Dear friends,
When we were just starting elementary school, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. And just the other week, the Afghanistan Papers confirmed that political and corporate elites have been lying to us our whole lives, so that they can use our communities for their power and profit.
That’s why we joined a team of young organizers from different movement backgrounds to build a new antiwar organization that connects our global and local struggles for freedom from violence, occupation, and war. The War Resisters League joined this effort because we need an ecosystem of antiwar movements powerful enough to ring in a bright new era of safety and healing. We’ve spent years researching and strategizing. Now, we’re ready to launch Dissenters, a new organization that will lead our generation to stop endless wars.
We know you care about mobilizing young people against war, so we’re writing to you today to ask for your help. Our movement depends on people like you chipping in to make this work possible. If we’re going to rise to the challenges of 2020, we need you to help us grow.
Young people are tired. If things don’t change soon and fast, we’re on track to die younger, sicker, and with more debt than our parents. But we know there is no scarcity of resources, and that we don’t have to live in fear of one another to get what we need to thrive. We can have strong schools, universal healthcare and housing, and a Green New Deal. But the ruling class creates endless wars instead.
Dissenters is a new organization led by Black, brown, queer and trans, working class young people, who are taking our resources back from elites and their violent wars, prisons, police, weapons, and walls. Over the past year, organizers with WRL have helped build Dissenters’ story, strategy, and structure. As young people are coming together to take action against militarism, WRL is serving as a crucial resource - offering staff capacity and institutional knowledge to support our efforts.
We believe we are going to demilitarize the world together. The antiwar movement has always been here, but we need to be so much stronger. Learn more about Dissenters & sign up for our mailing list here and please donate to help our comrades at WRL raise $30,000 for their amazing work this year!
Together we will win,
Nashiha Alam and Yuni Chang
On behalf of Dissenters and War Resisters League
