An enthusiastic audience attended a May 19 forum in Chicago on combating the U.S. war drive from the Middle East to the Philippines.

Randi Nord, a Workers World Party member from Detroit and journalist with Geopolitics Alert, spoke on Yemen. She characterized the horrific war in Yemen as an effort by the United States and its proxy, Saudi Arabia, to suppress a broad-based popular movement struggling for sovereignty and democracy.

Kousay Ahmad, a representative of the Syrian American Will Association, described the widespread support for the democratically elected government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and how the Syrian army and its Russian supporters are protecting civilians from terrorist carnage.

Joe Mshahwar, a young Syrian-American activist with the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice and WWP in Detroit, explained the historical background and genesis of the war in Syria and why the U.S. has unleashed terrorist groups to destroy the most democratic and secular state in the region.

Edmund Nabua, from Anakbayan Chicago, linked these struggles in the Middle East to the struggle for national liberation and democracy in the Philippines, and stressed that the vast resources used to wage U.S. wars abroad are taken from education, health care and housing here at home.

The forum, co-sponsored by Workers World Party and Anakbayan Chicago, was chaired by Adjoa Achiaa of Chicago WWP, who noted that May 19th — the birthday of heroic liberation fighters Ho Chi Minh, Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama — is a particularly suitable date to mobilize support for the global struggle against imperialism and all forms of oppression.