1/15/09

United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) – the nation’s largest anti-war coalition – convened our 4th National Assembly in Chicago, IL the weekend of Dec. 12 – 14, 2008. There were over 250 participants, with voting delegates representing 142 member groups in 31 states. The mood of the crowd was generally upbeat and largely unified. With a renewed commitment from our member groups, and a dramatic revitalization of our energy, we enter the New Year optimistic about the coalition’s strategic focus and the priorities for our program work.

We – the newly-elected Steering Committee of UFPJ – take our responsibility seriously and want, as one of our first acts together, to report back on the National Assembly, to review the decisions made by the coalition, and to clarify points of dispute which have subsequently been raised.  

The National Assembly is the highest decision-making body in UFPJ.  The 4th UFPJ National Assembly adopted an updated Unity Statement and Strategic Framework, as well as a comprehensive Program Document, a plan for the 6th anniversary of the Iraq war, and a “Yes We Can” campaign, spanning the period between the Jan. 15 Martin Luther King holiday and the April 4 anniversary of his prophetic “Beyond Vietnam” speech and assassination one year later.  

Decisions were made by voting delegates (up to 2 per member organization) in open plenary sessions, using a modified consensus decision making process, in which if we were unable to reach unanimous agreement, we would fall back to a supermajority vote. One measure of the level of unity throughout the Assembly is that we needed to count votes only a handful of times.  Delegates also elected a new Steering Committee.

Skills and issue workshops, breakout groups, working group sessions, and informal networking filled out the program, along with outstanding panel presentations on Friday and Saturday evenings.  One highlight was a detailed presentation by Armando Robles, the president of the local United Electrical Workers, on the events at Republic Windows and Doors, who stood on the podium with his family.  His comments reminded everyone that when people act collectively and boldly in the face of great obstacles they can succeed. The collection after his talk raised almost  $2,000 for the fund being created to help the workers and their families during this difficult period.  

We encourage everyone to look at the plans and program work to which UFPJ and its member groups are committed for the next 18 months.

All of the final documents, more detailed reports, and a list of the new Steering Committee members is available here.

• We remain committed to doing everything we can to immediately and completely end the war and occupation in Iraq. We have also elevated our commitment to end the war and occupation in Afghanistan.
• Given the nature of the current economic crisis here and around the world, our efforts must be framed in ways that make the connections between military spending/the war economy and the ways our communities suffer from the lack of needed resources.
• We are entering a period that should allow us to strengthen and build new alliances with movements for economic and social justice, and this must be a top priority if we are going to build a sustainable peace and justice movement, locally, nationally, and internationally.

The major work of the National Assembly centered on coming to agreement on UFPJ’s Unity Statement, Strategic Framework, Structure Document, Program of Action, and sixth anniversary plans. These documents, as well as a campaign that ties much of our work together over the next several months, provide the foundation for the coalition’s projected work for the next 18 months.

UFPJ’s Unity Statement spells out what brings  us together as a coalition and for what purposes the coalition works. This document has remained largely unchanged from previous versions, although it has been updated to reflect current realities. The Unity Statement continues to view the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan as the priority issues on which UFPJ will focus our work.

Please click here for a full-text version of the Unity Statement adopted at the Assembly.

The Strategic Framework is another important foundational UFPJ document, which defines the current political terrain within which the coalition pursues our work.  With the election of Barack Obama as President and a recognition that his campaign kick-started an enormous wave of energy and excitement from young people and long-disenfranchised sectors of the public, the Strategic Framework has been revised: a new terrain demands a new understanding of how we pursue our work.

This new political terrain, however, does not change UFPJ’s major strategic priority, which  has been and remains an immediate end to the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the Strategic Framework notes, ‘We cannot sit back and expect our elected leaders to change the course [of U.S. militarism] alone…Now, more than ever, we must ensure a popular mandate to end the war in Iraq and change the direction of our country.’ This can only be done with ‘broad, creative, and continuous action and pressure from the people of the United States.’ The coalition sees as its strategic goal the ‘organizing and mobilizing [the millions of people energized during the electoral season] to secure the changes so urgently needed.’

The Strategic Framework also underscores the severe economic crisis in which the U.S. finds itself.   We view this as an opportunity to explore and reveal the connections between U.S. militarism abroad and the depletion of resources at home.  Rarely before have the links between war and economic injustice been clearer, nor has the opportunity to build the movement for peace and justice been greater.

Please click here for the full-text version of the Strategic Framework adopted at the National Assembly.

The Program of Action is logically derived from the Strategic Framework.  Ours is a comprehensive and multi-layered approach to the opportunities and challenges ahead, and to really understand UFPJ’s program  we encourage you to read this document carefully.  Pulling out just one or two, or even a few, of the points in the document does not do justice to our rigorous, inclusive planning process.

Please click here for the full-text version of the Program of Action adopted at the National Assembly.

The most contentious issue addressed at the National Assembly was what plans UFPJ would adopt for the 6th anniversary of the war in Iraq.

In October, the UFPJ Steering Committee had put out a call for a mass action in Washington, D.C., around the anniversary in March. However, shortly after issuing that call, the Steering Committee re-evaluated it in light of rapidly emerging political and economic changes, and in consideration of the possibilities of engaging more effectively with a newly energized public. The Steering Committee came up with two new proposals, related to each other, to present to the National Assembly: 1) a call for nationally-coordinated local actions on March 19th; and 2) a four-month long ‘Yes We Can…’ campaign leading up to a major mobilization in New York City on April 4th, the anniversary of Dr. King’s ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech at NYC’s Riverside Church in 1967 and his assassination a year later.

Some UFPJ member groups submitted another proposal for 6th anniversary actions, including a call for UFPJ to join with other groups in a mass march in Washington, D.C. in mid-March.  These proposals were presented, discussed, debated and decided using the same open, modified consensus process as other proposals.

The voting delegates to the National Assembly, however, by an overwhelming majority, adopted the Steering Committee’s proposal for local sixth anniversary actions, with the ‘Yes We Can…’ campaign also adopted in a later vote. The call for local actions on March 19th is now an integral part of the ‘Yes We Can…’ campaign.

Please click here for a full-text version of the sixth anniversary document adopted at the National Assembly.

For those who did not have the chance to attend the National Assembly, we want to clarify the thinking behind the ‘Yes We Can…’ campaign.

In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Dr. King gave voice to the fact that the war in Vietnam was not only an attack on poor people in the U.S. – with its draft of disadvantaged young men as fodder for an illegal immoral war and the accompanying diversion of resources from domestic needs – but also an unjustified, barbaric attack on innocent Vietnamese civilians. This bridge – viewing with extreme clarity the ‘glaring contrast between poverty and wealth’ both at home and abroad – was the impetus that ignited Dr. King’s very public opposition to the war in Vietnam and his attempts to organize a Poor People’s Movement towards the final days of his life.

UFPJ has come to this recognition from a much different angle than King did, with the coalition’s focus to date mainly on U.S. foreign aggression rather than social and economic injustice at home. What has often been vague in UFPJ’s repeated calls for social and economic justice now becomes explicit in the ‘Yes We Can…’ campaign: U.S. militarism abroad, economic injustice at home and racism – as Dr. King labeled them, “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism” --  are closely connected and cannot be struggled against in isolation from each other.

The ‘Yes We Can…’ campaign seeks to end this isolation. To do so does not mean backtracking from our unceasing focus on ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor viewing them as anything other than morally and legally reprehensible. Instead, it means to start reaching out to communities with which we – as a coalition – have not had as much interaction as we would like.

The UFPJ ‘Yes We Can…’ campaign flows directly from the Strategic Framework and Program of Action. With a new political terrain – due more to the wave of energy and excitement from young people, people of color, working-class people, etc., than to the incoming Obama administration – the campaign seeks to organize and mobilize the base of people inspired by the Obama campaign and its most progressive promises. This is, in fact, a building block towards mass action on a scale much larger than ever before.

Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and preventing new wars anywhere can only happen by strengthening our organizing and expanding our base. We have done tremendous work over the past six years raising the level of people’s consciousness about both wars and turning public opinion sharply against at least one of them. What is needed now is to turn this public opinion into public action, to ensure that the Obama administration hears and acts on the demands of its base of supporters.

The ‘Yes We Can…’ campaign, like Dr. King more than forty years ago, aspires to such goals.

Please click here for the full-text version of the ‘Yes We Can…’ campaign adopted at the National Assembly.