| Services: | Human rights, Anti-war, Anti-imperialism |
| Black Alliance for Peace | |
| Founded: | United States |
| Location: | United States |
| Fields: | Advocacy, Media attention, Direct-action campaigns, Coalition & movement building |
Black Alliance for Peace (also referred to as BAP) is a people(s)-centered human rights project against war, repression, and imperialism. The Open Collective is the fiscal sponsor of the formation.
The mission of the organization is "to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement."[1]
Founded in April 2017 by Ajamu Baraka, the Black Alliance for Peace is part of the renewed effort to organize the anti-war movement based within the Black community in the United States. The organization's founding members agreed to ten points of unity: the right to self defense; self determination; anti-imperialism; working-class foundation; intersectionality; anti-patriarchy; decolonization; prisoner support; black unity; and southern roots.[2]
The Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace currently consists of sixteen representatives of BAP internal structures and member organizations.
Current members:
The organization is simultaneously campaigning on nearly a dozen various issues, with a focus on peace, people-centered human rights, and anti-imperialism education.[3]
Domestically, BAP opposes Israeli training of American police forces and the Department of Defense's 1033 program that allows military grade equipment to transfer into the possession of civilian police departments.[4] In addition to calling for accountability for police brutality and the elimination of Operation Relentless Pursuit, the organization is calling for a 50% reduction in the U.S. military budget to finance the human-rights needs of the American public.[5] The organization is calling on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation in support of the abolition of nuclear weapons.[6]
On foreign affairs, BAP's primary campaign is its demand to shut down the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and end all U.S. intervention on the continent of Africa.[7] This is reinforced by BAP's other aims to abolish NATO, close the 800+ U.S. foreign military bases, end all foreign interventions and illegal sanctions, and to uphold global norms by complying with international law.
BAP, along with key partner organizations, is leading an effort to activate the popular movements in our region in support of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) 2014 call to make the Americas region a “Zone of Peace.” This campaign will be informed by the Black Radical Peace Tradition. With its focus on the structures and interests that generate war and state violence—colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and all forms of imperialism—the fight for a Zone of Peace is an attempt to expel all of these nefarious forces from our region.