Ahead of Rev. Barber’s ‘Moral March,’ U.S. Groups Call Out Hypocrisy of $54B Ukraine War Funding

Julie Varughese June 18, 2022 Julie Varughese Admin, Americas, Archives
The Poor People's Army in Philadelphia / credit: Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign / Facebook
The Poor People’s Army in Philadelphia / credit: Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign / Facebook

JUNE 18, 2022—Two U.S.-based organizations announced Thursday in a virtual press conference that they are joining forces to grow the Poor People’s Army, a poor and working-class grassroots initiative started in Philadelphia. The announcement came just days before the more widely recognized Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) planned to hold its “Moral Assembly,” a series of events that includes a march today in Washington, D.C.

Spokespeople for the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and the Philadelphia-based Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) said they have reached out for years to develop relationships with PPC. The Reverend Dr. William J. Barber has been the face of the organization since it launched in 2017. The campaign calls for a “moral movement” to address the increasing wealth gap in the United States. PPC cites 140 million poor and “low-wealth” people, which is 42 percent of the U.S. population.

Today’s march is called the “Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls.” It is expected to draw thousands from across the United States.

However, BAP and PPEHRC spokespeople said U.S. poverty will not be eradicated until people are independently organized to challenge the power of finance capital and disengage from the Democratic and Republican parties.

“One cannot have one foot in the establishment, echoing its most backward positions on issues like the war in Ukraine,” said BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka during Thursday’s press conference, “and the other foot with the people, declaring solidarity with the people, [who are] suffering from the rapacious greed and violence of a ruling class operating through the two capitalist parties.”

Thursday’s joint press conference was titled, “Thinking Beyond Ukraine: Their War Is Not Our War.” BAP and PPEHRC sought to call attention to the $54 billion the U.S. Congress has allocated since January to the Ukrainian state, amid a weapons buildup and the illegal expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward Russia’s borders. Activists have pointed out the COVID-19 pandemic could be addressed in the United States with $16 billion, while $60 billion per year in federal housing vouchers may solve the U.S. homelessness crisis.

“How dare we stand by as billions are spent on war when children all over the world, and here in Kensington [a Philadelphia neighborhood], go without water, health care, food or a place to lay their heads tonight,” said Cheri Honkala, PPEHRC’s founder. Honkala is known for helping homeless people occupy empty houses, which she first did as a homeless mother in the 1980s.

PPC cites the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as its inspiration.

However, activists have said King was assassinated in 1968, exactly one year after he denounced the U.S. war on Vietnam in his famous Riverside Church speech. That is also when he dubbed the “three evils” of U.S. society: Materialism, militarism and racism. Baraka and Honkala said PPC does not name those concepts in its work.

Baraka went on to say the BAP-PPEHRC joint venture does not intend to create “antagonism” with PPC, but the groups felt it was necessary to point out where they draw the line. BAP and PPEHRC use the People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHR) framework he developed in an effort to put a name to the work of mass-based grassroots movements throughout the Global South, including the U.S.-based Black Liberation Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s.

“The PCHR framework does not pretend to be non-political,” Baraka said. “It names the enemies of freedom: The Western, white-supremacist, colonial-capitalist patriarchy.”

The spokespeople at Thursday’s press conference also said PPC will not be able to lead an independent movement because of its foundation ties. Honkala often can be heard railing against the “non-profit industrial complex,” which includes many large foundations that fund non-profit organizations. These groups drop the ball on societal challenges they claim to want to address because they wind up doing the bidding of the Democratic Party, she told press conference attendees.

Honkala also said Barber’s partner in launching PPC, the Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, was once an intern at Honkala’s organization. A Toward Freedom inquiry to PPC went unanswered.

“This movement will not be funded by foundations or corporations,” said the Reverend Keith Collins, a PPEHRC organizer in Philadelphia who also spoke Thursday. “It must be a people-driven revolution and it needs faith leaders in compliance with the movement.”

The spokespeople said those who are interested in learning how to help expand the Poor People’s Army to cities beyond Philadelphia can sign up for a three-day boot camp being held near the city August 12-14. Honkala encouraged people in other cities to request a boot camp by contacting [email protected].

Honkala also dismissed the effectiveness of marching in Washington.

“We will no longer get on buses and beg leaders to change the conditions,” she said.

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom.

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Renewed Peace Movement Lauded As Protesters Marched in Washington, D.C., on 20th Anniversary of U.S. Invasion of Iraq

Julie Varughese March 21, 2023 Julie Varughese Admin, Americas, Archives
A demonstration took place March 18 in Washington, D.C., that coincided with the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq / credit: ANSWER Coalition
A demonstration took place March 18 in Washington, D.C., that coincided with the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq / credit: ANSWER Coalition

WASHINGTON, D.C.—An estimated couple of thousand of people to “several thousand” marched on March 18 in downtown Washington D.C., calling for an end to the U.S. imperialist project that they hold responsible for 20 years of a “War on Terror” on millions of people. The weekend marked the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

U.S. interference in the form of military invasions and other types of activities since 2001 have caused the global displacement of 38 million people and the death of at least 900,000 people, according to the Costs of War Project. Those are conservative estimates.

The demonstration aimed to link the lack of funding for people’s needs in the United States with the diversity of tactics the United States uses to perpetuate wars on people around the world.

“The proxy war in Ukraine has already taken hundreds of thousands of lives, plunged the world into crisis, and will cost the people of the U.S. at least $113 billion in public money,” Press TV reported. “Over the past year, Washington has supplied Ukraine with military equipment worth more than $50 billion, excluding other types of assistance worth tens of billions of dollars.

Rally speakers representing a diverse cross-cut of U.S. society, ranging from students and Filipino migrants, to internal U.S. colonies like African and Indigenous peoples, as well as Wikileaks Publisher Julian Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, gathered in front of the White House for a 1 p.m. rally. Toward Freedom Board Secretary Jacqueline Luqman also spoke, which can be found here, here and here.

Then a mile-long march kicked off that stopped briefly at the Washington Post headquarters.

Activists spoke out against the newspaper—now owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—because it spread information that helped build the U.S. government’s case for the invasion of Iraq. A U.S. Senate intelligence committee report later found the war was based on false information.

“Thousands of anti-war protesters stretched for blocks without a corporate camera in sight yesterday,” tweeted independent journalist Chuck Modi, who has documented protests in Washington, D.C. “In pre-cell phone age, you wouldn’t even know it happened.”

Activists on Saturday carried coffins wrapped in the flags of countries that the United States has either invaded over the past two decades or that the United States has helped fuel a conflict inside of through the shipment of arms and funds.

More than 200 organizations demonstrated against the United States funding and arming the war in Ukraine, and called for the United States to not interfere in peace negotiations. They also spoke out against a possible military conflict with China and decried the U.S./EU sanctions regime that prevents food, fuel and medicine from reaching one-third of the world’s population.

Plus, the call was raised to close U.S. military bases around the world and U.S. military commands, such as AFRICOM. Some estimates have ranged from as little as 800 bases to thousands of bases, according to U.S. military veteran and psychologist Monisha Rios. She claimed at the International Women’s Alliance conference, held March 4-5 in Washington, D.C., that activists have used a figure based on a calculation that undercounts U.S. military installations.

People leading the march held banners that read, “Remember Iraq: No More Wars Based on Lies” and “Fund People’s Needs, Not War.”

After the march, a teach-in was held at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, just a few blocks from the rally site. There, professor Noam Chomsky, as well as representatives from the U.S. colonies of Guam and Hawaii, gave remarks.

Activists like Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture of Philadelphia, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, spoke out against the international wars as well as the domestic war on the people of the United States. That includes the most recent federal government move to eliminate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to hungry families. “Roughly 60 percent of those households have children, and more than half include older people or adults with disabilities,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s editorial board writes.

 

The protest was noted for how it was led by people who bear the brunt of U.S. imperialism.

“When the interests and positions of colonized people are respected, the turnout to mobilizations look different,” tweeted the Black Alliance for Peace, an anti-imperialist organization led by African people in the United States. “Perhaps the March 18 demonstrations signal a shift is taking place: That an anti-imperialist movement led by young African and other colonized peoples is rising.”

Many commented that a renewed movement for peace was emerging with this demonstration. About 11 million people protested the U.S. invasion of Iraq 20 years ago. An ANSWER Coalition representative did not reply to this reporter in time to confirm the number of marchers on March 18.

“Here we are again, 20 years later, because imperialism persists,” Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley told activist group Popular Resistance. “As long as that is true, the location of the war will change, the people waging the war will change, but we will still have wars. Our goal is to end imperialism.”

Besides in Washington, D.C., demonstrations were held in dozens of cities across the United States.

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom.

Proud Boys in MAGA hats at a neo-Confederate rally in 2019 / credit: Anthony Crider / Flickr
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Left-Right White Solidarity Basis of Support for U.S./EU/NATO Wars on Global Humanity

Ajamu Baraka February 1, 2022 Ajamu Baraka Admin, Americas, Archives
Proud Boys in MAGA hats at a neo-Confederate rally in 2019 / credit: Anthony Crider / Flickr
Proud Boys in MAGA hats at a neo-Confederate rally in 2019 / credit: Anthony Crider/Flickr

Editor’s Note: This opinion was published as “Left-Right White Solidarity?” in Common Dreams in 2014, shortly after the U.S.-backed neo-Nazi coup in Ukraine, in response to solidarity emerging between left-wing and right-wing people of European descent in the United States and in Europe. However, this does not refer to the “horseshoe theory,” a concept that suggests the left and the right have much in common and pose a threat to a so-called “center.” The horseshoe theory leaves out the colonial question: What happens to people who have been colonized by Europeans in the United States and around the world? And what impact does white supremacy have not just on those who have been colonized, but on people of European descent? This version has been edited with the author’s permission.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana

Some years ago, Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri suggested that while not always visible in the social practices of everyday European life, the racist foundation for European fascism was still present, safely confined to a space in the European psyche, but always ready to explode in what he called a “racist delirium.”

Today, white workers and the middle classes in Europe and in the United States, traumatized by the new realities imposed on them by the decline of the Western imperialist project and the turn to neoliberalism, are increasingly embracing a retrograde form of white supremacist politics.

This dangerous political phenomenon is developing in countries throughout the European Union and in the United States. Just recently, the National Front, a racist, authoritarian party that labored on the fringes of French politics for years, has emerged as one of the dominant forces. The Tea Party in the United States, Golden Dawn in Greece, the People’s Party in Spain, the Partij Voor de Vrijheid in the Netherlands—in these and other countries, a transatlantic, radical racist movement is emerging and gaining respectability.

The hard turn to the right is not a surprise for those of us who have a clear-eyed view of Euro-American history and politics. In all of the 20th century fascist movements in Europe, two elements combined to express the fascist project: 1) The rise of far-right parties and movements as the political expression of an alliance of authoritarian, pro-capitalist class forces bankrolled by sections of the capitalist class and constructed in the midst of capitalist crisis; and 2) racism grounded in white supremacist ideology.

The neo-fascism that is now emerging within the context of the current capitalist crisis on both sides of the Atlantic has similar characteristics to the movements of the 1930s, but with one distinguishing feature. The targets for racist scapegoating are different. The targets today are immigrants: Arab, Muslim and African in Europe; and Latinos as well as the never-ending target of poor and working-class African Americans in the United States.

What makes the rise of the racist radical right even more dangerous today is that it is taking place in a political environment in which traditional anti-racist oppositional forces have not recognized the danger of this phenomenon or—for strategic reasons—have decided to downplay the issue. That strategy has been tragically played out in the “immigrant rights” movement in the United States.

The brutal repression and dehumanization witnessed across Europe in the 1930s has not found generalized expression in the United States and Europe, at least not yet. Nevertheless, large sectors of the U.S. and European left appear to be unable to recognize that the U.S./NATO/EU axis that is committed to maintaining the hegemony of Western capital is resulting in dangerous collaborations with rightist forces both inside and outside of governments.

The manufactured crisis with Russia over the issue of Ukraine is a case in point. The incredible recklessness and outrageous opportunism of the U.S./NATO/EU axis in destabilizing Ukraine—knowing that the driving forces on the ground were racist, neo-Nazi elements from the Right Sector and the Svoboda party—demonstrated once again the lengths this axis is prepare to go to achieve its geo-strategic objective of full-spectrum economic and political global domination.

Yet, strangely, not only did many radicals in the United States and Europe not see the potential threat this situation represented—they seemed unable to penetrate the simplistic cold-war propaganda that suddenly re-emerged to frame events in Ukraine.

Instead of being concerned that—as a direct consequence of U.S. actions—a government came to power in Europe that, for the first time since the 1930s, included ultra-nationalist, racist neo-Nazis in key positions, the left along with the general population allowed the corporate media and U.S. propagandists to turn the narrative away from U.S./EU destabilization of Ukraine to Putin’s supposed expansionist aspirations.

The ease in which the corporate media was able to flip that script and make Putin the new face of evil has been truly astonishing. And the fact that that narrative was embraced by most liberals and large sectors of the white left in the United States only affirmed that—having abandoned class analysis and anti-imperialism, and never really having understood the insidious nature of white supremacist ideology—the U.S. left has no theoretical framework for apprehending the complexities of the current period.

The inability to extricate itself from the influences of white supremacist ideology has to be considered one explanation for the strange positions taken by large sectors of the white liberal/left over the last few years. How else can one explain the bizarre incorporation of the discourse of “humanitarian intervention” and the obscenely obvious racism of the “responsibility to protect”?

Could it be that many white radicals have fallen prey to the subtle and not-so-subtle racial appeal to a form of cross-class white solidarity in defense of “Western values,” civilization and the prerogative to determine who has the right to national sovereignty, all of which are at the base of the rationalization of the “responsibility to protect” asserted by the white West?

The apparent incapacity of white leftists to penetrate and understand the cultural and ideological impact of white supremacy and its powerful effect on their own consciousness has weakened and deformed left analysis of U.S. and European foreign policy initiatives. It has also resulted in the U.S. and European left taking political positions that either objectively championed U.S./NATO imperialist aggression or provided tacit support for that aggression though silence.

As a consequence of the abandonment of anti-imperialism and an active class-racial collaboration with the Western bourgeoisie, an almost insurmountable chasm has been created separating the Western left from its counterparts in much of the global South.

Instead of more resolute anti-imperialist solidarity, broad elements of the white left in the United States and Europe have consistently aligned themselves with the policies of the U.S/NATO/EU axis that supports right-wing forces from Ukraine to Venezuela.

Exaggeration, racial paranoia, and an overly simplistic and divisive—even “racist”—assessment of the liberal/left will be the charge. We accept those charges. We accept them because we know they will come. For those of us living outside the walls of privilege who must nevertheless accept the realities of the colonialist/imperialist-created global South, we don’t have the luxury of comforting illusions. Our lived experiences negate the false history of Europe’s benevolent civilization. We see developing in Europe and in the United States the very real possibility of a left-right racial convergence fueled by crisis, leftist ideological confusion and what appears to be a mutual commitment to maintaining the global structures of white supremacy.

Understanding the violent history of the Western project and the pathological nature of white supremacy, we are forced to see with crystal clarity that within the context of the volatile economic and social conditions in Europe, giving legitimacy to neo-fascist forces like the ones in Ukraine might just be the fuel needed to ignite that racist, fascist delirium Berneri referred to.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president of the United States on the Green Party ticket. Baraka is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and was awarded the U.S. Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.