Founded in 1992 by Ramsey Clark, the International Action Center (IAC) is a fiercely “anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist” organization that provides “information, activism & resistance to U.S. militarism, war & corporate greed” while supporting “struggles against racism & oppression within the United States.” Closely allied with the the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party, IAC aims to “end human suffering caused by living under a [capitalist] system that puts profit before people’s needs” — a system whose hallmarks include “multi-national corporations and banks” that “extract resources and debt payments from the rest of the world” while “the Pentagon and CIA protect their wholesale plunder.” Claiming that America victimizes and oppresses nonwhite minorities both at home and overseas, IAC maintains that “the best way to fight U.S. imperialism abroad is to stand in full solidarity with people of color living within U.S. borders.” Toward that end, the Center aims to form a “progressive movement” in service of a broad coalition of victim groups whose “struggles” are purportedly “connect[ed].” These include “communities of color, women, lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, youth and students, immigrant and workers’ organizations in order to build a progressive movement for social justice and change.”

IAC’s activism is founded on the premise that the United States is the world’s chief violator of human rights — guilty of unspeakable atrocities, past and present, foreign and domestic. As one IAC official once put it, “No one in the world … has a worse human rights record than the United States.” To punish the U.S. for its transgressions, IAC has organized many demonstrations, direct actions, picket lines, community forums, speak-outs, war-crimes tribunals, and negative-publicity campaigns against America’s “targeting of Muslim people”; its “occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Yugoslavia, [and] South Korea”; its “expanding … role throughout Africa”; its “intervention in Ukraine”; its “ominous move [with NATO] to the Russian Federation borders”; its “war in Syria”; its “racist police brutality, mass incarceration, [and] death penalty”; and its contributions to “corporate plunder and environmental destruction of the planet.”

A staunch backer of the late Fidel Castro, IAC long opposed what it termed the U.S. “blockade of Cuba.” In 1994 IAC was an affiliate of the Peace for Cuba Appeal, which called for normalized American trade and travel relations with that nation. Signatories of the Appeal included such notables as Ramsey Clark, Alice Walker, Brian Becker, Teresa Gutierrez, Quentin Young, and Gloria La Riva.

IAC was a signatory to a February 20, 2002 document that: (a) condemned military tribunals and the detention of immigrants apprehended in connection with post-9/11 terrorism investigations, and (b) charged that “the denial of any due process for Arab[s], Muslim[s], South Asians and others, [has] chilling similarities to a police state.”

Rejecting the use of “raids and deportations” as tactics for dealing with illegal aliens, IAC embraces “the powerful new movement for immigrant rights” which calls for open borders and legal amnesty for the millions who have violated America’s immigration laws.

In an efort to raise public awareness of “attacks on women’s reproductive rights,” IAC was a Cosponsoring Organization of the April 25, 2004 March for Women’s Lives, a Washington rally advocating unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.

Strongly opposed to “the Pentagon’s recruiting [of] working-class youth to fight and die for corporate greed,” IAC accused the George W. Bush administration of using the “tragedy” of 9/11 “as a pretext to launch new wars of aggression and to step up the assault on civil rights and civil liberties here at home.” Proposing drastic cuts in America’s military-related spending – and a corresponding increase in funding for “desperately-needed social programs” – the Center launched “a national campaign … against military recruiters” to “ensure that the criminals in Washington don’t have enough soldiers to continue their wars.” Also in the mid-2000s, IAC expressed solidarity with antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan.

Opposing the imposition of sanctions designed to thwart the nuclear-weapons programs of Iran and North Korea, IAC in January 2012 was one of several leftist groups to call for coordinated nationwide protests on the theme: “No war, no sanctions, no intervention, no assassinations against Iran.” The Center was joined in this effort by the Workers World Party, World Can’t Wait, the ANSWER Coalition, Women Against Military Madness, Peace Action Maine, Occupy Myrtle Beach, and others.

Over the years, IAC has expressed uncompromising “solidarity” with, and support for, “Venezuela’s Bolivarian government”; “emerging revolutionary changes throughout Latin America”; the release of “political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and Aafia Siddique”; increased government funding for “affordable housing, healthcare … and education”; “every worker’s right to a job at a living wage”; and “self-determination and the right to reparations for Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Indigenous Nations, and oppressed Black and Latino peoples within the U.S.”

Passionately supportive of “the struggle of the Palestinian people in their heroic resistance to [Israeli] occupation,” IAC demands “an end to U.S. aid to Israel” while defending “Palestinian self-determination and the right to return.” To advance these objectives, the Center has sponsored, co-sponsored, and organized numerous anti-Israel events across the United States. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL): “These protests … [have] regularly featured anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic rhetoric, expressions of support for terror and offensive Holocaust imagery likening Jews and Israelis to Nazis.” The ADL also notes that IAC has “repeatedly expressed support for terrorist groups determined to dismantle the state of Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as ‘resistance’ groups fighting U.S. forces abroad” – a support reflected in the presence of Hamas and Hezbollah flags and banners at IAC’s anti-Israel events.

More evidence of IAC’s hostility toward Israel:

• On April 18, 2004, IAC leaders in New York joined representatives of Al-Awda and New Jersey Solidarity to protest the recent killing of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
• On May 6, 2005 in New York City, members of IAC, the Islamic Thinkers Society, Neturei Karta, and New Jersey Solidarity convened outside the Israeli mission to the United Nations to commemorate the so-called Nakba, or “Catastrophe,” of Israel’s creation in 1948.
• On August 5, 2006 in New York and Los Angeles, IAC held rallies to oppose the Second Lebanon War – a month-long conflict between Israeli and Hezbollah forces. According to an ADL report, “Speakers at the event praised terrorism and called for the annihilation of Israel.”
• In January 2009, at least two IAC members – Ramsey Clark and Sara Flounders – attended a conference in Beirut where they met with representatives of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations to discuss strategies for supporting Hamas and opposing the regional interests of Israel and the United States. While Clark condemned “the crimes of the Zionist occupation against the Lebanese and the Palestinians,” Flounders said: “We need to militantly support Hamas” and its “right to resist” and “to fire rockets” against “the imperialist and Zionist war machines.” She also lauded “the heroic forces in Lebanon, led by Hezbollah,” and praised the Islamists who were fighting and killing Americans on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
• In July 2009, a number of IAC representatives participated in a Viva Palestina convoy of ships to Gaza that was organized by the British parliamentarian George Galloway. Upon arriving in Gaza, those representatives and their comrades met with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and other leading officials of the terror group.

In September 2010, the Communist-linked Committee to Stop FBI Repression identified IAC as an organization that had issued a statement of solidarity in support of twelve leftist activists whose homes had been raided by the FBI on suspicion that they had ties to foreign terrorist groups.

In addition to serving as the driving force behind International ANSWER, IAC has been closely affiliated with such groups as People Judge Bush, the Korea Truth Commission, No Draft, No Way!, Troops Out Now!, Activist San Diego, and Leftbooks.^[1]

IAC has received financial assistance from a variety of sources, including the Ford Foundation, the Vanguard Public Foundation, the Alliance for Global Justice, the People’s Rights Fund, and the Progress Unity Fund (the latter of which is IAC’s fiscal sponsor).

IAC has been a member organization of Abolition 2000 and the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalitions.

Among IAC’s key players over the years have been Brian Becker, Richard Becker, John Parker, Larry Holmes, and Sara Flounders.

IAC is a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. In the past, it was a staunch defender of the late Slobodan Miloslevic, the North Koren dictators Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, and former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

NOTE:

^[1] IAC has also been affiliated with such groups as:

• People’s Video Network, whose productions typically depict the United States as a fundamentally racist, discriminatory, evil nation;
• Mumia Mobilization Office, Youth and Students for Mumia, and Rainbows Flags for Mumia — three organizations that support the cause of the convicted cop-killer and leftist icon Mumia Abu Jamal, whom IAC deems a “political prisoner”;
• National People’s Campaign, a self-described “nationwide organization of progressive activists” dedicated to combating: (a) a “resurgence in reactionary extremism”; (b) “the right wing’s continual encroachments upon basic human, civil, and economic rights”; and (c) “a political climate which is becoming increasingly hostile to working people, people of color, women, the unemployed, gays and lesbians, and other marginalized groups”;
• Demand Freedom for Leonard Peltier, an organization that supports the American Indian rights activist who murdered two FBI agents in 1975 and was sentenced to life in prison;
• New York Committee to Free the Cuban Five, which defends five individuals imprisoned for trying to infiltrate U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups in South Florida;
• Association of Mexican American Workers, which laments that illegal aliens residing in the United States: (a) are “under severe attack”; (b) must endure “brutal working conditions”; and (c) face the constant threat of “racist attacks” by “vigilante hate groups”; and
• Rosa Parks Day Headquarters, which depicts the United States as a nation where civil-rights protections have worsened since its namesake’s historic 1955 action aboard a Montgomery, Alabama bus.