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Mission Statement

• promote peace in the world by opposing the threat and use of force, especially military operations and other punitive measures, such as sanctions, that harm innocent civilians;
• oppose racially- and religiously-motivated violence and intolerance around the world and prevent the targeting of any ethnic and religious groups in the United States;
• promote United States foreign and domestic policies founded on principles of political and economic justice for all people;
• oppose the curtailment of civil liberties in the name of national security and countering terrorism.

It is time to end the cycle of violence. Our current attack on Afghanistan is morally wrong and likely to have dangerous consequences. Despite attempts to mitigate its effects, such as dropping food alongside bombs, military intervention can only do more harm than good. Even more frightening are threats of expanding the war to other countries, or even the use of 'low-level' nuclear weapons.

The attack on the WTC was a heinous and unjustified crime that does not serve any positive interest. Along with the rest of the nation and the world, we grieve for the lives lost and the suffering caused by this attack. But attempts to paint the bombings as an attack on 'freedom' and 'democracy' blur the issue and feed into the very cycle of violence that the bombers hope to stoke. Groups around the world, including some that engage in violence, dislike or hate the United States not because the country is a 'beacon' of freedom but because of concrete policies that the U.S. pursues around the globe - these policies have all too often been immoral and violent. A military response only sows the seeds for future attacks and results in the deaths of more innocent people.

To understand the context of the WTC bombings, we must reject the false dichotomy between 'legitimate' acts of violence - committed by the U.S. and allied states - and 'terrorism'. We must be willing to examine, for example, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people killed in the Gulf War and the subsequent ten years of sanctions and bombings, the victims of the United States' inexplicable 1999 bombing of Sudan, or the thousands of civilians killed in Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and weigh their lives on the same scale that we weigh those of the victims in New York City. We must not accept as 'collateral damage' the innocent civilians who are dying in Afghanistan or those people who will suffer and die because of the damage that the United States military and U.S. policies are doing to their country.

Questioning this dichotomy is not easy. The perception that U.S.-supported violence is legitimate is reinforced by misinformation from the U.S. government and the media. We must also recognize that the perception of difference is reinforced by conscious and unconscious racism and cultural biases.

But questioning the dichotomy is crucial. We must realize that strident calls for 'revenge' and accepting 'collateral damage' lead to a path that is morally equivalent to the actions of the bombers themselves. And we must understand that other groups view events through their own lenses. Just as many in the U.S. feel that the WTC bombings 'justify' a violent response, there will be those who will believe such a violent response itself 'justifies' further attacks, perpetuating the cycle of violence.

We must recognize that the enemy is violence, and not attempt to divide the world into 'good' and 'evil' users of violence. We must work to end the cycle of violence.

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