Iraq Veterans Against the War Statement on Resistance in Ferguson

A line has been drawn in Ferguson, Missouri. A line that separates a community collectively grieving for their lost son, and on the other side, a police force that is sworn to serve and protect but instead has brought nothing but fear and violence. A line that separates the institutionalized racism of city, state and federal government decisions and the people across the country who want to see justice for Michael Brown and the many other victims of police violence. This line didn’t begin and doesn’t end in Ferguson. It has its roots in a long history of police violence against Black and Brown communities in the U.S.

As an organization made up of veterans of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and those who support them, we intimately know what it is like to stand on one side of a line and face down a community that you are not from. We understand the institutional dehumanization that takes place in the name of ‘security.’ We know what it is like to be an invading force sent to aggressively defend the interests of people outside that community. We have witnessed the irreparable damage this militarized invasion has on individuals, families, and entire countries. Seeing the last few weeks of brutal police response, we can’t help but notice how familiar the equipment that police are using against the people of Ferguson is. Familiar because the armored vehicles, assault rifles and camouflage utilities are the exact same that we used against the Iraqi and Afghan people to rob them of their self-determination, while destroying communities, homes, and lives.

The explosion of community anger in Ferguson and the local police response has strengthened a conversation about why local police forces appear to be an occupying army. Defense Department projects like the 1033 Excess Property Program enabled the flow of $4.3 billion dollars worth of discarded or surplus military equipment into local police departments, with little accounting and absolutely no democratic oversight. This program provides the Pentagon with cover and justification for their enormous equipment expenditures, while continuing to enrich contractors, even as military leaders slash healthcare for soldiers and pinch pennies by denying benefits to traumatized service members administratively forced out due to downsizing and budget cuts.

It is not only weaponry and equipment that is transferred from the U.S. military to local law enforcement agencies, but people and their training as well. Few U.S. veterans leave the military with the job skills they were promised and find few options outside of the law enforcement field. Thus, many of our local police are themselves veterans, already traumatized by their experience in the military.

We also see an undeniable link between the military equipment the Department of Defense has funneled into local police departments across the country and the military equipment our nation continues to send to governments all over the world to facilitate the repression of popular uprisings. It seems that our government has determined that the only appropriate response to a community’s desire to be heard and to enact some measure of self-determination is violence and repression.

However, to focus our outrage only at the steady militarization of our police forces would be a mistake because without the systemic racism that mediates and justifies violence on communities of color and occupied people, that same violence would never be possible in the first place.  This dehumanization of people makes it possible to casually brush off the more than 650,000 civilians killed in Iraq as ‘collateral damage’ and for people of color in the U.S. to be effectively ‘guilty until proven innocent,’ and in some cases, killed extra judiciously by those that are supposed to protect them.

We see the intersection of all of these forces as an enduring reason to resist militarization and racism on multiple fronts. Whether that is in the streets of Ferguson, where a community is demanding real justice, or in Oakland, California at the upcoming ‘Urban Shield’ expo, where foreign and domestic law enforcement and military agencies purchase ‘non-lethal’ and ‘less-than-lethal’ weaponry, while trading skills and strategies for repressing dissent in their respective countries.

For all of these reasons and more we call for a nationwide effort to fully demilitarize our police forces. Military equipment in the hands of police officers only encourages the use of force against the communities that they should be working in cooperation with. We call for an end to the occupations and re-occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. And we stand with the Ferguson community in their call for accountability for the murder of Michael Brown, and for the freedom to exercise their rights to protest and to resist police brutality.