What was WRL Southeast?

War Resisters League Southeast was a regional office of War Resisters League (WRL) based in the Triangle region of North Carolina from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Together, its members broadened the definition of what nonviolence and antimilitarism look like in practice. They thrived as coalition-builders, wearing many hats as progressive leaders in the US South during the Reagan years of the Cold War.

Collage of fliers and photographs on a pink background. The photographs are of a national War Resisters League gathering, with everyone raising their fists in the air; Mandy Carter, a young African American woman with short hair standing in front of the barbed wire fence of a military base; and Mandy Carter and others marching behind a banner with two prominent women's symbols. The fliers are for a "nonviolent vigil" and a list of candidates for the "Durham gay and lesbian solidarity coalition." What looks like a political button features an image of hands breaking a rifle in half, the War Resisters League's logo.

As feminists and lesbian feminists, WRL Southeast organizers connected issues, from confronting homophobia, to opposing the nuclear arms race, to building unity against the Klan. They innovated new progressive formations in the South and practiced intersectional organizing before we had a name for it. 

One former WRL Southeast organizer said that, rather than building an organization, “We thought of our work as building a movement.” The history of WRL Southeast offers us lessons for movement building in a time of heightened right-wing violence and global militarism.

What was WRL Southeast?