National Conference on Other Wars aires live on Uhuru News

Black is Back Coalition Call for a
"National Conference on the Other Wars"

The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (BIBC) is calling on all honest, freedom loving opponents to war and imperialism to attend our National Conference on the Other Wars, scheduled for March 26 in Washington, D.C.

We are compelled to call this conference because of the growing oppression of black and other oppressed people within the U.S. itself, and because the Peace Movement, which is usually led by the white left all over the world, is one that, generally speaking, addresses the issues of war and peace depending on their immediate or potential impact on the interests of North Americans or Europeans. Too often the anti-war movement positions itself as a “loyal opposition” engaged in anti-war activity as a means of registering disagreement with a particular war as a policy decision of one or another U.S. Administration.

In this way they liquidate the fact that imperialism is not a policy, but a system that necessarily breeds war. This view of war as simply a policy also means that too often the European and North American left only recognizes those wars that are declared significant by the imperialist themselves.

Such wars are those currently initiated against Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and constantly threatened against Iran and Korea. In addition, various organizations within the peace movement engage in anti-war activities primarily to build their own organizations.

Our view is that it is not enough to just be for peace. We see wars like those in Iraq or Afghanistan, as symptoms of imperialism itself.

Black is Back is also opposed to imperialist peace, one that does not disturb the relations of power between the oppressed and the war-mongering imperialist oppressor.

Black is Back is not just about opposing a particular policy of imperialism; we are about opposing imperialism itself.

The essential wars that imperialism has been making have been wars against the black and the non-white world. These are generally wars that are not acknowledged by the imperialists. Consequently they are generally war without terms and most often they are wars against Africans and others whose domination is essential to the continuing existence of imperialism as a system.

That’s why the white left does not deal with Congo, or Haiti, except as hapless victims, and that’s why they don’t deal with what happens throughout Africa where African people are dying like flies every day. They don’t deal with the U.S. government intervening in Colombia, the African and Mexican people who are being killed, imprisoned and persecuted right here in the United States, and they don’t deal with the Native Indian people who've been forced to live on death-camps they call reservations.

The Black is Back Coalition believes that these “Other Wars” are the real wars, that these are the wars that have to do with the actual construction of imperialism that still perpetuates a parasitic relationship between Europe and the vast majority of people on earth, especially in Africa, throughout much of Asia and the South Pacific, South America and within Europe and North America as well.

We believe that most of the wars being waged represent resistance to imperialism; they represent a contest between the oppressed and the oppressor. Therefore, it is the position of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations that all justice loving people who are genuinely opposed to war must also support victory of the oppressed over their oppressors.

Therefore, the Black is Back Coalition calls on all Africans and other people--youth, students, immigrants, trade unionist, and community and human rights activists – and all those opposed to imperialist violence and oppression to join us in raising up to public view these Other Wars that are wreaking havoc on so many of us throughout the world. Attend the “National Conference on the Other Wars” on the weekend of March 26, 2011, in Washington, D.C.

Black is Back!