Posted on 04/14/2008 1:44:00 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
What comes to mind when you think of the United States peace movement? Cindy Sheehan? Code Pink? Berkeley? Those are all important players in the current U.S. movement for peace in Iraq, and their brave and tireless contributions should be commended. But many others around the country have also been voicing their desire for true peace and justice since before the war on Iraq began.
And not all of them are white.
One such grouping, which I have had the privilege to be part of these past five years, is the Strength in Unity contingent. Made of people and organizations of color in the San Francisco Bay Area, we came together in 2002 to march and protest against the war.
Why would people and organizations of color feel the need to march together in a separate contingent at the antiwar demonstrations? The quick answer is: because there’s Strength in Unity! Our shared histories and voices merit a specific safe space that only we can define together. Many of us come from refugee and immigrant communities that have experienced the brunt of U.S. military intervention and occupation. Many of us have ancestral roots that can be traced back to U.S. slavery and indigenous genocide and displacement. Like Iraqi women, children, and men, many of our peoples know too well what the rape, torture, murder, bombs, chemical weapons, and invasion and control of U.S. forces look like.
Take my story: I am Vietnamese American. Less than 40 years ago the U.S. tried to bomb my people back to the Stone Age, as U.S. General Curtis LeMay declared, for standing up for Viet Nam’s sovereignty and resisting U.S. occupation and influence. My working-class mother – a single parent – is a refugee from this U.S. war on Viet Nam and has worked in a factory here in the States for nearly 30 years making no more than 12 dollars an hour. It wasn’t until I was 24 years old that my mother spoke of the consequences of war, describing how she had to suck an orange peel to stay alive coming to the States.
When I recently learned that four million Iraqis have been uprooted since the war began, I immediately thought of my refugee mother and the suffering and trauma she endured from the U.S. war not long ago. It is from these kinds of real memories of U.S. war and terror that we come together in Strength in Unity. It is from ongoing struggles we experience living in the States that we also unite as people and communities of color for immigrant rights, affordable housing, better schools, free healthcare, and fair employment. We connect the issues we face here to the war in Iraq knowing it is out of this world for the U.S. to spend trillions of dollars on an illegal war while 37 million Americans live in poverty and over 47 million live without health insurance. In the wise rhymes of Tupac Shakur: “They got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor.” This on top of unjust deportations, raids, and detentions that many families in our communities have suffered through since 9/11.
So here we are, marking the fifth anniversary of the war. Like the wider peace movement, Strength in Unity has experienced its own ebbs and flows. At the height of the ANSWER-sponsored demonstrations in 2003 and 2004 more than a thousand of us marched together, led by the beat of Korean drummers and the music of Loco Bloco. This year our contingent was about 300 people strong, much smaller than prior marches, but a microcosm of our dire state of affairs where people don’t feel it makes a difference to march. I empathize with this feeling because those in power have proven that they will act in arrogance and with total disregard of what most Americans desire. But, there’s a real spirited and contagious energy when our contingent is out in the street stomping feet, pumping fists, and chanting songs. Organized by Bayan USA and the International League of People’s Struggle, our contingent this year included more than ten Bay Area youth and community organizations representing Arab community members, Asian and Pacific Islander youth, no and low-wage workers of color, Filipino students, Latina women, children and youth, and white allies. Some women from the community group Mujeres Unidas y Activas brought along their young children.
A young Latina mother pushed her 18-month-old daughter in a stroller while her young son, no more than six years old, followed nearby. They walked the entire 2.5 miles of the march. Seeing this helped me realize how critical it is for us people of color to continue to march and voice our opposition to the war, especially now when no clear signs of better days are near.
While I came to the fifth anniversary of the war to march for peace in Iraq and for its peoples, I left understanding that it’s not just about them. It’s about us – people of color – marching for our mothers, our fathers, our brothers, our sisters, our children, our ancestors. We march to remind ourselves that we are still sane, that we haven’t lost all hope for humanity.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony V. Nguyen (tvnguyen@afsc.org) is the Asian and Pacific American community program coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee (afsc.org) in Oakland. A member of VietUnity (vietunity.org), a progressive Vietnamese community group, Nguyen helped organize Strength in Unity contingents with the Asian and Pacific Islander Coalition Against War (apicaw.com) from 2002 to 2007.
Well, you gotta admit though, "people of white" is less offensive that "whited people".
Those who march for peace wear the uniforms of our armed forces - not pink!!
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