No one today would dispute the racist character of European colonialism in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In the Middle East, the main prize was and is oil. In defying the sanctions, we were carrying on the tradition of the civil rights movement when it refused to abide by the unjust and illegal Jim Crow laws some forty years ago. The sanctions law and the Trading with the Enemies Act are immoral. Moreover, the sanctions are in violation of international law, including the UN Convention against Genocide, to which the U.S. is a signatory.
Genocide is defined as the destruction or elimination of a people or nation, in whole or in part.
Another reason I went on this trip was to show the people of the U.S. who are suffering injustice that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than with the U.S. capitalist establishment. This becomes crystal clear when you compare U.S. government treatment of the people of Iraq with its treatment of the most disenfranchised sectors here, especially those of color. For example, let's take bombing. But in Philadelphia, on 13 May 1985, the police and FBI, acting independently of the Black mayor, Wilson Goode, dropped incendiary bombs on a home in a Black neighborhood and destroyed sixty houses. The attack was aimed at the environmental communal group called MOVE, which had also been demonized in the press beforehand.