By Alison Bodine
From May 8-10, 2015 more than 400 activists from across the U.S. and internationally gathered in Secaucus, New Jersey, for a national antiwar conference sponsored by the United Antiwar Coalition (UNAC).This conference brought together people from 29 U.S. states, Canada, Britain, Germany and Ukraine to discuss and plan organizing a united and effective international movement against U.S.-led wars and occupations, including the war being waged against poor and working people in the United States. The Conference had the participation of 116 organizations and more than 100 speakers between six plenary sessions and 31 workshops. Vancouver’s antiwar coalition, Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO) sent a message of solidarity to the UNAC conference. This message reinforced the decisiveness of building a strong antiwar movement across the U.S./Canada border and continuing coordinated work between UNAC and MAWO.
For a full report on the 2015 UNAC Conference, including photos and all planned and endorsed actions, please visit: www.UNACpeace.org
UNAC Conference Action Plan: Political Goals, Objectives & Mission
The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) opposes all U.S. wars, whether they be in the form of direct military intervention with troops on the ground, privatized death squad wars, drone wars on every continent, sanctions and embargo wars, U.S.-backed military coups, “humanitarian interventions,” the U.S.-backed and -financed 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 weapons of mass destruction, the trillions spent on advancing imperialist interests and the associated devastation perpetrated 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 & Beyond. Bring All the Troops Home Now & Dissemble 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-incarceration criminal “justice” system; the war-profiteering military-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 virtually unpunished racist police murders of African-American, Latino and Native American peoples; massive ever-intensifying austerity – assaults on wages, massive cutbacks 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-promoted homophobic attacks on the LGBT community; the fossil-fuel, war-induced global warming and associated looming climatic catastrophe; and the wholesale police-state-like surveillance measures that increasingly obliterate 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 inseparable aspects of a society that requires the subordination of human needs to the private profit interests of the bailed-out and enriched (at public expense) banks, corporations 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 working 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 oppressed to advance their own needs and interests. UNAC strives to advance the unity of the antiwar and social justice 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.
For a full UNAC Action Plan please visit: www.UNACpeace.org
Back to Article Listing
