The WRL organizing team has been working with the new WRL Tear Gas working group to build the campaign that will launch late this fall. We have continued to add to the Facing Tear Gas site, including stories we collected recently at the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. We talked to many people that day who had experiences with tear gas in places ranging from Italy to Chile to oakland and have been overwhelmed with the strong show of support for our work from our international campaign partners, including the Collective opposed to Police Brutality (Quebec, CA), the U.S. Campaign to end the occupation, Physicians for Human Rights (u.S.), the omega Research Foundation (UK), and the Independent Customs Workers union (Suez/Egypt national). We are also thrilled to be organizing the first call of the tear gas campaign global network to take place later this month! The call will include our partner organizations, as well as activists from all over the world affected by tear gas in their work for democracy at home.
WRL is also set to launch a new resource, Movement Building for Allies that comes out of nearly 2 years of work. Movement Building for Allies is a facilitators’ manual for a workshop intended for white people working in the antiwar and other other anti-militarist movements in the U.S. who want to sharpen their analysis of the connections of racism and white supremacy to other systems of oppression and discuss how to concretely take that into account in their work for social change. WRL has crossed the country over the past year, hosting workshops in Tennessee and Connecticut with white anti-racist organizers who want to further their work against militarism helping to build strong anti-oppressive multiracial movements for change.
WRL has been working with activists throughout the country on hosting events connected to the launch of a new book that WRL has co-published with PM Press: We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America. The New York launch of the book on October 12, one week after the national launch in Boston, included a tribute to Bayard Rustin, gay Civil Rights movement leader and former WRL executive Secretary, with speakers Kenyon Farrow, Zoharah Sim-mons, and Walter Naegle, Rustin’s partner of 10 years.
WRL has endorsed and supported the exciting work of Havaar: Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions, and State Repression, which culminated on September 25 during the un General Assembly in NYC when Havaar and their allies simultaneously protested the polices of Ahmadinejad, obama and netanyahu, all present at the assembly, as damaging to the Iranian people. later that evening, in a collaboration with the Illuminator, Havaar’s messages were projected onto Manhattan’s ‘Flat Iron Building’ in renegade 20 foot high lettering. (To get in touch with Havaar, email info [at] havaar.org.)
