We collectively affiliate ourselves with direct actions which interrupt, disrupt, or dismantle the international sale of arms, and offer support to actionists where possible.
As an international affiliation of human rights groups, advocacy organizations, legal bodies, trade unions, religious institutions, and other groups fighting for social justice, we affirm a material struggle for liberation for colonized people and lands, for those most affected by systems of racial and other forms of brutalization, oppression, and apartheid.
We oppose the US-predominated international trade in arms for its mass destruction of life. This destruction includes Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and ongoing genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, US imperial warfare including in Iraq and Afghanistan, and private military contractors’ mass killings – also with the concomitant destruction of the environment. In the current moment, we particularly support the material dismantling of Israel’s ongoing illegal occupation of Palestinian Territory.
Inspired by movements through history for liberation, from the ANC’s struggle against South African apartheid led by Nelson Mandela, to Palestine Action’s struggle against the arms trade that upholds Israel’s apartheid, we associate ourselves with direct activism that unbuilds contexts of “colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation” – and particularly the militarized world of US imperial interests.
We consider ‘direct actions’ to be those that deploy physical and/or economic leverage to disrupt the arms trade and/or the supply chains and economic processes underlying it. Such actions do not have their primary effect through electoral or media-based channels, but work by materially inhibiting, and raising the cost of participation in imperial processes of destruction – particularly destruction of Indigenous life. Such actions may include, but are not limited to: actionists blocking arms-carrying or potentially arms-carrying transport (from ships to lorries); workers refusing to build or transport arms including through wildcat strikes; workers disrupting the building or transport of arms; actionists conducting disruptive actions against logistics and infrastructure (from factories to ports, docks, rail, and roads).
Where capacity permits, we commit to:
- Publicly share fundraiser calls for those conducting direct actions where requested, for the purpose of legal support (and living expenses where necessary) for these actionists.
- Share information within trusted networks, to promote the financing of legal and other support for those conducting actions against the arms trade.
- Offer direct support, including financial and legal for those conducting direct actions – or locate support on actionists’ behalf.
- Otherwise make visible the struggle against the international trade in arms, either through platforming speakers, publicly sharing links, or other forms of visibility.
- Appeal to trusted networks to sign up to the affiliation.
To sign up, email dsdaction@proton.me and display this statement on your website. Please display the statement with a note about why you signed up, a note about any capacity you might have, and how actionists might get in touch with you when needed. Organizations involved will be listed on https://dsdaction.noblogs.org/. This initiative has been organized by actionists and volunteers, and in collaboration with CAGE International, to build legitimacy around direct action (with signatories joining on a horizontal basis to ensure the message rather than any group remains the focus).
Signatories