before i lose my style

marshmallowmegamama:

palestinian/palestinian solidarity

the one really useful workshop/thought process that was opened up at the counter summit was exactly what NATO is and what it has to do with communities both in the US and throughout the world. and how NATO uses the language of human rights to conduct horrific military campaigns throughout the world and how NATO’s actions have gone largely unchecked because of the corporate media’s *use* of the language of human rights (and you should be thinking here about how military intervention in libya is being positioned as a human right’s intervention and how many human rights orgs in the US alone have called for military intervention in support of human rights—most specifically Ms. and other *F*eminist organizations calling for NATO intervention in afghanistan on behalf of “poor oppressed women” being terrorized by the taliban).

there were *tons* of non-US based organizations at the protest and doing work around anti-NATO military intervention, and i think that is probably the biggest most serious lack of reporting being done by corporate media—and where the US being the 1% of the world really plays out. I wasn’t really that interested in this protest—I went, but I was mostly going for local community building efforts, not for the march. It wasn’t until I was at the march and attended the workshop at the summit that i began to see that the fact that I *don’t KNOW* what a devastating thing NATO is to SO many communities of color throughout the world makes me a dangerous ally.

I’ve always been against all of the wars the US fought in, I have particularly focused on supporting the women of  Afghanistan and Arab women in pointing out that bombing somebody has never saved anybody—but I never really understood the role NATO plays in the context of globalization, war, violence against and control of communities of color, or the destabilization of left leaning governments throughout the world.

NATO is not a peacekeeping force. and I really don’t think anybody in the US can act in solidarity with anybody outside of the US until we get hip to that.

(Source: iinventedeverything)