengthened WRL’s internationalist antiwar organizing by connecting with folks like Iraqi activist Jannat Alghezzi, Palestinian freedom fighter Rasmea Odeh, and Yemeni journalist Afrah Nasser, as well as sending a group of cross-diaspora SWANA activists to Greece to build with refugee leadership there.
While the two of us are moving on, there is so much work that was seeded during our time that has yet to blossom. This year, WRL is organizing an antiwar strategy panel with diaspora leadership at the upcoming Allied Media Conference. We’re bringing a crew to the School of the Americas Watch Border Encuentro this Fall, and are organizing an antimilitarist political education school for young activists in Chicago this Winter. With exciting new programs like our Resisting Airwars campaign, WRL is looking for a fresh new Organizing Team to amplify our power, digitally and in the streets!
We’re looking for organizing leadership with connections to communities experiencing militarism here and abroad, a passion for radical nonviolence, and sharp campaign development skills to continue building the antiwar movement we need. Will you help WRL find a new Organizing power team to expand our antimilitarist visions?
In Solidarity,
Ali Issa Tara Tabassi
