Campaign Against Racism (CAR)
Dismantling structural racism and its global effects on health by supporting local actions, efforts, and networks.
Organizing Statement
EqualHealth’s Campaign Against Racism (CAR) is organizing to uncover the historical connections between racism and capitalism to radically imagine a future in which sociocultural, political and economic systems work towards health equity, rather than against it. CAR employs tactics of formalized reflection on the role of racial capitalism in each chapter’s work and experience.
We center the voices of communities and acknowledge that racism manifests differently in various global contexts and intersections of systems of oppression. We have 16 chapters across 10 countries committing to local actions in building global solidarity.
How does CAR operate?
Praxis & Power
Recent Work
History
Statements
CAR operates with a chapter model and collective action working groups. Each Chapter has their own local vision to struggle against structural racism and racial capitalism, then in the working groups we find our shared organizing ground to work more on wider global structural issues. Most chapters are made up primarily of healers, health workers and organizers. Chapters are supported by political education spaces which create a critical consciousness in the community, language justice resources and spaces for healing along with organizing infrastructure which is the foundation for radical imagination and courageous tactics.
Chapters engage in collective dialogue about how they see structural racism and racial capitalism operating within their communities, they are then in struggle on how to build solidarity globally on this. We are now in our sixth year of building this movement.
Global-to-local focus: Co-creating shared consciousness on how racial capitalism is operating across our contexts and exploring ways to interconnect our struggles. Decentering the global north and learning from liberation struggles across the global south.
Intersectionality: Examining all global systems of oppression, our place within the struggle and our practice of decolonization to restructure power as we build power.
Healing justice: Following the practises of our Black feminism teachers, particularly the Cara Page Kindred Collective, who use framework us to accompany us to examine how as a movement we are holding generational trauma and harm further understand care as a political strategy.
Language and disability justice: Understanding access as a tool of the colonizer, organizing to decolonize our movement spaces and recovering collectively our historical memory of communication.
Our movement-building doesn’t just touch the edges of institutions—it completely reimagines power structures. Over the last year:
We are currently developing a Global Right of Return forum.
We organized a global public trial on anti-Blackness and the migration industrial complex.
A prominent group of healthcare professionals formed The Healing ARC to shape interventions that eliminate structural racism in hospitals, healthcare systems and care facilities that contribute to racial and ethnic inequities in patient care.
We published “Nobody is Free Until Haiti is Free: Liberation, Reparations and Justice for Haiti.”
We denounced that the vast majority of Covid-19 vaccines were administered in high and upper-middle-income countries replicated “slavery and colonial-era racial hierarchies,” according to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
We released a video documentary on global health, skin bleaching, and colorism.
We organized health care workers through working groups focused on various advocacy topics, including: fighting white supremacist violence against Haitians, canceling the debt, settler colonialism, and organizing against cis-heteropatriarchy.
CAR was originally conceptualized by Dr. Camara Jones, a racial justice activist, physician, and past president of the American Public Health Association. Dr. Jones first presented the idea of a committee dedicated to global issues of racism when she was the keynote speaker at EqualHealth’s 2017 Social Medicine Consortium. CAR was further conceptualized in November 2017 at the American Public Health Association’s annual conference in Atlanta. EqualHealth officially launched the campaign in April 2018, with over 350 members from around the world, at the third annual Social Medicine Conference in Churchrock, New Mexico. Since then, CAR’s members have launched 23 chapters across 10 countries.
Our Chapters
Barcelona Chapter
Brazil Porto Alegre Chapter
Brazil Chapter
Haiti Chapter
Liberia Chapter
Twin Cities Chapter
Uganda Chapter
Zimbabwe Chapter
Palestine Chapter
Western Sahara Chapter
New York Chapter
San Francisco Chapter
Burlington Chapter
Campaign Against Racism and Discrimination India Chapter
Atlanta Chapter
North West New Mexico Chapter
Critical Consciousness Collaborative Chapter
From Local to Global Building Power
CAR Collective Actions Stop the Genocide in Palestine
Organizing Against White Supremacist Violence against Haitians
Organizing Against Cis-heteropatriachy
Cancel the Debt Subgroup
Our working groups include: Fighting white supremacist violence against Haitians, canceling the debt, settler colonialism, organizing against cis-heteropatriarchy
CAR’s collective actions to stop the genocide in Palestine include:
Creation of a Global Right of Return Forum
Political education and interrupting disinformation
Global letter writing for the liberation of Palestine
Video: Global Public Trial on Anti-Blackness and the Immigration Industrial Complex
On September 19 2021, we were deeply horrified and outraged by the white supremacist violence by border patrol agents on the banks of the Rio Grande, Texas against Haitian asylum seekers trying to bring food to their families. In solidarity with our Haitian comrades we are organizing against anti-Blackness and the migration industrial complex. Through anti-imperialism praxis, we hope to interrupt this systematic harm and trauma by holding the US and others accountable for the displacement of migrants.
Colonialism and white supremacy imposed the cis-heteronormative notions of gender and sexuality which continue to be perpetuated by white-neoliberal-cisheteropatriarchy today. Globally laws that limit womxn’s freedoms, bodily autonomy, reproductive rights womxn continue to expose them to structural discrimination, physical, psychological and sexual violence. The hegemonies which include racism, imperialism, capitalism and colonialism all intersect with cis-heteropatriachy in disempowering and worsening inequities that black, indigenous, womxn of color face globally especially in the global south countries. It is important therefore that in our organizing, we take an intersectional approach to address these hegemonic issues for true liberation.
Video: The new face of colonialism: A catastrophe of debt inflicted on public health care.
As the world witnesses recurring pandemics from HIV to Covid 19 , there is a growing concern about how these recurring pandemics have exacerbated the precarious debt situation in the global south. This highlights the urgent need for collective actions to challenge neo-colonialism and imperialism which manifest as austerity measures influenced by institutions like IMF , World Bank and private lenders affecting local policies of governments in the global south. The accumulation of debt undermines the provision of social services in sectors like health care, pausing a great threat to the lives of communities.
In our pursuit of confronting racial capitalism and imperialism to contribute to better global and local health systems, we greatly value partnerships in exploring political education within communities, capacity building and movement building. Cancel the debt subgroup Campaign Against Racism meet biweekly on Thursday at 5pm EAT/ 4PM CAT/ 10am EST to discuss strategies and tactics.
Get Involved
Join the movement!
Our community organizing is always emerging and we are committed to building community across contexts.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to our community organizers at campaignagainstracism@equalhealth.org