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Black Alliance for Peace Welcomes Outcome of Meeting Between the United States and North Korea

June 12, 2018

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) calls on the people of the United States to ensure the leaders of the U.S. state remain committed to continued diplomacy to end the U.S.-Korea conflict. The meeting between Kim Jong Un and the president of the United States was a positive step toward a peaceful resolution of the 68-year Korea war. The decision on the part of the U.S. occupying power to end the provocative and illegal war games with the South Korea state is a necessary concession to demonstrate a commitment to easing military tensions on the Korean peninsula. As the foreign power with 32,000 soldiers and a nuclear umbrella over the North from its bombers and submarines, the United States was correct in responding to North Korea’s unilateral decision to halt nuclear tests and testing of ballistic missiles with the decision to end the U.S.-South Korea military drills.

BAP is concerned with the irresponsible and reckless comments by various political leaders who are opposed to ending the military exercises and are characterizing the outcome of the summit as a win for North Korea. For BAP, the winners of the summit are the South Korean people and all those who cherish peace and an international community committed to law and the principles of the United Nations charter.

As the state primarily responsible for the division of the Korean Peninsula and the subsequent war of annihilation waged against the North, it is only natural that the United States would need to demonstrate a good-faith commitment to a peace process.

The use of sexist and patriarchal imagery along with subtle appeals to white supremacy emanating primarily from Democrats to goad the administration into taking a more aggressive position on North Korea demonstrates once again that Democrats offer no alternative to the politics of domination and aggressive imperialism that has defined U.S. behavior for decades.

BAP considers both parties to be war parties that are committed the use of war, repression and various forms of violence, including economic sanctions, to maintain the global hegemony of the United States. That is why any political space that is created that might move the United States away from its preferred method of using violence to advance the interests of the 1% is positive and must be supported by the people. Left to their own devices, the bought-and-paid-for politicians will never pursue peace when militarism continues to make their patrons rich!

Keeping pressure on the politicians who represent the interests of the capitalist oligarchy requires the re-building of an anti-war, pro-peace and anti-imperialist movement in the United States. The demands for peace voiced by the people of both Koreas are what drove the leaders of North and South Korea to move toward a new relationship between the nations. If the Korean people did not have to deal with the reality of the United States as a foreign neo-colonial power, it would have been able to resolve their differences many years ago.

That is why the issue is not de-nuclearization but de-colonization. We must demand an end to U.S. occupation, withdraw all U.S. troops, close the military bases, and remove the nuclear threat posed by U.S. bombers and submarines.

The Black Alliance for Peace says, “Close all foreign U.S. bases”! Defeat the giant triplets of racism, militarism and materialism that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., identified. And commit to “not one drop of blood from the working class and poor to defend the interests of the capitalist oligarchy.”

For media inquiries, email info@blackallianceforpeace.com

Photo credit: Reuters

The Black Alliance for Peace Calls on Congressional Black Caucus and Leadership of Poor People’s Campaign to Demand the Dismantling U.S. African Command (AFRICOM)

May 29, 2018

On May 25, African Liberation Day, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) called on the United States government to dismantle the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) and withdraw all U.S. forces from the African continent. This demand is in line with the main objective of the newly formed Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases—of which BAP is a founding member—which was formally launched in January. The coalition demands the closure of 800-plus U.S. military bases in other countries, which would save more than $150 billion that could then be re-allocated to realize the economic human rights of the working class and poor in this country.

In our statement on African Liberation Day we called on the members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to publicly oppose the aggressive militarization of the African continent, ramped up by the Obama administration and being continued by the Trump administration.

During the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) actions to end the War Economy, Militarism and the Proliferation of Gun Violence that began this week, BAP is calling on the campaign to take an unequivocal stance in opposition to AFRICOM. Just as we called on the CBC to take a public position against the aggressive expansion of U.S. militarism in Africa, we are also asking the PPC leadership and all activists supporting this week of actions to join us in demanding the United States pull out of Africa and close all U.S. military bases on foreign soil.

For BAP, it is clear the U.S war on “terrorism” in Africa was and remains a subterfuge to expand U.S. influence and its physical presence there. The destruction of Libya, the ongoing war in Somalia, the dismemberment of Sudan, the millions of lives lost in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the widespread political instability throughout the continent is the concrete result of U.S. policies and not some internal or externally motivated “terrorism” and therefore must be opposed by all who claim to represent the interests of Black people.

The PPC states “[t]he truth is that instead of waging a War on Poverty, we have been waging a War on the Poor, at home and abroad, for the financial benefit of a few.” There certainly has been a war. However, it is not “we” who are waging this war but them, the racist capitalist oligarchy that has been operating against the interests of the majority of the people in the United States and throughout the world.

BAP sees a clear connection between the war being waged against Black and poor people domestically through the Obama and Trump administrations’ Department of Defense 1033 program, which has resulted in the obscene militarization of the police, and the U.S. commitment to “full spectrum dominance” that translates into a permanent war against colonized people of color globally. That is why we agree with the PPC’s focus on gun violence, but we say the focus must be even more explicit.

Netfa Freeman, organizer with Pan-African Community Action (PACA) and a member of the BAP Coordinating Committee, points to both the internal and external on issues of militarism and gun violence: "The double standards and dirty-trick twists and turns of the U.S.'s industrial-police-military-intelligence complex has operated on two complementary and parallel tracks when it comes to war, repression, and militarism in Africa and in Black communities within U.S. borders,” he says. “Those tracks are militarized domestic repression in the form of over-policing, police murders and mass incarceration, and in Africa the phony war on terrorism.”

The PPC’s clear demand for “demilitarization of our communities” including “ending federal programs that send military equipment into local and state communities” is in sharp contrast to the support of repressive federal policies by a majority of Black lawmakers at the national level.

In July 2014, two months before the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 80 percent of the CBC voted against ending the 1033 program; last July, a majority voted in favor of the obscene increase in the military budget that exceeded the $54 billion increase demanded by Trump; and just a week or so ago, a majority of the caucus voted in favor of a right-wing federal “Blue Lives Matter” bill, making “assaults” on police officers a federal hate crime!

The Democratic Party that vehemently opposed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when he finally broke with the Johnson administration and the party establishment to oppose the Vietnam War, and which gave political cover to and justifications for the murderous assault against the Black Liberation Movement, is the same party that today supports the war agenda of the corporate and financial oligarchy. It is the same party that under Obama accelerated the 1033 program and prosecuted only one of the dozens of killer-cops that executed black, Latinx and Native people across the country.

BAP is not fooled by the diversionary politics of the Democratic Party. We are clear that opposition to war, militarism and all forms of gun violence requires taking on both parties representing the two wings of the ruling class. A bill providing a blank check to the Trump administration to wage war across the planet in the form of the new “authorization to use military force” is an example of the bi-partisan commitment to permanent war and repression as U.S. policy.

Moral stances also require explicit political positions. Opposition to war and gun violence requires that real political connections are made and concrete positions taken against policies that perpetuate the moral offenses that we oppose.

It also means that those who claim to represent the oppressed must be held to account. The members of the Congressional Black Caucus have failed to represent the interests of their Black constituents who have consistently opposed war and domestic militarism.

BAP applauds the effort by the PPC to recapture the moral ground lost to the right-wing counter-revolution of the 1970s and ‘80s as well as to the moral bankruptcy of the Obama presidency. However, we believe that in this era of right-wing ascendency represented by Trump and the liberal authoritarianism of the Democratic Party, it is important the interests and politics of the working class and poor are clearly delineated from those of the capitalist oligarchy. This means that our politics must be clear and our rhetoric devoid of liberal ambiguities in order to expose the nature and interests of the oppressive system and state.

Our task today is even more pressing than it was 51 years ago when Dr. King called on the oppressed and their allies to defeat “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism.”

That is why during this week of action called for by the PPC, BAP is making a clear call for the U.S. to leave Africa and for the people to control the police in their communities. Nothing short of this would reflect the morality and politics of the original Poor People’s Campaign and the revolution of values advocated by Dr. King.

For media inquiries, email info@blackallianceforpeace.com

Re-centering Anti-war and Anti-imperialism as Working-class Issues on May Day

May 2, 2018

MAY 1, 2018—May 1 is recognized as International Workers’ Day throughout the world except in the most bourgeois of bourgeois nations—the United States. Yet, even though the capitalist oligarchy has tried to erase the day from the awareness and memory of the working class and worker-oriented organizations and unions, the working class continues to embrace and take ownership of this day as its own.

Today is the day that the multi-national, multi-racial working classes express solidarity with all those who labor, who have nothing but their labor power to sell in order to eke out a living for themselves and their families. Today, workers from all nations, races, genders and nationalities proclaim that—despite differences—common interests bind us and can serve as a basis for a common political stance and program of liberation from the ravages of capitalist exploitation and great power domination.

On this International Workers’ Day, over 140 million people are classified as low-income in the United States while tax cuts are given to the rich. Thirty-thousand people still die every year simply because they do not have access to health care. Thousands walk the streets not knowing where they are going to lay their heads at night. And millions of working people are paying over half their income on housing and laboring more than 50 hours a week just to keep their heads above water.

And every day, millions of undocumented workers who have been forced from their home countries by the devastating policies of a rapacious, vicious capitalist invasion of their economies must take on back-breaking work not knowing if they must evade ICE—the modern-day slave catchers—to make it home to their families that evening.

These are some of the realities facing workers in the United States, the richest capitalist nation on earth.

For the Black Alliance for Peace, it is these realities and the realities that are even more acute for Black workers and the poor, that inform our political understanding of the historic task of the day. We say without any equivocation that there will be no peace without justice, that the task of workers in the United States is to struggle for a vision of a new world that transcends the backwardness of this degenerate and anachronistic system. We have a name for the source of this degrading and dehumanizing oppression: the white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy.

Because we are clear on who/what the enemy is and our responsibilities to fight against oppression, we are also clear we will never support U.S. imperialism in any of its adventures. We are not fooled by the phony humanitarian justifications for interventions by a nation that has consistently proven to be what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called 51 years ago “the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet.”

That is why on this International Workers’ Day we say once again: “Not one drop of blood from the working class and poor in defense of the gangsterism of the capitalist ruling class.”

We understand that state-sanctioned violence in the war being waged against Black and Brown people domestically is the flip side of the coin of the war being waged against people of color world-wide.

As colonized captives in this oppressor nation, we know that there is a necessity to struggle against domestic policies like the repressive Department of Defense 1033 program that is responsible for militarizing police forces across the country. We also know we must oppose the training of police forces by the Israeli apartheid state. We understand we have a responsibility in this oppressor nation to take on the U.S. state by opposing U.S. military interventions, destabilization campaigns, sanctions, and the subversion of nations in the cross-hairs of U.S. imperialism.

The struggle for Black liberation must be a struggle against imperialist wars. Defending national sovereignty and self-determination of peoples and nations is not an abstract concept for BAP members—it is a guiding principle of our work.

Therefore, an anti-war position is a necessary first step and an understandable and welcomed moral position for many in the anti-war community. However, for BAP, an anti-war position without an explicit anti-imperialist position would be a betrayal of the millions still subjected to assaults on the humanity of Africans, Asians and the people of Latin America and the Caribbean by the U.S./EU/NATO axis of domination.

Four interrelated issues confront all of humanity, but especially workers and the poor in the United States and abroad today: white supremacy, neoliberal capitalist exploitation, permanent war, and the threat to the planet by capitalist industrial processes.

Confronting these issues will only happen as a result of power being shifted from the capitalist oligarchy back to the people. But we understand that will never happen without a revolutionary movement. The good news is the tide is turning in that direction.

Brave and determined teacher unions made up primarily of women have injected new life into the struggle for the collective human right to organize. New efforts to fight for a living wage are developing across the country. The immigrant/migrant rights movement is disconnecting from the suffocating influence of the liberal establishment and rebuilding the spirit of 2006. The anti-war and anti-imperialist movements are showing new life, and Africans and Black radicals are moving toward consolidating authentic left formations under the leadership of working class organizations and movements.

But we have no illusions about what we are up against. Through its grip on communications and all of the cultural and educational institutions, the rulers are still able to convince significant numbers of workers that no alternative exists and that they can only hope for reform of the system.

Fifty years ago, worker revolts rocked the world from France to Mexico. On this day, 50 years later, let us re-dedicate ourselves to the revolutionary project that re-centers resistance to imperialist war and global structures of white supremacy as representative of a new international workers movement.

Any U.S. Attack on Syria Is International Gangsterism

April 10, 2018

Media Contact:

Ajamu Baraka

National Organizer

info@blackallianceforpeace.com

APRIL 10, 2018—The pending military intervention into Syria by the United States represents yet another case of unilateral illegality that continues the systematic assault on international law and morality that has characterized U.S. foreign policies since the end of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, when the United States found itself without any countervailing global power. The result for the people of the world has been unending military conflicts, destabilization and the destruction of whole nations.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., correctly identified exactly a year before his assassination that the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet. The 50th anniversary of his murder just passed on April 4—five decades later, the United States continues to hold that distinctive position. This reality makes any declaration on the part of the United States that it alone has the responsibility to intervene on the side of human-rights protection an absurdity and an insult to the intelligence of the national and international communities.

Today, the people of the United States are supposed to believe the racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic Trump administration is supposedly so concerned about Arab life in Syria that it feels morally compelled to engage in direct military intervention. That is a position we in the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) do not believe based on the documented actions of this administration and all previous administrations. These regimes have demonstrated their utter contempt for the lives of non-Europeans in their quest to maintain their global dominance.

U.S. support for the continued brutality of the apartheid state of Israel and its immoral justifications for Israeli crimes against humanity committed at the apartheid wall in Gaza reflect the bi-partisan moral degeneracy of the ruling parties, media and ruling oligarchy. Their lack of real concern for Palestinian life reveals not only their lack of morality, but the real imperialist interests that determine their opportunistic position on Syria.

Just a few weeks after the massive marches to address U.S. gun violence, the people of the United States are being asked to support the ultimate form of gun violence—war. For BAP, the only way the movement to oppose gun violence in the United States will have any moral credibility is if people link gun violence in the United States to militarism and war abroad.

BAP takes an unequivocal position against U.S. intervention in Syria. We say the only institution with the right and power to protect the peace and resolve international conflict is the United Nations. We condemn any and all unilateral interventions by any state and assert that any state that violates the international norms that are committed to the maintenance of peace as established by the United Nations Charter is a rogue state that deserves international condemnation.

We say if the United States is concerned about human rights, it should:

prosecute killer cops who savagely murdered Stephon Clark in Sacramento, California;
investigate the approximately 1,000 killings each year at the hands of police in the United States;
stop the mass transfer of children from juvenile courts to adult courts;
stop the militarization of its domestic police forces;
stop the raids of migrant communities;
release its political prisoners; and
cease the collaboration with the corporate media and private communication companies in its effort to censor and limit news content on the Internet.

But we know centering human rights has never been a commitment of the U.S. state. That is why BAP says if you want peace, you have to be willing to fight for it. This weekend, BAP is mobilizing with groups across the country to highlight our opposition to U.S. warmongering, demanding an end to U.S. lawlessness, calling for the closure of more than 800 U.S. military bases around the world, and ending the war against the Black and Brown working-class and poor. We support self-determination for all oppressed peoples—domestically and internationally.

Stop the ongoing agony in Syria. Demand the United States withdraw its forces from Syria and respect international law. Call for the United States to adhere to international human-rights norms and cease its status as a rogue state.