Change Here, Change Abroad

by Mike Liu
8/31/07

Traveling in Venezuela where the fear of a U.S. invasion is palpable, the question of U.S. activists’ responsibility for international support inevitably arises. How much effort should we put toward international support when our homeland bestrides the world?

People in other parts of the globe look toward and are curious about U.S. activists and their ability to influence policies that our regime applies against their country. U.S. regimes are generally imperialist and globally interventionist. Consequently, our ability to support Third World countries comes as much through generating dissent toward these regimes as it does from direct or material support for international struggles.

For Asian American activists, international support has always been a significant component of its movement building. The most foreign-born and most often perceived as ‘foreign’ sector of the U.S. population, Asian Americans have looked to movements and struggles internationally for models for how to conduct campaigns. By supporting international struggles, Asian American Movement (AAM) activists have weakened the imperialist framework. Such a weaker framework benefited both AAM activists and struggles abroad.

The essence of the question of international support is not whether to support such struggles, but the relative energy and purpose to put into that work rather than organizing around domestic issues. If we see organizing for change as a mass activity - the organizing of the grassroots - then the issue is how to advance people’s consciousness.

Build Political Understanding to Buiild International Support
Broadening people’s consciousness about international issues and the conditions of other parts of humanity is a component part of changing people’s overall consciousness. An individual often comes to support others as their fundamental values grow. But most people respond first to issues directly affecting them, often local, domestic ones. So our work in building a movement for change inevitably focuses on such work.

This is not to avoid or argue against seeking out international support work. Many times people’s consciousness dramatically change when they come face to face with the conditions and different viewpoints of people in other countries subject to U.S. actions and the direct impact of such actions. But organizing international trips or even meeting with occasional visiting delegations can not be mass activities – for reasons of costs and practicality. We should take advantage of such opportunities - for example, many groups decided to organize for the WTO meetings in Hong Kong – but we must judge each opportunity or choice to engage in international support work based not only the criticalness of the issue but also the impact on building consciousness and movement relative to the costs of engagement.

Our best and greatest contribution to international support is to most effectively build a mass movement for change. The focus has to be on issue that touch most people most deeply. For now, in the U.S., these issues are local and direct. In doing so, we will broaden support for the just struggles of people of other countries and weaken the policies of imperialist regimes here at home.

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