November 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

The Two Heads of Militarism

Dustin Washington is the director of the Seattle AFSC's Cross Cultural Youth Leadership Development (YLD) Program which works to develop leadership in high school and college students to organize around the issues of racism, poverty, and militarism.

All too often peace activists who organize against war and militarism by the US armed forces forget to also organize against the domestic arm of militarism, US police forces. It is unfortunate that connections between the two are not being made. Now, on the eve of a second Iraq war, we as activists are in a prime position to make vital connections between global militarism and domestic militarism.

Everyday we are bombarded through the media with the term "state sponsored terrorism." We must look at Reverend Daniel Buford's concept of racial profiling and police brutality as US sanctioned "state-based terrorism. This terrorism is being waged against communities of color all across the US. Here in Seattle where I work, African Americans make up only 10% of the population but are over 40% of those in the King County jail. This disproportionality is directly related to the acknowledged behavior of racial profiling by the Seattle Police Department. On a national level, because of profiling, by the year 2017 there will be more African Americans incarcerated than were enslaved at the height of slaery in 1863. That is terrorism against communities of color of genocidal proportions.

As we talk about police departments waging terrorism against communities of color, we also cannot forget the countless beatings and murders of people of color by police officers. From the killing of Aaron Roberts here in Seattle to the killing of Amadu Diallo in New York, police have shown disregard for the lives of people of color, with consistent impunity from the courts, or should I say the state.

All across the US we hear police chiefs and elected officials declaring war against crime, war against gangs, war against drugs and war against violence. The concrete results of these "wars" have actually been a war against people of color and the poor. There is a disproportionate amount of suffering in communities of color and poor communities as a result of these wars.

Police officers and the armed forces go through very similar militaristic and dehumanizing training to become soldiers or officers. The new cable show "The Elites" very clearly illustrates how comparable the police academy is to the type of boot camp that new military recruits attend. Whether it is the police academy or boot camp, recruits are taught to treat the enemy as less than and worthy of death.

Who is the domestic enemy in the US? Incarceration rates show the enemy as being African American and Latino men. Both institutions also receive a large share of national, state, and municipal budgets. In Seattle, 49% of the budget goes to the criminal justice system and 56% of the federal budget goes to the military. This allocation of funding to our institutions of militarism takes away money from social needs such as healthcare, job training, and education. A nation that has a relationship based on justice with all of its citizens and the world would not need to spend so much money on security forces. The most glaring similarity between the military and the police is their institutional role. The role of both institutions is to maintain the status quo. Globally and domestically the military and the police serve to control any resistance to US economic domination and to quell any uprising against racist institutional polices here at home. From Central America and Vietnam to Iraq, it is clear that the US military has been used to either destroy democratic people's movements that threaten US economic interests or to destroy any regime that entertains the least notion of challenging US global domination. Domestically from the Watts rebellion in 1966 to the most recent African American uprising in response to a police killing a young black male in Cincinnati, the institutional role of the police is to silence any uproar in communities of color that suffer from high unemployment, poor schools, poor housing, high infant mortality rates, and four hundred plus years of institutional racism.

Even predominately white crowds have been victims of the militarism of the police as we saw in the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle. It is hard to believe that those nonviolent protestors, who were faced with police dressed as storm troopers with tanks, tear gas, concussion grenades, and high powered weapons did not view the police as an Army of sorts. If the police would wage such an attack on the civil liberties of its white citizens, imagine what is occurring in communities of color everyday.

Those in power are very clear that in order to maintain the current global and social domestic order, with its unequal distribution of wealth and its racial caste system, the US needs the lethal force of the military and the police to keep people in line.

In many white activist circles the question is asked, why are people of color not coming out in mass to oppose President Bush's plan to attack Iraq? Although people of color are directly affected by budget transfers from social services to the military, are disproportionally killed during war (50% of the frontline soldiers in the first Gulf war were people of color), and suffer from negative psychological effects of having to go to war--all too often against nations of color, people of color do not see the peace movement as relating to their day-to-day struggle. One way to bridge this divide is for our white brothers and sisters to become active in the movement to confront domestic militarism. The peace movement cannot be effective if it continues to remain silent on the issues of racial profiling and police brutality.

If we are ever to build a strong, multi-cultural movement for social change in the US and truly address systemic poverty, institutional racism, and militarism, the three pillars of oppression that Dr. King spoke of, we must come together around issues of domestic militarism. Now is the perfect opportunity to show on an institutional level, police force and the military are different heads of the same beast.

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