Shut It All Down
The last six months or so has seen much of what might’ve otherwise been "movement news" beamed straight into households across the US. From Ferguson, to New York City, to Los Angeles, and all the mass mobilizations against police violence and racist impunity that have resulted - even mainstream conversations appear to be undergoing critical transformations. In the background, a number of noteworthy organizing developments have occurred.
More than a decade after Christopher Hitchens’ book The Trial of Henry Kissinger and the documentary film that followed it compiled a dossier for the former Secretary of State’s prosecution for war crimes carried out under his guidance during his mid-1970’s tenure, activists with Code Pink upended a January 29th Senate Armed Forces Committee meeting, attempting to literally put handcuffs on the 91-year-old. “In the name of the people of Chile,” began Code Pink organizer and co-founder Medea Benjamin, as she abruptly disrupted the hearing, continuing, “In the name of Vietnam. In the name of the people of East Timor. In the name of the people of Cambodia. In the name of the people of Laos.” The action immediately made headlines around the world, most of them accompanied by a photo of Kissinger, cuffs dangling directly in front of his face. Chairman of the Committee, Senator John McCain, said that in all his years with the body, he'd “never seen anything as disgraceful and outrageous; as despicable,” before ordering Medea and her fellow organizers out of the hearing, calling them “low-life scum” - an outburst on which he doubled down in interviews that followed. While unsuccessful, practically speaking, the action undoubtedly brought front and center Kissinger’s role in atrocities committed under his watch, and the atrocities themselves, for generations less likely to have much knowledge of either.
Witness Against Torture, tackling more contemporary crimes of State, has been coordinating Friday fasts in solidarity with prisoners at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay - a campaign now in its tenth year, and now bound up with well-publicized and harrowing hunger strikes on the part of Guantanamo prisoners, themselves. Meanwhile, a recent report by the UK's Guardian has revealed that the Chicago Police Department has been, for a number of years, operating a CIA-style "Black Site" within the very city that was the recent subject of testimony to the UN Committee Against Torture.
So far, nine separate individuals have come forward with strikingly similar claims of having been disappeared by heavily-armed Chicago police and held at a Homan Square warehouse, handcuffed to walls of a cell, and interrogated as part of drug investigations. Reports include beatings, minors held in the facility with not notifying counsel, and arrestees being kept out of the booking process and thus beyond all visibility of accountability for police. The city has denied these allegations, but police have so far failed to answer detailed questions about the facility posed by journalists.
Chanting and organizing under the banner of #Gitmo2Chicago, residents immediately staged forceful protests, insisting on the closure of the facility. In addition, they've issued concrete demands, including a special meeting with CPD officials where residents can have questions answered directly about the facility, and prominent displays within all CPD facilities informing citizens of their rights - particularly their right to legal representation, lack of which is considered a "systemic problem" within the CPD broadly.
NEW PUBLICATIONS
Two new critical publications from WRL staff become available in 2015. From organizing staff member Ali Issa, comes Against All Odds: Voices of Popular Struggle in Iraq, due out later this spring, with Tadween - a publishing imprint of the brilliant Middle East news and analysis outlet, Jadaliyya. From the publisher's description:
“Collected from dozens of interviews with, and reports from, Iraqi feminists, labor organizers, environmentalists, and protest movement leaders, Against All Odds presents the unique voices of progressive Iraqi organizing on the ground. Dating back to 2003, with an emphasis on the 2011 upsurge in mobilization and hope as well as the subsequent embattled years, these voices belong to Iraqis asserting themselves as agents against multiple local, regional, and global forces of oppression. As Vijay Prashad notes in the foreword: “Other histories had been possible for Iraq, and indeed might yet be possible. The social basis for the Popular Movement to Save Iraq remains, even if in the shadows. It is the only force that could provide an alternative to the history of blood that stands before Iraq, the nest of bones, the sky of death.”
Workers’ justice, gender liberation, anti-imperialism, and global solidarity have been on the agendas of many Iraqi organizations, in contrast to almost all media and scholarly representations -- even those that are sympathetic to popular Iraqi struggles. Media and scholarship instead focus on geopolitics, mass violence, and sectarianism to the exclusion of attempts at independent political action and imagination in Iraq. With the legacy of wars since 1980, followed by the brutal sanctions of the 1990s and the 2003 US invasion and occupation, not to mention the recent emergence of the threatening forces of the Islamic State, understanding and acting in solidarity with these struggles is more crucial than ever.”
Against All Odds will be available in paperback for $11.99, with an e-book version available for $8.99.
Also available this year is the WRL brochure What Every Girl Should Know About the U.S. Military.
Written for girls, queer and trans youth, youth of color and poor youth, this newly redesigned full-color brochure is focused on sexual & gender-based violence: perfect for distributing at schools & community centers.
Copies are available in the WRL Store for $0.15 each plus 20% shipping, or $0.12 for orders of 100 or more!
CORRECTIONS
Due to a mixup in the handoff of the last issue of WIN, an incomplete version of Ed Hedemann’s obituary for Scott Herrick appeared in the printed issue. We’re deeply sorry for this and have excerpted a portion of the full version below, and made the entire piece available online at www.
warresisters.org/win-summer-2014-wrlnews.
