Our Findings: Youth Speak 2 antiwar mvt
We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For…
Youth Voices on the Future of the Anti-War Movement
What happens when Iraq veterans and youth & student peace leaders gather to strategize on ending the war?
[You can download this doc HERE]
From July 7-10 2006, young members of Iraq Veterans Against the War and Military Families Speak Out, student peace leaders, youth organizers and antiracist activists from across the nation came together at the Highlander Center in rural Tennessee. This magical spot—with its long history of nurturing strategies and leadership for the Civil Rights movement, union work and other struggles—became a site of profound alliance building, strategic conversation and insight about the future of the anti-war movement.
We shared meals, campfire songs and stories: about where we were on 9/11, on March 20th 2003, on November 3rd 2004, key moments in our young political lives. We shared stories from time served in the military in Iraq, from the Zapatista’s “Otra Campaña,” from post-Katrina organizing in New Orleans, to accounts of kicking recruiters off campus, to what we organized on February 15th 2003. We had conversations about the big stuff: alliance building, organizing, racism, burnout, faith, and our futures….we talked and talked, often till the dawn broke over the Smoky Mountains. And we worked together at the task of developing generational strategies to end the War in Iraq and to demilitarize our future.
This Collaborative was convened by STORY (Strategy, Training and Organizing Resources for Youth), the youth program of smartMeme, a multi-issue holistic strategy and training organization. The STORY Collaborative To End the War in Iraq was designed to build relationships and strengthen a peer network of young adults (representing more than 25 organizations) who can innovate, experiment, develop strategies, and support each other in building the US anti-war movement for the long haul. Iraq Veterans Against the War, War Resisters League, and Student/Farmworker Alliance were the STORY Collaborative partner organizations.
I) STORY Collaborative Frameworks
The STORY Collaborative was convened because the voices of young people are crucial in strategy development, and building shared stories deepens our relationships and thus our movement. In January 2006, smartMeme was approached by several of our youth led partner groups who felt they needed space to address the deep strategy and alliance building questions that are central to stopping the Iraq war and changing the direction of US foreign policy. The STORY Collaborative to End the War in Iraq was born, and was convened with two over arching and interrelated frameworks at its core: Alliance Building and Story-Based Strategy.
1. Alliance Building For Movement Building
We worked to find our common ground through the principle of Alliance Building for Movement Building. Riffing off of the “Alliance Building Frameworks” model developed by the Movement Strategy Center we accepted that “to build a movement we have to think outside of our organizations and coalitions,” and to “start where you agree and work your way out.”
The STORY Collaborative specifically brought together 3 key sectors, crudely lumped as follows: 1. Young members of military families, conscientious objectors, and young Iraq veterans against the war 2. Young people working for the rights of immigrants and doing anti-violence, demilitarization, and counter recruitment work in low-income areas and communities of color 3. Young people and students working in the traditional, mostly white, “peace movement.”
2. Story Based Strategy
This second framework came from smartMeme’s work on “story-based strategy.” Story-based strategy places storytelling at the center of social change by linking movement building with an analysis of the narratives that structure power. The current administration has used narrative power to deceive and manipulate; their story of the War on Terror (WMDs, democratization, etc.) and various re-branding efforts for their occupation of Iraq are unraveling stories that are increasingly seen as lies.
SmartMeme’s strategy work in the realm of narrative is based on the premise that stories are central to how humans understand the world, and thus stories are embedded with power--both the power to justify the status quo and the power to make change imaginable and necessary. A “narrative power analysis” unmasks the assumptions that operate behind the dominant stories in our culture(s). While storytelling is an ancient practice and a cornerstone of any great organizing campaign, the story-based strategy framework refines this practice in the context of 24/7 news cycles and an age of information saturation, and applies “meme” theory to the present social change context. Story-based strategies aim to change the stories through integrated organizing, messaging, and campaigning.
The STORY Collaborative started from the premise that an organizing strategy to stop the war must reclaim our stories, call out the war maker’s make-believe stories, and craft new narratives about peace and a future worth fighting for. Then we asked, “What’s our story?” The story-based strategy approach centered storytelling as a key element of the Collaborative’s strategizing and alliance building work.
II) STORY Collaborative Findings: Sparks to Light Many Fires
1. Sharing Our Stories Builds Strong Alliances
The first finding is that the two frameworks are profoundly linked and powerful when used in harmony with one another. Sharing our stories brings us together in deeper relationship and alliance. Our stories matter: we come into this work as whole people – with different histories, experiences, scars, stories, and ideas. We have different relationships with the war in Iraq and with the history of US imperialism. Understanding our own histories and location in relationship to the war is essential, and making space to share these stories is movement-building work. The intersection of story-based strategy and alliance building is a key lesson for our STORY Collaborative model.
2. Challenging White Supremacy and Oppression In Our Movements
As the Peoples’ Institute for Survival and Beyond explains in their Principles of Antiracist Organizing: Racism is the single most critical barrier to building effective coalitions for social change and Militarism must be recognized as applied racism. It is the force that maintains the current imbalance of power.
A lack of shared analysis of how White Supremacy operates, in the system of militarism and inside our anti-war movement, is holding us back. We must critically analyze this war within a historical context of imperialism and colonization through a racial and gendered lens, and understand it as structural violence and systemic oppression – in Iraq and in our communities. We are inside the system of racism, and must actively work to challenge it in our lives and practice. Building a “culture of strategy” in our movements is building what Dr. Martin Luther King called a “beloved community” in our movements- a community that actively works to undo racism with love, struggle, and solidarity.
3. Creative Communication! New Words, Memes & Mediums for Changing Times
The Collaborative struggled with the terms “peace movement” and “anti-war movement.” They are movements we proudly inherit, but there was much discussion of a holistic approach to ending this war calling for another name. While we believe in peace, the word has been stolen from us and given new meanings. To paraphrase Dr. King, peace must be not just the absence of conflict, but also the presence of justice. We were hungry for new words to name our approach, and new symbols and icons to communicate our vision. What do we call a holistic, multi-issue, de-militarization movement, that collaborates at the intersections of peace and justice in 2006? What does this look like in images? Sound like in songs? What mediums do we use to share our story (podcasting, YouTubing, blogging etc.)?
4. Solidarity with Iraq Veterans and Military Families
The role of Iraq Veterans and Military Families is critical, and other sectors of the peace movement need to support the development of these organizations and their leaders. Relationships and trust need to be developed between members of these organizations and other anti-war individuals. Bridging strategies need to be examined by anti-war activists in order to effectively work in concert with the diversity of people who are against the Iraq war, and undertake the development of tactical plans that incorporate everyone’s voice and ideas, especially Iraq Vets and their families.
5. (Counter) Recruiting for Movement Building: Out of Iraq, A Future Free of War
Counter Recruitment work is an important grassroots, youth based strategy, and needs the support of the traditionally white-peace-and-justice-Baby-Boomer set. That support must be given in a collaborative way, and a way that empowers young people, particularly young people of color, to do the peer-to-peer work of offering another vision, and actual alternatives, to high-school age youth. We need to be doing more than saying, “The recruiters are lying!” We need to be speaking and manifesting our truth, and offering young people options for another way to pursue dreams…another story to believe in and belong to as part of the broader peace movement.
What if we went to local businesses, farms, non-profits, and schools and asked people, “Are you against the Iraq War?” And if they say yes, asking, “Would you give a young person who is considering joining the service a job/apprenticeship/internship, or even afternoon of your time to talk about how you got where you are today, without having to serve in an illegal war?”
What if we networked these young people and community leaders together, and started to make a political statement that we want to build opportunities for our youth that keep them home and out of harms’ way in Iraq? The peace movement can undertake a program of mutual mentorship at the community level, and explicitly understand this is anti-war work. This can include local peace activists creating directories of potential college scholarships, job training programs, alternative education, potential mentors, as well as recruiting young people towards alternatives like healing spaces of dance, art, spoken work, writing, farming—places to connect, to share their stories, be validated, and build community. The Collaborative found a lot of synergy around this vision for demilitarizing our generation.
6. Healing: Moving Our Grief Into Hope and Action
Iraq Veterans Against War operates on the idea that you have to be well in order to be effective in ending the war. For many Iraq veterans and military family members, healing is often what brings them to peace work. In working together, they build a family with each other, connect with people who truly understand their experience and can give them guidance and advice in their healing and activist work. These Veterans and military family members have created and developed a way to move their grief into action and do the work as a way to survive. Their peace work is a form of collective healing.
Veteran or civilian, we are all grieving the state of this world in our own ways. Grief is a process we don’t have to do alone! As young activists, we at the Collaborative shared a sense that when we work overtime and lose our sense of wonder and hope for actualizing change, we can burn out. This means we need to work in ways that are strategic and effective, as well as nurturing. If we can channel our grief together we can transform that energy into action. We recognize that you have to be well in order to be effective in ending the war and that healing work is integral to organizing.
7. Intergenerational Solidarity & Mutual Mentorship: We Need Each Other!
This struggle is like a relay race--you run as far as you can, and then
you pass the stick on.
--- Lena Taylor, Mississippi Association of State Employees
We 20-somethings came of age as the Internet exploded, the World Trade Center collapsed and the War on Terror went prime time on 300 channels. This is our world.
We ask our elders in the progressive community and peace movement to offer us your solidarity. Tell us your stories, and offer us your trust. Let us take the risks we need to take – these times demand it of us. Support us as leaders, listen to our stories, ask us what we think about antiwar strategy, and what we are doing to work for peace.
To our elders, we ask you to support us, mentor us, push us, work with us. We need to work through ageism together in a process of collaboration and mutual mentorship.
To our peers, we say that we are all carrying a lot of weight on our shoulders, and we can carry the load easier when we work together. The world is in trouble, and no one is going to fix it for us. We’ve got to get each other’s back, support each other’s struggles, and step forward together.
It is time for us to take risks. Its time for us to claim our space. We see the STORY Collaborative retreat at Highlander as a hearth fire burning, our campfire as a literal epicenter, that can offer flame to light many fires everywhere, in the imaginations and hearts of young people who dream of a better world of peace and justice. We offer you these sparks….
You are the ones you’ve been waiting for…
III) Next Steps for the STORY Collaborative
Members of the STORY Collaborative are currently working on producing videoblogs and podcasts for distribution on the web about our time together in Highlander.
♣ Check out our video-blog at youTube
♣ Become our myspace friend!
Coming out of the STORY Collaborative, there was lots of energy to work on the Not Your Solider project and cultivate a national network of counter-recruitment leaders, and local and national directories of alternatives to the military. Meanwhile, MFSO and IVAW are also mobilizing to the polls with the rallying cry “Out of Iraq or Out of Office!” The STORY Collaborative crew will continue to be in networked relationship on specific projects and campaigns, as well as the larger task of anti-war strategy development. But we need your support to keep logs on this fire!
* The STORY Collaborative needs your support TODAY. Your contribution can keep this Collaborative of young leaders strategizing and working together for peace. It is you who are the “funders” of the peace movement. Your $5 - $500 can help us carry this work forward. Please give at http://www.smartmeme.com
IV) Many Thanks To:
• All friends and family who offered monetary solidarity to make the Highlander retreat, and getting our ‘peeps to TN possible!
• Collaborative core partners: Iraq Veterans Against the War, War Resisters League, Student/Farmworker Alliance!
• Celia Alario and the crew at Sir, No Sir!
• The Funding Exchange , for an emergency grant of $1,000 towards the costs of this gathering
• All the awesome cooks and other folks at Highlander!
• Our dynamo facilitation team: Kenny Bailey from the Design Studio 4 Social Intervention, Doyle Canning from smartMeme, Xiomara Castro from Arts in Action and the Ella Baker Center, and Maryrose Dolezal from the Nonviolent Youth Collective of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
• All the young bright wonderful peacemakers who participated in the Collaborative
• Everyone who has supported and believed in smartMeme’s vision and work…
V) About smartMeme: Changing the Story
The smartMeme Strategy and Training Project was founded in 2002 to support struggles for justice, peace, democracy and ecological sanity. We develop and apply narrative power analysis and story-based strategies to build grassroots movements for change. SmartMeme is a non-profit collective of people of who believe in imagination, organizing, creative action and the power of stories to change the world for the better. We bring combined decades of experience in grassroots movements, as well as training the fields of advertising, advocacy, organizing, film & broadcast, ecology, and education.
STORY (Strategy, Training & Organizing Resources 4 Youth) is smartMeme’s youth training, leadership, and movement building program. In the last four years, smartMeme has conducted over 100 trainings and workshops for thousands of grassroots activists all over the US. Through our curriculum, strategy consulting, facilitation, and the story-based strategy framework, we work to nurture a culture of strategy in grassroots social change movements. We think our times demand we be better strategists, build bigger movements, and tell better stories.
SmartMeme is a national strategy center for holistic movement building, and a one-stop-shop for movement based strategy consultation, messaging, meeting planning and facilitation, communications and design.
Visit us at www.smartmeme.com | 415- 255- 9133