Repeating Islands of Resistance: Redefining Security in Militarized Landscapes

Abstract

Social movements near American military bases have been increasingly successful at opposing the continue militarization of their home communities. Focusing on groups from Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawai'i and Okinawa –as well as the global “No Bases” network – this paper examines how social movements in presently colonized places organize their multi-scalar activism to challenge the legitimacy of militarism. While the American state views many of these places as sacrifice areas for an imperial national security, these organizations resist this banal colonialism through campaigns for a localization of sovereignty and a redefinition of security. Inspired by strategies of decentralized organization, affinity, direct action and mutual aid these ‘newest social movements’ are not merely petitioning the imperial state for greater access to rights through a politics of demand, but are engaged with creating secure physical and social environments through struggles for local self-determination, demilitarization, and environmental decontamination. Through their activism these organizations challenge not only the legitimacy of contemporary imperialism, but also the notion that the nation-state is the proper institution (and scale) to define rights, sovereignty, health and security.