United National Antiwar Coalition Action Plan

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Adopted by UNAC Conference May 8-10, 2015 Political Goals, Objectives & Mission The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) op­ poses all U.S. wars, whether they be in the form of direct military intervention with troops on the ground, priva­ tized death squad wars, drone wars on every continent, sanctions and embargo wars, U.S.-backed military coups, “humanitarian interventions,” the U.S.-backed and -fi­ nanced Israeli wars against the Palestinian people and the myriad of other modes of intervention and conquest that deny oppressed peoples the right to freedom and self-determination.

We demand an end to it all: the war machine, the weap­ ons of mass destruction, the trillions spent on advancing imperialist interests and the associated devastation per­ petrated on poor and working people the world over. We demand: U.S. Hands Off & Out Now—from the Middle East to Africa to Latin America to Iran, Ukraine & Be­ yond. Bring All the Troops Home Now & Disassemble Weapons of War! Trillions for Human Needs—Not One Penny for War!

UNAC similarly opposes the ongoing and deepening wars against poor and working people at home, including the militarization of the police; the racist mass-incarcer­ ation criminal “justice” system; the war-profiteering mil­ itary-industrial complex; the ever-privatized, for-profit and slave labor prison-industrial complex; the deepening racist attacks and mass deportation of immigrants; racist persecution of Muslim communities; vicious and virtu­ ally unpunished racist police murders of African-Ameri­ can, Latino and Native American peoples; massive everintensifying austerity—assaults on wages, massive cut­ backs of social services, massive student debt, unending tuition hikes, deterioration and re-segregation of public education—union busting; the oppression, exploitation and brutality waged against women; the government-pro­ moted homophobic attacks on the LGBT community; the fossil-fuel, war-induced global warming and associated looming climatic catastrophe; and the wholesale policestate-like surveillance measures that increasingly obliter­ ate civil and democratic rights. The U.S. needs a national urban policy that promotes sustainability of human life, rather than the profits of finance capital.

The U.S. wars abroad and the wars at home are insepa­ rable aspects of a society that requires the subordina­ tion of human needs to the private-profit interests of the bailed-out and enriched (at public expense) banks, corpo­ rations and multibillionaire elite. We hail the emergence of new anti-racist and working-class forces that have demonstrated vibrant leadership capacities, from Black Lives Matter and the myriad of other anti-racist fighters to the ever-resurgent Palestinian community mobilizations against the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, to the recent International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 work stoppage in solidarity with their Black and Brown sisters and brothers who have been the prime victims of rampant police brutality and murder.

Our method of struggle looks to the broad mass of work­ ing people and their allies as the primary agency of social change. The history of all social movement victories is a history of the unification of the working masses and op­ 10 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 2015 pressed to advance their own needs and interests. UNAC strives to advance the unity of the antiwar and social jus­ tice movements in united, independent, inclusive, and democratically planned mass actions to demonstrate the power of the working masses and achieve fundamental social and political change. We support a broad range of actions, including nonviolent direct action, lobbying, and petitioning, and we stand in solidarity with community resistance and rebellion against race and class oppression. UNAC-initiated actions • Oct. 4-10 National: UNAC will initiate and collabo­ rate with all interested organizations and groups in or­ ganizing a week of united and broadly sponsored local and regional activities (rallies, marches, teach-ins, vigils, etc.) to advance the above goals and objectives during the week of Oct. 4-10 and culminating on Saturday, Oct. 10. This time period corresponds to the beginning of the now 14-year-old U.S. war against Afghanistan, which with the U.S. wars in Iraq, Libya, and so many other countries have caused enormous suffering abroad while draining this country of the resources critically needed to address problems here at home In this effort we welcome the emerging and critical lay­ ers of youthful anti-racist activists who have served to re­ vitalize today’s social struggles and who will be planning campus and community-based actions in collaboration with UNAC. • UNAC tour to Cuba: UNAC will consider organizing a tour to Cuba to exchange ideas with Cuban and interna­ tional antiwar and social justice activists. • UNAC National Tour: UNAC will explore possibili­ ties of organizing a national tour of prominent antiwar and social justice leaders, as we did with Malalai Joya in 2013.

Actions endorsed by UNAC • May: UNAC offers full support to the Red Crescent Society of Iran sailing a rescue mission to Yemen to bring urgently needed supplies of medicine, rice and flour to the people of Yemen under siege and blockade by Saudi Ara­ bia and other Gulf countries and fully backed by the U.S. The ship’s crew of 50 men includes internationals from the U.S., France, and Germany. We demand that the ship be allowed to reach the desperate Yemeni population to deliver its supplies intact and that the ship and its crew are allowed to arrive safely. Any interference and/or violence would be a criminal act in violation of international law. • May 12, Orange, N.J.: UNAC calls for the reinstate­ ment and contract renewal of Marilyn Zuniga, the Orange, NJ teacher suspended from her third grade classroom at the behest of the Fraternal Order of Police for forward­ ing her students’ get well letters to Mumia Abu Jamal. We endorse and encourage efforts to this end, including a mobilization at the May 12 meeting of the Orange Board of Education. • May 13, Philadelphia: UNAC will support the program and mass rally to mark the 30th anniversary of the police bombing of MOVE. Sponsored by the MOVE organiza­ tion, which is still fighting for the release of the MOVE 9. http://onamove.com. • May 19, Detroit: UNAC endorses the Michigan Emer­ drone strikes. UNAC will also support further actions in the Ramstein/AFRICOM campaign in coordination with German activists. • May 30, New York City: March and rally to free Oscar Lopez Rivera, beginning his 34th year of imprisonment on that day for his participation in Puerto Rico’s indepen­ dence movement. May 30th Coalition to Free Oscar Lopez www.freeoscarnycmay30.org. • July 25, Newark, N.J.: Million People’s March Against Police Brutality, Racial Injustice & Economic Inequality. Sponsored by the People’s Organization for Progress. UNAC will endorse and support this mobilization. http:// njpop.org/wordpress/?p=1896. • September, Richmond, Va.: UNAC will support the lo­ cal call for a national presence in Richmond to demand the reclamation and memorialization of sites central to the U.S. slave trade. Sponsored by the Sacred Ground Histor­ ical Reclamation Project of the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality. http://wwwsacredgroundproject.net. • September, Cincinnati: UNAC supports the call for Justice for Palestinian-American community leader Rasmea Odeh. The appeal of her conviction will take place in Cincinnati in September. We join with the Com­ mittee to Stop FBI Repression, the U.S. Palestinian Com­ munity Network, and the Rasmea Defense Committee to pack the courthouse when the appeal occurs. www.stopf­ bi.net; www.uspen.org. • Oct. 4-10, National: UNAC will support the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space that has set the same week, Oct. 4-10, for coordinated pro­ tests. http://www.space4peace.org. • November – December, International: International ac­ tions are being planned to protest the expected and tragic failure of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 21 or Conference of Parties) set for Paris, France, where no binding agreements are anticipated to stop Planet Earth from reaching a 2-degree Centigrade mean temperature rise, wherein the disastrous results will be irreversible. UNAC will support and help build U.S.-based actions on this critical question and will speak to the endless oil wars being fought over the very fuel whose continued use spells doom for humankind.

Ongoing actions endorsed by UNAC • National: Support campaign to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which threatens jobs, wages, the environment, and more in our communities and around the world. Tell Congress NO on Fast Track! • National: UNAC supports the courageous efforts by low-wage workers fighting for $15 and a union, and will help mobilize for the next Fight for $15 general strike and all efforts to win a livable wage, both domestically and internationally. UNAC realizes that a true livable wage would exceed $15 per hour. • National: UNAC will continue its solidarity with Mu­ mia Abu-Jamal in his struggle for freedom and for the immediate medical attention required to remediate the prison medical neglect that has placed Mumia’s very life in immediate jeopardy. UNAC supports the work of orga­ nizations working to free all U.S. political prisoners. • National: UNAC will support and participate in acts of resistance in immediate response to police murders and anniversaries of murders. • National: UNAC acknowledges the role that media plays in political organizing and calls on all supporters to find ways to coordinate their activities to amplify the value of them and to make the media more useful to the efforts of the movements we support. • National: Support actions calling for an end to the Cuba embargo blockade and to close the U.S. base in Guantanamo. n

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Lawrence Hamm, founder and chair of the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) in Newark, N.J. urged united opposition to “all U.S. boots on the ground, defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership, solidarity with the fight against union busting and other attacks on the working class at home, and a united challenge to the ceaseless rac­ ist attacks on Black and Brown people!”

Opposing the wars abroad On the international front, conference participants heard from longtime antiwar activist Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, who recently completed a threemonth prison sentence for protesting U.S. drone warfare.

Other keynote speakers were Kazem Azin of Solidarity Iran, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, Maurice Carney of the Friends of the Congo, Bruce Gagnon of Global Net­ work Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Mala­ chy Kilbride of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Ed Kinane of the Upstate (N.Y.) Drone Ac­ tion Network, Ray LaForest of Haiti Support Network, David Swanson of WarBeyondWar.org, and Kevin Zeese of PopularResistance.org.

The conference also heard from retired U.S. Col. Ann Wright, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, and former U.S. State Department official Peter Van Buren, all of whom are now prominent opponents of U.S. wars.

Solidarity with struggles at home On Saturday evening, the “Tribunal on the Militarizaton of the Police & Structural Racism” heard from Michelle Kamal, whose son was murdered by police. Other tribu­ nal presenters included Manzoor Cheema of Muslims for Social Justice in Raleigh, N.C., Larry Holmes from the People’s Power Assemblies, and the Rev. Osagyefo Uh­ uru Sekou from Ferguson, Mo.

Clarence Thomas of International Longshore and Ware­ house Union Local 10 spoke about how his local shut down San Francisco-area ports this past May Day in sup­ port of the urban rebellions against police killings.

Other speakers for workers’ rights included John Den­ nie of National Postal Mail Handlers Union Local 300, a founder of the Postal Defenders coalition and an orga­ nizer for the “Stop Staples” campaign; Charles Jenkins, president of the New York chapter of the National Coali­ tion of Black Trade Unionists; Shafeah M’Balia of North Carolina-based Black Workers for Justice; and Rolandah Cleopattrah McMillan of the Virginia Defenders for Free­ dom, Justice & Equality, representing Virginia Raise Up and the “Fight for $15 and a Union” campaign.

Recently elected Boston bus driver and Steelworker Lo­ cal 8751 President Andre Francois addressed the confer­ ence, surrounded by union members. Local 8751 recently defeated a company-inspired frame-up of several of its (continued from page 7: “European workers resist austerity”) bank vault is empty, we need to down­ size—even though they have been piling up money for years.

Unfortunately, these struggles re­ mained isolated and ultimately failed to achieve their primary goals. Some, like the 1100 Continental workers, who conducted their struggle through a self-managed general assembly, waged a sixmonth strike and were able to get com­ pensation money up to 100,000 euros for workers with seniority.

Unfortunately, only the revolutionar­ ies (in the broad sense) fought to build a national movement against layoffs. Espe­ cially since the so-called “left,” that is the SP, is in power, and the trade-union bu­ reaucracy bows toward a social partner­ ... U.S. bombing (continued from page 12: “U.S. uses ‘restraint’ in bombing ISIS in Syria”)

of his opponents exposed before the entire popula­ tion, Shiite and Sunni alike.

The U.S.-trained Iraqi Army, mostly Shiite, has to­ day all but disintegrated. The persecuted Sunnis have largely chosen to support or step aside to the reac­ tionary ISIS fundamentalists. Many Sunnis see them as the “lesser evil” to the new U.S.-installed regime of Haider al-Abadi, who is ironically dependent on Irani­ an-linked Shiite militias and U.S. airstrikes to preserve the corrupt and dictatorial Iraqi government. ship with the state and the bosses, with the added argument, “if we fight against the Socialist Party government, it will only reinforce the far right.”

In 2013, the movement against layoffs in Brittany underlined some contradic­ tions of this period. There were thou­ sands of layoffs in the region’s meat­ packing industry. Local strikes were taking place, and the situation was ripe for an effort to bring all these struggles together.

But at the same time, a petit bourgeois movement sprang up of truck company and business owners against a new envi­ ronmental tax on trucks. The movement was called the Red Hat, a symbol of the French Revolution.

This far-right movement managed to put itself into the leadership of the move­ ment of the workers against layoffs, with the aid of some local unions penetrated members. Marilyn Zuniga, a teacher from Orange, N.J., who was recently fired after some of her students wrote get-well cards to ailing Mumia Abu-Jamal, won support from the conference for her fight to regain her job.

Other speakers addressing important domestic issues were Gerry Condon, Veterans for Peace; Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report; Imani Keith Henry, Equality for Flatbush (N.Y.) Project (E4F); Cheri Honkala, Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign; climate change author and activist Anto­ nia Juhasz; and John Parker, a leader in the Los Angeles ballot initiative to win a $15 minimum wage.

As in past UNAC conferences, Mus­ lims fighting for social change played important roles. These included Malik Mujahid of the Muslim Peace Coali­ tion and chairman of the Parliament of World’s Religions; Sharmin Sadequee of the National Coalition to Protect Civ­ il Freedoms; Manzoor Cheema, founder of Muslims for Social Justice; as well as members of Project SALAM, which works on issues of preemptive pros­ ecution of Muslims. Joe Iosbaker, a member of Antiwar Committee-Chicago, himself a target of FBI repression, spoke about the case of Palestinian-American political prisoner Rasmea Odeh.

Also speaking on this panel was attorney and former political prisoner Lynne Stewart. Pam Africa spoke about the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the MOVE com­ mune in Philadelphia and the continuing case of politi­ cal prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. The conference endorsed MOVE’s rally on the bombing’s anniversary, May 13. A Message from Cuba On Saturday afternoon, UNAC Administrative Com­ mittee member Jeff Mackler read a message to the con­ ference from Kenia Serrano Puig, President of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples. The message opened by stating, “The work UNAC does in USA in the struggle for social justice and against military interven­ tions in other nations is a topic of utmost importance.” Mackler expressed UNAC’s joy at the release of the Cu­ ban Five and recounted UNAC’s consistent opposition to all forms of U.S. intervention in Cuba. To the thunderous applause of the packed conference session Cuba was ap­ proved as an honorary member of UNAC.

Several Ukrainian activists attended, including three from Odessa who brought a photo display of the mur­ derous, right-wing attack on the House of Labor in that city. The Ukrainians spoke at a plenary session and in a workshop on the expansion of NATO and the situation in Ukraine. Their central message to the conference was a , by the National Front. Its platform for the workers was “Romanians and Bulgarians steal our jobs; keep our jobs French.”

Some people in the unions do vote for the National Front, whose discourse on the union switched from “destroy the unions” to the attempt to infiltrate them, but it was the first time they were able to play such a role in a struggle.

The non-revolutionary left—the CP mostly and the main union it used to control, the CGT—decided to denounce the struggle as being controlled by the fascists and organized separate protests.

The NPA, however, decided to go to the main union protests and to wage a po­ litical fight against the far right. The NPA had its own section in the protests under the banner “Forbid the layoffs,” while the trade-union leaders controlled by the National Front were yelling: “Down with Romanians.” The NPA local com­ Few Middle East nations have escaped the chaos fol­ lowing the U.S. wars of intervention and conquests. From Syria and Iraq to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and be­ yond, the bloody hand of U.S. imperial might twists and distorts everyday life. Aside from the hyperbole of the U.S. kept media, few in the region believe that U.S. troops and weapons of mass destruction are there to preserve or advance democracy and freedom. The tragic memory of colonial rule, past and present, re­ mains imbedded in mass consciousness.

At stake for the U.S. plunderers is the question of who will secure control of the Middle East’s vast fossil-fuel and human resources, and how many additional tril­ lions of dollars the endless wars in the region can gen­ Tony Savino / Socialist Action Socialist Action Books sponsored two panel discussions at the Left Forum in New York City on May 30. Well over 50 attended our panel on prospects for revolutionary change in S. Africa to hear (from left) Patrick Bond, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, S. Africa; Marty Goodman, Socialist Action; and Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report.

plea against U.S. war and intervention.

Other speakers at the conference included former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Born King Allah of the Nation of Gods & Earths, “Addicted to War” au­ thor Joel Adreas, Palestinian author and activist Susan Abulhawa, Johnny Achi of Arab Americans for Syria, Abayomi Azikiwe of the Pan-African News Wire, Wil­ liam Camacaro of the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle, Dr. Ghias Moussa of the Syrian American Forum, and U.S-based Honduran activist Lucy Pagoada-Quesada.

International speakers included Elizabeth Byce of the New Democratic Party of Canada, Socialist Caucus; Chris Nineham of the U.K. Stop the Wars Coalition; and Elsa Rassbach of the German National Drone Campaign, which is demanding the closing of the Satellite Relay Sta­ tion at the U.S. Air Base Ramstein and the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Stuttgart.

Also speaking were UNAC leaders Judy Bello, Upstate (N.Y.) Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars; Ana Edwards and Phil Wilayto, Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice and Equality; Bernadette Ellorin, BAY­ AN USA; Sara Flounders, International Action Center; Joe Iosbaker, Committee to Stop FBI Repression; Mar­ garet Kimberley, Black Agenda Report, and UNAC CoCoordinators Marilyn Levin and Joe Lombardo. n This article is an abridged version of the report on the conference issued by UNAC. For the full report and list of speakers, see http://UNACconference2015.org. Videos of many of the sessions can be found at http://nepajac.org/ conferencevid.htm.

mittee maybe had a dozen activists, but thousands of workers joined our section in the protest because they refused to let their protest be hijacked by the far right.

The idea here is not self-glorification.

It is that the far right is evolving from an extra-parliamentarian, anti-Semitic fascist group to an extremely conserva­ tive political party. They are less radical in their discourse (which we call “deevilization”), but their reactionary ideas are clearly penetrating the working class more than before.

I want to thank you again for inviting me to speak. It is also an opportunity for me to learn about the movements of the great American working class—whether it be Ferguson, Baltimore, or the Fight for 15 movements. You are fighting against one of the most powerful, racist, and vio­ lent ruling classes in the world, and your dedication is an inspiration to us all. n erate to be funneled into the coffers of the military-industrial complex. Endless wars are good business for capitalists. Endless bombing and mass destruction create new markets to exploit for profit.

For the people of the Middle East, with no excep­ tions, the starting point in achieving the basic right of self-determination is the absolute and total withdraw­ al of all U.S. troops and weapons of war. Freed from imperialist plunder and mass murder, in time, the vast array of workers and farmers are fully capable of forg­ ing new, democratic, and genuine mass revolutionary parties aimed at wresting power from their local ty­ rants and exploiters and proceeding to rebuild their nations in the interest of the vast majority. n SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 2015 11

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