Current context/common visions: Building antiwar strategy in the Obama era

We will engage participants in a dialogue on strategies for antimilitarist organizing in the U.S. At the beginning of the session, facilitators will lead activities in which participants will analyze the current landscape for antiwar organizing. This includes the complexities of living in the Obama era, the TEA party movement, and the relationship between the current economic collapse and U.S. militarism. Following this will be a discussion of current U.S. wars and occupations and the increasing trend towards privatization in the military. From there, participants will assess antiwar and antimilitarist organizing strategies that were used during the Bush era and those that are still used today, including G.I. resistance support, counter-recruitment, mass mobilization, and grassroots antiwar base-building. Through exercises and case studies, the larger group will engage questions about what worked well then, what continues to work well, and how we can update our strategies in response to current conditions. The goal of this session will be to get people engaged in a participatory dialogue about concrete steps that we can take to build effective organizing strategies and to plug more people into antimilitarist organizing.