by NILOOFAR ADNANI
As federal police pour into U.S. cities, the Trump administration’s crackdown on racial justice protests has taken its most authoritarian turn yet. At the same time, during a global pandemic, the Trump administration has continued to ratchet up devastating sanctions on Iran, while edging toward more overt military confrontation.
Iranian-Black Solidarity is a must now more than ever. We need strong, transnational movements to democratize and de-militarize our states, reverse hostile foreign policies, and call for solidarity between our communities against racism and authoritarianism.
In the face of mass protests against institutionalized racism, police brutality, and militarism, U.S. authorities deployed police and military forces across the country. Images of tanks and soldiers confronting protesters in Washington, D.C. and other cities drew analogies to Kabul and Baghdad — the capital cities of Afghanistan and Iraq, which no doubt reminded Iranians of the endless U.S. wars in their region.
To stop police killings and different forms of violence against Black people across the United States, activists have demanded urgent reforms including defunding police departments and investing in communities, with some early successes. These demands could be extended to call for defunding the Pentagon, which not only supplies local police departments with military-grade weapons but also exports violence against people of color all over the world.
While civil rights activists in the U.S. have been trying to connect anti-racist struggles with the anti-war movement since the Vietnam War, the post 9/11 “war on terror” has made the point dramatically. By the most conservative estimates, 157,000 Afghans and 295,000 Iraqis have been killed during the U.S. wars in those countries, alongside many others in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, and beyond.
Iranians have also suffered, dating back to the CIA-led coup d’etat in 1953 to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected government and install a brutal dictatorship in its place.
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