Never doubt that a small  group of concerned individuals can change society.

-- Margaret Mead

Political Principles:

The Nowar Collective is committed to a unified approach to politics that seeks to uncover the roots of hierarchy, cruelty, and oppression by a structural analysis of our society. This leads us to construe the term "war" broadly, including structural adjustment and “free trade” agreements, structural poverty, the race to incarcerate, and also the war against the planet, which has already created a global ecological crisis.

While we work on a wide variety of topics, we retain a core commitment to opposing U.S. military and economic aggression around the world

Organizing Principles:

We are committed to repeated attempts to get left and antiwar analysis into mainstream media, while also working with a variety of alternative media. We share a widely held structural critique of the mainstream media and the interests it serves, but believe there is still potential that is not always exploited.

We think in terms of building movement and catalyzing other struggles, in terms of networks rather than centralized organizations. For that reason, we focus on e-mail lists and websites that bring together many issues and organizations, building progressive community.

Internal Principles:

We are a group of like-minded people. We have no hierarchy, but we try to specialize in different areas. We work efficiently together because we know each other well and have hammered out all our political disagreements. While we still have them, we also have a common basis by which to evaluate our actions. When we can’t reach consensus, we make decisions on the basis of who has expertise in the field, and by majority vote, if necessary. We trust people who have specific tasks delegated to them to know which decisions they can make individually and which they should take to the collective. We try not to get bogged down in procedure. We strongly encourage individual initiative.

Network Principles:

Other Nowar Collective chapters should choose how they will run. We suggest they agree to the political principles above, and that they strongly consider working according to the other ones. We also think different chapters should stay in touch with each other. For more advice on starting and running a chapter.