Hot Off The Press: The Abolitionist Issue 42 on anti-war organizing!

 

 

ISSUE 42 LETTER from the EDITORS

 

Dearest Readers,

 

2024 has turned out to be a trying year of more grief for our communities and movements globally. As we bring this issue into the translation and design phases of our editorial process (in October-November)—after a year of Israel’s all-out bombardment on Gaza, courtesy of US taxes and military aid—apartheid Israel has now expanded its Zionist crusade into southern Lebanon, targeting and decimating hospitals and historic places of worship and deploying white phosphorous bombs. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump duked it out in another US presidential race between two warmongering parties. Critical Resistance (CR) anticipated how regardless of the results, the military industrial complex (MIC) and the prison industrial complex (PIC) will continue to expand in the coming years. Since winning, Trump has already pledged his first orders once he takes office in January 2025, slashing checks to his power, gutting the existing meager social welfare net, deploying military forces against communities in the US, and mass deportations. We at CR see a harrowing horizon before us, thus figure insights into anti-war victories and strategies are as timely a need and offering for PIC abolitionists to study now as ever.

 

In the US, we’ve seen the biggest anti-war protests in the past year since the US war on Iraq, though you wouldn’t know this from watching mainstream media. The mass student protests and encampments for Gaza and Palestinian liberation have formed the largest student protest movement of the 21st century so far, according to Vox, even though this past year’s protests have not yet reached the scale of the student movements against the US’s war on Vietnam in the late 1960s or of movements against South African apartheid in the 1980s. For 14 months and counting, communities and organizations around the world have hit the streets and mobilized direct actions, mass gatherings, and civil disobedience to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire and now a full arms embargo of apartheid-Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign to wipe Palestinians out of Gaza. Calls to unite against the global war machine and for solidarity with the peoples of Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) specifically have also (re)emerged in anti-war conversations.

 

Across the continent of Africa and into the Middle East, the US has had an active hand in thwarting independence movements and revolutionary advances since the late 1800s; the US has backed military coups and dictatorships and incited war through political and economic instability to secure western imperialism’s control of regional resources and raw materials, as mentioned in this issue’s feature analysis article—a cutting discussion between Susan Kingsland, Daz Park, and Khury Petersen-Smith with movement partners War Resisters League and Dissenters on how to cohere an anti-war movement in the 21st century. Amidst a resurging anti-war resistance in the US, with “Free Palestine” at the helm, we’re currently seeing a riptide of legacies from US and European imperialism in Sudan and the DRC, resulting in escalated violence from military occupation and some of the world’s most severe refugee, food, health, and land crises yet as tens of millions of people combined are forced from their homes and on the brink of starvation.

 

Israel’s military occupation to maintain itself as a “laboratory” for the world stage on settler colonialism, repressive strategies, social control, punishment, torture, and ethnic cleansing)—Sudan, too, is rich in arable land, ample agricultural opportunities, a young labor force, and several natural resources—including natural gas, gold, zinc, iron, aluminum, granite, and cobalt (used, for example, in rechargeable batteries for iPhones and in “green” technologies for electric cars). The DRC has an estimated $24 trillion in value of untapped mineral deposits (including cobalt) and is also home to more than 70 percent of the world’s coltan, which is processed into tantalum, a metal used in electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops, and military equipment. The violence that has erupted in both Sudan and the DRC in the past year is a byproduct of the “green colonialism” akin to Israel’s greenwashing (as explored previously in Issue 41), as both lands are ravaged through extractive, inhumane and exploitative labor practices for the sake of “green” and “environmentally friendly” products for First-World consumers.

 

CR understands that the struggle for ecological justice to save the planet from hastening climate collapse, as explored in our previous issue, is an intersecting struggle not only to abolish PIC but also the MIC—hence why we selected these two feature topics for 2024’s issues. The US military, for starters, has the largest military in the world with the largest military presence internationally, currently standing at more than 750 military bases in over 80 countries and is the world’s largest consumer of oil and producer of greenhouse gases. Weapons testing sites, training areas, bases, bombings, and combat not only annihilate lives by killing people, animals and plant life but also destroy the land, air, and water—the life force of the planet for generations and ecosystems to come. We no longer see only one war to stop: rather, late-stage capitalism, with US imperialism in the driver’s seat, is waging a constant war—through low-to-high- grade warfare—on our communities worldwide and on our right to live and live well every day.

 

Issue 42 on anti-war organizing is dedicated to Masai Ehehosi, a longtime Black freedom fighter, a co-founder of CR, and the organization’s longest-standing member to date, who unexpectedly passed away in April this year. A veteran drafted and coerced to fight in the US’s war on Vietnam during the GI and Black Power movements, Masai had over 50 years of struggle in liberation movements under his belt. For this issue’s feature reflection, we shed light on how Masai’s contributions to PIC abolition fall within a broader commitment to anti-war resistance. Moving within this tradition, we chose to work with contributing authors and organizations who wage campaigns and struggles that resist the PIC and MIC by challenging militarism, militarization, and US imperialism, to consider how abolitionist strategies can abolish the PIC and the MIC.

 

Many of the feature articles, then, detail past and current campaigns against initiatives like deadly exchange policing programs from California to Georgia as shared by “A” with the Demilitarize Atlanta 2 Palestine coalition and CR’s campaign director Mohamed Shehk, as well as the layered impacts of US military occupation in Hawai’i with the international campaign to cancel RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific Exercise) and youth organizers resisting military recruitment of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander youth in the islands, as explained by Misty Pegram and Tia Marie. Seeking wins against military weapons testing and trainings sites, we then turn from the Pacific to the Atlantic and Caribbean, uplifting the four-decades-long people’s struggle to expel the US Navy from Vieques, Puerto Rico in a historic interview with intergenerational members of Alianza de Mujeres Viequenses.

 

Feature action articles continue with Lara Witt and Maya Schenwar of Media Against Apartheid and Displacement, who consider how journalism has been used to resist war and genocide—as we see now in the radical and brave work of countless journalists and media organizers worldwide who cover Israel’s genocidal assault of Gaza despite Israel’s continued targeted assassinations and censor- ship of journalists. We also offer a look into warmaking as an essential feature of neoliberalism and capitalism in a combined piece from author Dawn Marie Paley and imprisoned contributor Ricardo Vela Jr as their research and parallel personal reflection explore the war on drugs, border militarism, and possibilities for the anti-war movement in its current resurgence, from opposite sides of the US-Mexico border.

 

Because this issue is heavy, and times are tough, we also include two feature resources: a mental health and trauma therapy tool to regulate your nervous systems and any post-traumatic stress that may be triggered while reading this issue, and a factsheet on the costs of the US’s post-9/11 wars, homelessness, and veterans, which highlights connections between the “war at home and the war abroad.” Please keep in mind when reading any of the feature articles, that the editorial collective works with several authors to generate content and completes con- tent editing from August through the beginning of October, so some data, statistics, or figures may change slightly once subscribers receive the paper.

 

Lastly, most of our columns return this issue, including Kites to the Editors, “Until All are Free” on political prisoner news, the Inside-Outside Fishing Line—this time a cross-wall conversation on the impacts of imprisonment on families—and part two of Stevie Wilson’s conversations with young men in prison on guns and safety for 9971. (Also note that we’ve changed the CR Updates and Movement Highlights column to a shorter CR Bulletin with quick announcements again, to save more space in this issue for feature articles. This issue’s “Abby Throwback” is included in Masai’s feature reflection tribute.)

 

2025 brings 20 years of CR publishing The Abolitionist—that’s right! Two decades of radical, cross-wall, abolitionist political education and publishing. We’ll be celebrating with a cross-wall strategy and power building summit Fall 2025. Check out the CR Bulletin and share your input and your interest in the planning by responding to our questionnaire on page 25 (Send it back to CR’s The Abolitionist Project Coordinator, Molly Porzig, by February 2025 or so). We’d love to collaborate with you. Also check out the Call for Content on page 26 to submit writing or art for Issues 43 and 44.

 

Onward for a life worth living,

-Critical Resistance & The Abolitionist Editorial Collective

 

List of Contributors

CONTRIBUTORS

• A
• Bonnie Kerness
• Bryce Huber
• Dawn Marie Paley
• Daz Park
• Diana Ramos Gutierrez
• Ibrahim Sharif
• J Kayne
• James “Jimbo” Clark
• Jaycia Diamond Foster
• Joseph Nichols
• Katherine Martinez Medina
• Khury Petersen-Smith
• Lara Witt
• Leo Cardez
• Mariana Iriarte Mastronardo
• Masai Ehehosi
• Maya Schenwar
• Misty Pegram
• Mohamed Shehk
• Rameek Page
• Rene Goddard
• Ricardo Vela Jr
• Robert Pattenson
• Ronald Cundiff
• Stevie Wilson
• Susan Kingsland
• Tia Marie
• Zaida Torres

 

ARTISTS

• Aaron Hughes
• Alec Dunn
• Asha Edwards
• Brooke Anderson
• Elena House-Hay
• Fernando Marti
• Grea Rosa
• Ivan Arenes
• Josh MacPhee
• Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative
• Luke Thomas
• Melanie Cervantes
• Roger Ourthiague
• Sarah Farahat
• Xinachtl

 

THE ABOLITIONIST EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE

• Billy Ray Boyer
• Dylan Brown
• Jess Ho
• Liz Atkins-Pattenson
• Luigi Celentano
• Mar Golub
• Molly Porzig
• Rehana Lerandeau
• Susana Draper

 

TRANSLATOR

• Luigi Celentano
• Lorena Alemán Aróstegui
• Maje Martínez Soto
• Verónica Musa

 

DESIGNER

• William Ramirez

 

COPY EDITORS

• Anna Stratton
• Chiara Bercu
• Chris Gang
• Conrad Wolfe
• Julia Duray
• Kristen Haven
• Letecia Garcia
• Mason Mimi Yadira
• Muneeza Rizvi
• Ramsey McGlazer
• Sharone Carmona
• Tess Rankin

 

TRANSCRIBERS

• Amara Santos
• Ann Meyer
• Ava Wallace
• Bonnie Feldberg
• Chiara Bercu
• Christina Hang
• Claire Clayton
• Deborah Soung
• Monica Kim
• Neko Javaheri
• Nina Posner