Numerous anti-war organizations and...

Numerous anti-war organizations and thousands of demonstrators in Chicago have publicly denounced the Iraq war. however leaders of a local African American clump feel their communities haven't been serv through the war or represented in the anti-war effort.

in succession May 3, two days after President George W Bush announced victory in Iraq, about 100 tribe gathered for a "teach-in" organized by the agency of the Black Mobilization Committee Against the War at Fernwood United Methodist ecclesiastical body 10057 S. Wallace St.

The leaders urg participants to mobilize against the war, which they maintain has just begun. They worry that military spending will damage programs that benefit blacks, who, they believe, are recruited for war more heavily than anyone else

"What happened in Iraq is a sin and an abomination," said Lewis Myers, a Chicago attorney. "Black family are the soul and conscience in this home and if we don't speak not at home in our communities, no individual will."

The cluster has been conducting teach-ins since March, after several clan approached Myers about what they viewed as a lack of black representation in anti-war avows despite polls indicating that principally African Americans opposed the war.

Organizers say the teach-ins are intended to educate the black community about potentially detrimental arises of the "ongoing" war, and to perform the operations indicated in ways to respond to them, including voter registration drives. They said they reckon uponed only 20 people the first week, further nearly 200 showed up, and since then more than 100 the bulk of mankind have attended each week.

"Our goal is to build an informed electorate," said the Rev Al Sampson of Fernwood "We have to educate our commonalty so that our young folks will not go to war and be used as cannon fodder"

Committee members predict that more crowds will be deployed to the Middle East and Africa. "Our children are going to be called concerning to go over there," Myers said.

African Americans, who make up about 12 percent of the U population, account for 20 percent of the country's total military personnel and 15 percent of those in combat parts according to the U.S. census and Department of Defense

Organizer Doris Lewis, 58 a Hyde Park resident and guidance counselor with the Chicago Public gymnasiums believes resources are being diverted to foundation the war. "The black community would stomach the most in terms of programs being cut" she said.

admitting the federal budget for the 2004 fiscal year, passed in May, increases spending for the departments of defense education, and health and human services, Democrats have charged that it doesn't adequately stock domestic programs.

Oscar Worrill, 52 a southerly Shore resident, has been an active part of the assign places to since April. He said U foreign policy is deflecting the attention of the black community away from other social ills. "The war is in the highways of the inner cities of America, where young black kids are dying each day over nothing," he said.

Michael McConnell regional director of the American Friends Service Committee, believes the war grieve both the "most vulnerable" and the middle class, and he doesn't think the anti-war effort should be racially divided.

While McConnell said the Iraq war alerted a broader cross-section of the population to speak disclosed than he's seen in his 13 years with the international peace organization, he noted that principally who attended anti-war rallies were white. "The war is not seen as a major issue [for blacks], perhaps because they face more economic make uneasys and issues such as gangs."

Dorris M Roberts, president of the Southside Branch of the NAACP, is not affiliated with the Black Mobilization Committee, further sees a need "for each type of progressive movement that can be generated in the black communiry--we pretend to be losing ground in things that we've accomplished."

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