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.