Where's the color in the antiwar movement? Organizers connect the war abroad to the one at home.(FEATURE)

THE OCCUPATION IN IRAQ is going on its sixth year and so are the antiwar demonstrations. While people of color can be seen at the demonstrations, it remains largely a white movement. But in a war where people of color and working-class communities are impacted the most ($720 million dollars spent on the war each day) some activists are asking, as Betita Martinez did many years ago about the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle: where is the color in the antiwar movement?

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Organizers of color in the movement acknowledge that the movement itself does not have the broadest support in the United States. But they cite other reasons for the absence of people of color, specifically that many activists of color are already organizing on multiple fronts, from housing to education and jobs. And if they work for a nonprofit, then funding, time and energy are likely limited to specific issues. Still, organizers like Rama Kased with the Arab Resource and Organizing Center in San Francisco recognize other dynamics as well. "It's always been a challenge to get a Palestine-centered [agenda]" in the movement, said Kased, a Palestinian American who grew up in Brooklyn. "Because it's easy to be, 'I'm against the war. I'm against killing people.' But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of human rights or Palestine or all this other stuff, they start stepping back."

Over the years, Kased has organized with other people of color in the antiwar movement in Brooklyn. New York, and in the San Francisco Bay Area. Palestine, education equity, Black liberation and queer rights are among the issues they've brought to the table. While many antiwar groups have been supportive, she said, they do little to actually work against the deep-rooted problems of racism and economic injustice.

Army veteran Eli PaintedCrow is disillusioned with the war, the military and the antiwar movement. Coming back from Iraq, she recalls facing racism in antiwar organizations. "It's mostly run by white males [and] continues to oppress people of color and women," PaintedCrow said, referring to the mainstream antiwar movement. "Because if they didn't, you'd see more people of color in the movement."

More organizers of color are trying now to connect the war abroad to the issues facing their members. This is especially visible in San Francisco, where opposition to the war has been more vocal than in other cities.

Steve Williams, executive director of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (a.k.a. POWER). cofounded the nonprofit 11 years ago to focus on welfare rights in the predominantly Black Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco. There was some doubt at first about how they would connect antiwar work to their anti-gentrification agenda and to organizing Latina domestic workers. But they found many links. The kids of the approximately 600 members in the organization are constantly bombarded with messages of militarism. Corporations that are building the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border are some of the same ones profiting from the war in Iraq, Williams said.