ANSWER Coalition: 25 years of organizing against war and racism

On September 14, 2001, just three days after the September 11 attacks that killed over 3,000 civilians, a group of organizers formed the ANSWER Coalition, which dedicated itself to relaunching an antiwar movement in the United States.

President George W. Bush and his Vice-President Dick Cheney were taking advantage of the political mood in the country that was chiefly characterized by grief and rage to initiate a series of aggressive wars targeting the people and governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and Iran. This was a dominant feature of the coming decade. In response to the “War on Terror”, the ANSWER Coalition launched an immediate fightback to the war drive.

On September 29, 2001 – just 18 days after the terrorist attacks – over 25,000 people took to the streets in Washington D.C. to ANSWER’s first mass action. By April 2002, the antiwar mobilization drew over 100,000. The ANSWER Coalition slogans on April 20, 2002 denounced the Israeli re-invasion of the West Bank. And by October 2002, ANSWER Coalition’s repeated mass actions sparked a truly global antiwar movement that was unprecedented in world history. On February 15, 2003 in a national day of mass action, over 10 million people took to the streets to demand: No War Against Iraq.

The new antiwar movement’s actions were unable to prevent the “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, but a new, revitalized antiwar movement has continued in the 25 years since September 14, 2001. This movement has helped change political consciousness dramatically inside the United States.

The ANSWER Coalition has played a central role in the mass movement against genocide in Gaza and was in the streets in scores of cities on the very day that the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran began on February 28, 2025. It has been a central organization supporting the people of Venezuela and Cuba against brutal U.S. policies, and was the principal organization that mobilized against the 2011 war against Libya. Today, the antiwar sentiment shows itself in the mass opposition to the Iran war. The Trump administration has been constrained in its capacity to escalate the war through sending large contingents of U.S. troops to Iran. It has also manifested itself in the constant mass mobilizations against the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which resulted in a sea change in political consciousness in the U.S. The majority opinion now rejects the Israeli narrative.

Since September 14, 2001 till today – now a quarter of a century – the ANSWER Coalition has been the most consistent antiwar and anti-imperialist organization in the United States.

ANSWER is an acronym that stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. We deliberately created an antiwar movement that was explicitly antiracist. This was a differentiation from earlier antiwar movements where the focus was almost exclusively on opposition to war and in support of peace.

In response to the September 11 attacks the Bush Administration launched an all out campaign inside the U.S. against Arab-Americans, Iranian-Americans, South Asian communities, and Muslim-Americans. Thousands of people were detained not for what they had done but because of who they were. Arab communities were viciously demonized and targeted. The FBI sent agents into mosques around the country. People were recruited as spies against their own communities rather than be sent to prison on trumped up charges. Twenty five years later it is hard for people who were not there or who were too young or maybe not yet born, to understand the gravity of the anti-Arab hysteria that was generated inside the US by the “War on Terror.”

Because the ANSWER Coalition prioritized campaigns against racism and linked them to the larger war drive the Coalition built a bridge between the U.S. antiwar movement and the besieged communities that continues to this day. ANSWER has played a major role in integrating these communities into the larger antiwar movement rather than allowing them to stand alone in the face of a racist assault against their basic democratic rights.

Featured photo: An ANSWER Coalition demonstration against the U.S. war against Syria. Credit: ANSWER Coalition.