Campaign for Peace and Democracy - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD) is a New York-based organization that promotes "a new, progressive and non-militaristic U.S. foreign policy," in contrast to existing foreign policy, which CPD characterizes as "based on domination, militarism, fear of popular struggles, enforcement of an inequitable and cruel global economy
and . . . persistent support for authoritarian regimes." The hallmark of the Campaign’s work has been its efforts to seek out and work with dissidents and social justice movements worldwide, and to forge alliances between them and progressive movements in the United States. The organization has more than 100 endorsers, including Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

, Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...

, and Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War,...

; CPD’s full list of endorsers, statement of purpose, and other information can be found at the organization’s website http://www.cpdweb.org

Recent Initiatives

Since its inception the Campaign has been critical of U.S. imperial foreign policy while at the same time vigorously defending democratic rights everywhere, whether in countries allied with the United States or in countries targeted by the U.S. In recent years, the Campaign issued a 2002 sign-on statement, "We Oppose Both Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

and the U.S. War on Iraq: A Call for a New, Democratic U.S. Foreign Policy," which was published in The New York Times , The Nation, The Progressive and elsewhere. Subsequently, CPD launched actions in opposition to the Israeli attack on Gaza

Gaza

Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...

and worked with Czech and Polish peace activists to block the installation of U.S. radar and missile bases in the Czech Republic and Poland. It protested the persecution of trade unionists and human rights activists, such as Shirin Ebadi, as well as students and gays, in Iran . After the Iranian presidential election, 2009

Iranian presidential election, 2009

Iran's tenth presidential election was held on 12 June 2009, with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad running against three challengers. The next morning the Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official news agency, announced that with two-thirds of the votes counted, Ahmadinejad had won the election...

, the Campaign put out a detailed statement in support of pro-democracy protests in Iran and a Question and Answer on the crisis there . In October 2009 it issued a widely circulated call for the Obama administration to end U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Pakistan ; the statement appeared as an ad in the Pakistani newspaper, The News. In January 2010 the Campaign participated in a protest at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA, against drone attacks. In May CPD co-sponsored a public forum at New York University, "Sanctioning Iran," featuring Joy Gordon, author of The United States and Iraq Sanctions, and Trita Parsi, president of the Iranian American Council, and chaired by Roane Carey of The Nation. The Campaign was a co-sponsor of the "National Anti-War Conference to Bring the Troops Home Now," which held its founding convention in Albany, NY, July 23–25, 2010. After the disastrous floods in Pakistan in August 2010, CPD circulated an appeal by the Sindh Labour Relief Committee, including 14 Pakistani unions and progressive organizations, for financial aid to the flood victims. The Campaign also posted a statement on the floods' political context by the Labour Party Pakistan and the National Trade Union Federation. In October 2010 CPD issued a sign-on statement, "End the War Threats and Sanctions Program Against Iran: Support the Struggle for Democracy Inside Iran."

In December 2010 the Campaign declared its support for the work of Wikileaks and Julian Assange (and Bradley Manning, if he was involved), which revealed the cynical manipulation of other countries by the U.S. government. CPD enthusiastically welcomed the beginning of Arab Spring with the statement, "We Support the Democratic Revolution in Tunisia" on Jan. 16, 2011. A month later, CPD hailed the Egyptian uprising in the statement "Egypt After Mubarak" (Feb. 14), which also warned against the continuing power of the Egytian military and elements of the old regime and called for the completion of the democratic revolution. As part of its ongoing work on behalf of the democratic movement in Iran, the Campaign led a delegation of peace and human rights activists in a visit to the U.S. and Iranian missions to the UN on Feb. 24, arguing with officials there that both U.S. war threats and sanctions program and Iranian repression should be ended. CPD opposed NATO intervention in Libya ("We support the Libyan Democratic Revolution and Oppose Western Intervention and Domination," April 16, 2011) and played an active role in building solidarity with the democratic opposition in Bahrain. The CPD statement, "End U.S. Support for Bahrain's Oppressive Government," which included hundreds of Bahraini signatures, was published in The Nation (June 6) and the New York Review of Books online (June 9). After Israeli soldiers on the Syrian border fired on Palestinian demonstrators in May, CPD issued a statement condemning "Israel's Muderous Attack on Unarmed Palestinians" (June 9). As the Arab Spring continued, the Campaign declared its ardent support for Syrian democrats: "CPD Salutes Syria's Courageous Democratic Movement" (June 9). In response to the savage violence of the Assad regime, CPD released both a "Message of Condolence and Solidarity From U.S. Peace Activists to the Syrian People" and an "Open Letter to the Syrian Government in Protest Against the Death of Non-Violent Activist Ghayath Mattar and Brutal Repression of Syrian Democratic Activists" (Sept. 16, 2011).

Founding

The group was founded in 1982 as the Campaign for Peace and Democracy/East and West (CPD/EW) by Joanne Landy and Gail Daneker. Its initial inspiration was the emergence of the independent Polish trade union movement Solidarnosc (Solidarity), and the massive upsurge of opposition to nuclear weapons represented by the nuclear freeze movement in the United States and the European Nuclear Disarmament

European Nuclear Disarmament

European Nuclear Disarmament was a Europe-wide movement for a "nuclear-free Europe from Poland to Portugal” that put on annual European Nuclear Disarmament conventions from 1982 to 1991.- Origins :...

(END) movement, which protested NATO deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles. CPD/EW was formed around a perspective of independence from both Cold War blocs; it dedicated itself to helping build a third alternative based on popular struggles for peace, human rights and social justice .

Détente From Below

Embracing the idea of “détente from below," first articulated by British historian and peace activist E.P. Thompson, the Campaign insisted that lasting peace could not be achieved by relying on existing governments, with their own elite realpolitik agendas, but only by alliances of grassroots movements working across frontiers. In particular, CPD/EW strove to forge links among the Western anti-missile movements of the early 1980s, the U.S. anti-intervention movements then opposing the foreign policy of the Reagan administration, and Soviet bloc dissidents. CPD became widely known for its direct contacts with East-bloc activists, and provided many U.S. peace groups with the opportunity to meet them and support their democratic struggles.

Peace and Democracy News

In the spring of 1984, CPD/EW published the first issue of its magazine, Peace and Democracy News; it printed a speech by Daniel Singer, the European correspondent for The Nation and author of books on Polish Solidarity, "A Plague on Both Their Houses" , which had been delivered at a CPD/EW forum entitled "In Solidarity With the Right to Rebel: Spotlight on Chile and Poland"; the forum had also featured the Chilean playwright and novelist Ariel Dorfman

Ariel Dorfman

Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.-Personal...

. Subsequent writers for Peace and Democracy News (later renamed Peace and Democracy) included Adam Hochschild

Adam Hochschild

Adam Hochschild is an American author and journalist.-Biography:Hochschild was born in New York City. As a college student, he spent a summer working on an anti-government newspaper in South Africa and subsequently worked briefly as a civil rights worker in Mississippi in 1964...

, Richard Falk, Jan Kavan

Jan Kavan

Jan Kavan is a Czech diplomat and politician.-Biography:Kavan was born in London, the son of a Czech diplomat, Pavel Kavan, and a British teacher, Rosemary Kavan. His father was arrested and tried in a Czech show trial in the 1950s; his mother later wrote a memoir, Love and Freedom.He is a member...

, Judith Hempfling., Randall Forsberg

Randall Forsberg

Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg led a lifetime of research and advocacy on ways to reduce the risk of war, minimize the burden of military spending, and promote democratic institutions. Her career started at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in 1968. In 1974 she moved to...

, Ann Snitow, Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg

, Mina Hamilton Stephen Shalom, Alex de Waal

Alex de Waal

Alexander William Lowndes de Waal is a British writer and researcher on African issues. He was a fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University, as well as program director at the Social Science Research Council on AIDS in New York City...

, and Matthew Rothschild, along with CPD staff writers Jennifer Scarlott, Steve Becker, Gail Daneker, Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison.

Core Principles

Until 1995, when Peace and Democracy ceased publication and a decline in funding and popular support for a peace movement forced the organization into temporary dormancy, the Campaign (which changed its name to the Campaign for Peace and Democracy in 1990 to reflect the end of the Cold War) continued to mount campaigns, organize conferences and issue statements based on its core principles: opposition to nuclear weapons and military intervention, withdrawal of U.S. troops and bases from all foreign countries, an end to U.S. support for authoritarian states, and international economic policies to combat poverty based on aid and development aimed at popular rather than corporate needs.

1980s

Throughout the 1980s CPD insisted that independent peace and human rights groups in the Soviet bloc, not government-controlled "peace councils," were the genuine allies of Western peace movements . It drew up joint statements by peace and human rights activists from both sides of the Cold War divide condemning the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile , persecution of dissidents in Soviet Bloc states , U.S. intervention in Central America , the Tiananmen massacre in China , and Israel's refusal to withdraw from the Occupied Territories

Israeli-occupied territories

The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory seized by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria...

. As well as with END, the Campaign had close ties with the young Green Party in West Germany (especially with militantly democratic and radical leader Petra Kelly

Petra Kelly

Petra Karin Kelly was a German politician and activist. She was instrumental in founding the German Green Party, the first Green party to rise to prominence worldwide.- Early life :...

), Solidarnosc and the independent antiwar movement Freedom and Peace in Poland , Charter 77

Charter 77

Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in communist Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout. Spreading the text of the document was...

in Czechoslovakia , and peace groups in the Soviet Union .

1990s

The fall of Communism in Europe was welcomed by the Campaign, but after 1989 the group expressed its dismay that the kind of radical democracy implicit in Polish Solidarity was eclipsed in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union by "the dogma that democracy means submission to blind market forces and the laws of social Darwinism" . It spoke out against the imposition of "shock therapy

Shock therapy (economics)

In economics, shock therapy refers to the sudden release of price and currency controls, withdrawal of state subsidies, and immediate trade liberalization within a country, usually also including large scale privatization of previously public owned assets....

" policies which sought to replace the old Communist system not with economies centered on popular needs but instead with harsh policies that "fostered widespread economic misery" . During the 1990s, CPD opposed the aggression of the Yugoslav Army against the breakaway republics , the first Gulf War and U.S. intervention in Haiti . It sponsored debates over the issue of "humanitarian intervention

Humanitarian intervention

Humanitarian intervention "refers to a state using military force against another state when the chief publicly declared aim of that military action is ending human-rights violations being perpetrated by the state against which it is directed."...

" .

Revival in 2002

In 2002 the Campaign for Peace and Democracy was revived by co-directors Joanne Landy, Thomas Harrison and Jennifer Scarlott.

Campaign for Peace and Democracy, 2790 Broadway, #12, New York, NY 10025, USA
Website: http://www.cpdweb.org Email: cpd@igc.org Facebook: Campaign for Peace and Democracy
Co-Directors: Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison

The Campaign for Peace and Democracy papers, including correspondence, flyers, and a complete set of Peace and Democracy News, available at the Tamiment Library.

Selected members

Ervand Abrahamian

Ervand Abrahamian is a historian of Middle Eastern and particularly Iranian history.An Armenian born in Iran and raised in England, he received his M.A. at Oxford University and his Ph.D. at Columbia University. He teaches at the City University of New York where he is Distinguished Professor of...

Bashir Abu-Manneh

Bashir Abu-Manneh is an Assistant Professor of literature at Barnard College. He describes himself as "a Palestinian from Israel." He holds a B.A., University of Haifa, Israel; M.A., University of Warwick, U.K.; D.Phil., University of Oxford, U.K....

Janet Afary

Janet Afary is an Iranian author, feminist activist and researcher in history, Religious Studies and women studies. She now lives in the United States of America, and currently teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara....

Michael Albert

Michael Albert is an American activist, economist, speaker, and writer. He is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. He also co-founded South End Press and has written numerous books and articles...

Stanley Aronowitz

Stanley Aronowitz is professor of sociology, cultural studies, and urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also a veteran political activist and cultural critic and an advocate for organized labor.-Social Text:...

Ed Asner

Edward Asner , commonly known as Ed Asner, is an American film, television, stage, and voice actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild, primarily known for his Emmy Award-winning role as Lou Grant on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off series, Lou Grant...

David Barsamian

David Barsamian is an Armenian-American radio broadcaster, writer, and the founder and director of Alternative Radio, the Boulder, Colorado-based syndicated weekly talk program heard on some 125 radio stations in various countries....

Leslie Cagan

Leslie Cagan is an American activist, writer, and socialist organizer involved with the peace and social justice movements. She is the former national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the former co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and the former chair...

Tim Carpenter

Timothy W. "Tim" Carpenter is a Democratic member of the Wisconsin Senate, representing the 3rd District since 2003. He earlier served in the Wisconsin State Assembly, representing the 20th District from 1985 through 2003.-Early life, education and career:...

Noam Chomsky

Joshua Cohen

Joshua Cohen (philosopher)

Joshua Cohen is an American philosopher specializing in political philosophy. He is Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society and professor of political science, philosophy, and law at Stanford University. At Stanford, Cohen is also program leader for the Program on Global Justice at the...

Ariel Dorfman

Martin Duberman

Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist. He is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York and was the founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate School...

Steve Early

Steve Early is a professional boxer, who fought out of Coventry, England. Early started his career in 1977 with a TKO win over Kevin Sheehan....

Daniel Ellsberg

Jodie Evans

Jodie Evans is a political activist, author, and documentary film producer. She characterizes her activism as working for peace and justice, environmental causes and women’s rights...

David Friedman

David D. Friedman

David Director Friedman is an American economist, author, and Right-libertarian theorist. He is known as a leader in anarcho-capitalist political theory, which is the subject of his most popular book, The Machinery of Freedom...

Barbara Garson

Barbara Garson is an American playwright, author and social activist.Garson is best known for the play MacBird, a notorious 1966 counterculture drama/political parody of Macbeth that sold over half a million copies as a book and had over 90 productions world wide...

Howie Hawkins

Howie Hawkins is an American politician and activist with the Green Party of the United States and Socialist Party USA. He co-founded the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976 and the Green Party in the United States in 1984. He was New York's Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in the...

Adam Hochschild

Doug Ireland

Doug Ireland is an American journalist and blogger who writes about politics, power, media, and also about gay issues. He is the U.S...

Richard Kim

Richard Kim was an American karate teacher. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, he began studying judo as a child in the early 1920s, under Kaneko. Around the same time, he also began studying karate under Arakaki Ankichi. Before World War II, his service in the merchant marines took him to east Asia...

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...

Dan La Botz

Daniel H. La Botz is a prominent American labor union activist, academic, journalist, and author. He was a co-founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union and has written extensively on worker rights in the United States and Mexico...

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Nelson Lichtenstein

Nelson Lichtenstein

Nelson Lichtenstein is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy...

Dave Marsh

Dave Marsh is an American music critic, author, editor and radio talk show host. He was a formative editor of Creem magazine, has written for various publications such as Newsday, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone, and has published numerous books about music and musicians, mostly focused on...

Kevin Martin

Kevin Martin is the name of:* Kevin Martin , NBA shooting guard* Kevin Martin , Canadian curler* Kevin Martin , former chair of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission* Kevin Martin Kevin Martin is the name of:* Kevin Martin (basketball), NBA shooting guard* Kevin Martin (curler) (born 1966),...

David McReynolds

David McReynolds is an American democratic socialist and pacifist activist who described himself as "a peace movement bureaucrat" during his 40-year career with Liberation magazine and the War Resisters League...

Mary Nolan

Mary Nolan was an American actress and dancer.-Ziegfeld Follies dancer:Born Mary Imogene Robertson in Kentucky, Robertson's childhood was beset with hardship that included the death of her mother in 1908 and an absent father. As a child, she worked as a farm laborer, before moving to New York City...

Derrick O'Keefe

Derrick O'Keefe is a Canadian Vancouver-based writer and social justice activist. He is the former editor of rabble.ca, Canada's most widely-read progressive website, and his writings on foreign policy, Canadian politics, ecology and other topics have been published in a number of both alternative...

Christopher Phelps

Christopher Phelps is an American political and intellectual historian of the twentieth century. The subjects of his research and writing include philosophical pragmatism, concepts of class and labor in social thought, the fate of the American Left and the socialist ideal, and ideas of race in...

Charlotte Phillips

Ruth Rosen

Ruth Rosen

Ruth Rosen is a pioneering historian of gender and society, an award-winning journalist and a Professor Emerita at University of California Davis....

Bill Scheurer

Stephen Shalom

Alix Kates Shulman

Alix Kates Shulman

Alix Kates Shulman is an American writer of fiction, memoirs, and essays, as well as one of the early radical feminist activists of feminism's Second Wave...

Stephen Soldz

Stephen Soldz, Ph.D., born November 19, 1952, is a psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist, professor, and anti-war activist.He has received media attention as a vocal critic regarding allegations of the use of psychological torture by the U.S...

David Swanson

David L. Swanson is an American activist, blogger and author.-Education:Swanson obtained a Master of Philosophy degree from the University of Virginia in 1997.-Career:...

David Vine

David Martin Vine was a British television sports presenter. He presented a wide variety of shows from the 1960s onwards.-Early life:...

Steve Weissman

Steve Weissman is an American sportscaster who joined ESPN in January 2010. He came to ESPN from Comcast Sportsnet in California, where he served as the network's lead anchor...

Naomi Weisstein

Naomi Weisstein is the daughter of Mary Wenk and Samuel Weisstein. She is a Professor of Psychology, neuroscientist, and author. She graduated from Wellesley College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1961 and received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1964. In 1964 she took a post-doctoral fellowship at the...

Chris Wells

Chris Wells may refer to:*Chris Wells , Arizona Cardinals football player*Chris Wells , former National Hockey League player...

Cornel West

Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....

Reginald Wilson

Reginald Wilson may refer to:*Reginald Wilson , American psychologist*Reg Wilson , English speedway team manager and former professional rider...

External links

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