United for Peace & Justice

UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE. Founded in late October 2002, United for Peace & Justice (UFPJ) initially brought together a diverse group of about seventy peace and justice organizations to oppose the George W. Bush administration’s drive to war on Iraq. The coalition’s first major task was to help organize, coordinate, and publicize the February 15, 2003 global day of protest. “The World Says No To War” included 790 demonstrations worldwide and a rally of 500,000 people at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

Judith LeBlanc, who played a central role as one of UFPJ’s national co-chairs and later as national organizing coordinator, claimed that the February 15 day of protest brought out millions throughout the United States, with a half million in New York City. To her, the day of protest was “a high point of resistance” to the Bush administration’s preemptive war in Iraq.

Throughout much of the 2000s, LeBlanc and Leslie Cagan would lead UFPJ, along with an elected steering committee comprising partner organizations. LeBlanc, a Native rights activist, cut her political teeth as a participant in the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee; shortly thereafter she joined the Communist Party, USA. Cagan, a feminist and LGBTQ+ rights leader, started her political career as a student and peace activist in the mid-1960s. She worked for the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, later known as New Mobe. “The difference between this antiwar protest movement and the Vietnam antiwar movement is that we have a huge grassroots campaign before the war has even begun,” Cagan told the New York Times in early February 2003.

Despite massive worldwide protests, US military and allied forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 on the false pretext that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) and had links to Al-Qaeda. Ultimately, no WMD’s were found and Hussein’s ties to Al-Qaeda terrorists proved untrue. Over the course of the war and occupation, according to conservative estimates, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed, while millions more were wounded, maimed, and displaced; more than 4,000 US military personnel were also killed. The corresponding political chaos created space for terrorist groups like the so-called Islamic State (ISIL) to flourish.

UFPJ held its first national strategy conference in June 2003, where 550 delegates from thirty-eight states representing 325 local and national peace groups met to solidify the coalition’s organizational structure. From its inception, UFPJ merged anti-war activism – protests, marches, teach-ins, etc. – with electoral strategies. Illustrative of the coalition’s tactical flexibility, just a few weeks after the strategy conference UFPJ led a rally of thousands to mid-Manhattan where they protested outside President Bush’s “$2,000-a-plate campaign fundraiser.”

By summer 2003, more than 600 groups had joined UFPJ. Member groups included traditional peace organizations, such as Fellowship of Reconciliation, Peace Action, and the Quakers, numerous religious and denominational groups, student groups like the National Youth & Student Peace Coalition, labor groups like US Labor Against the War, as well as the US Peace Council, Veterans for Peace, CODEPINK, Gold Star Families for Peace, among others; numerous Marxist groups, including Democratic Socialists of America, the Committee of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism, and the Communist Party, USA, played a leading role in UFPJ. Special efforts were also made to ensure that local and regional peace groups and coalitions were represented among UFPJ’s leadership.

In March 2004, the one-year anniversary of the Iraq War, UFPJ initiated a global day of protest, where more than two million people from more than sixty countries organized over 575 protests against the war.

Five months later, UFPJ organized another massive New York City protest and rally, this time at the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden. On August 29, the opening day of the RNC, 500,000 people marched for peace and declared, “No! to the Bush agenda.” LeBlanc, a member of the Catto Nation, noted that protesters came from all across the country, including from the Ojibwe Indian Reservation in Wisconsin.

As a national peace coalition with an electoral strategy, UFPJ also focused on the November 2004 presidential elections and set a goal of mobilizing one million peace voters. Though the Bush administration proved more resilient than UFPJ had expected, the peace coalition wasted little time and by February 2005 convened its second National Assembly. The UFPJ elected a new leadership body and made plans to protest the second anniversary of the war. In all, that March protests were held in more than 700 locations across the country.

In September 2005, UFPJ organized a two-day peace and justice festival in Washington, D.C. including a 300,000 person march past the White House, where 800 participants met with over 300 members of Congress or their staff. Additionally, UFPJ used civil disobedience tactics to draw attention to the war and occupation. Nearly 400 protesters sat down in front of the White House and were arrested during the two-day festival.

UFPJ would continue to merge peace activism with electoral strategies leading into the 2008 presidential elections. In January 2007, UFPJ coupled a 500,000-person March on Washington with a congressional lobby day in which 1,000 people participated. That March, UFPJ organized more than 1,000 separate events across the United States to mark the fourth anniversary of the war.

As the 2008 presidential elections neared, UFPJ shifted its strategy and set a goal of mobilizing 25,000 volunteers to contact one million people on Saturday, September 20. They called it the “Million Doors for Peace” campaign. The goal: to obtain one million signatures on a petition demanding the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq within the year.

This was a unique strategy centered on building pressure at the grassroots, rather than mobilizing for large protests. As LeBlanc said, “the big challenge is how you take this new level of awareness [in the peace movement] about the Bush administration and the neo-conservative agenda and turn it into a very organized presence in the electoral struggle.” In 2009, with the war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan about to enter a new decade, UFPJ continued to apply pressure on President Barack Obama and Congress, while also celebrating the “symbolic benchmark” and timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal announced by the new administration.

In the early 2010, UFPJ’s leadership voted to transition from a formal coalition to a network of member groups dedicated to sharing information within the peace and justice community. UFPJ would continue to call for protests and teach-ins marking the ten-year anniversary of the US war and occupation of Afghanistan. By this time, the war and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq had cost at least $460 billion and $800 billion, respectively, and hundreds of thousands – perhaps, millions – of lives.

After US combat personnel were withdrawn from Iraq in December 2011, UFPJ shifted its focus to preventing war on Iran, closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, connecting the US military budget to cuts in social service programs, celebrating international solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela, and averting climate catastrophe, among other issues. UFPJ established a website that allowed activists to call for closing US military bases, nuclear disarmament, and support of the Poor People’s Campaign.

United for Peace & Justice Website. http://www.unitedforpeace.org/

“United for Peace & Justice Organizer Leslie Cagan Speaks On the State of the Anti-War Movement After the Invasion of Iraq,” Democracy Now, 2003. https://www.democracynow.org/2003/5/6/united_for_peace_justice_organizer_leslie

“Peace Movement and the 2008 Elections: Interview with Judith LeBlanc.” Political Affairs, April 8, 2011. http://www.politicalaffairs.net/peace-movement-and-the-2008-elections-interview-
with-judith-leblanc/

Pecinovsky, Tony. Let Them Tremble: Biographical Interventions Marking 100 Years of the Communist Party, USA. New York: International Publishers, 2019.