International Committee Against Racism
| Abbreviation | InCAR |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1973 at New York University |
| Type | militant anti-racist political organisation |
| Purpose | anti-racism |
| Location |
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Membership
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organization dissolved (1996); absorbed into Progressive Labor Party |
The International Committee Against Racism was the "mass organization" (front organization) of the Progressive Labor Party in the United States. It was founded in 1973 once it had become clear that the Worker Student Alliance section of the Students for a Democratic Society could not sustain itself and that a new group with a more long-term vision not focused on students was going to be needed. Anti-racism was chosen as the focus for that new group.
Early leaders of the group included Dr. Robert Kinlock, Toby Schwartz, and Finley Campbell. At first the group took the name "Committee Against Racism" (CAR), but as various Latin American members began to start chapters in their home countries, CAR added "International" to the beginning of its name and became InCAR, proclaiming itself to have not just a U.S. anti-racist focus, but a worldwide one as well.
In 1975 the Committee Against Racism conducted their Summer Project in support of integration and busing in Boston, MA. A joint Freedom School and Petition Campaign culminated in an attempt to have a presence outside South Boston High on the first day of Phase II busing. Two bus loads of protesters were taken off the buses before reaching the high school, detained and released by police.
By 1978 InCAR had about 1,500 members. It had a magazine periodical for its written work, known as Arrow (Flecha in Spanish), published bilingually.
For the most part, PL did not bother to hide that it was in charge of InCAR, but it did always choose to frame its role in InCAR as one of "leadership" rather than control. According to PL's party statement: "InCAR is a radical organization led by the Party which the Party builds in order to advance the struggle for communism." InCAR, for its own part, insisted in its mission statement (reprinted on the inside front cover of every Arrow issue) that it "recognizes the absolute necessity of unity of communists and non-communists in this struggle" against both societal and organized racism.
Like PL as a whole, InCAR was often active in protesting racist rallies held by the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, and other white supremacists. InCAR sometimes earned fear from these groups: the KKK in the 1980s told the Hartford Courant that "it's because of those commies in InCAR and PLP that our boys are afraid to come out in public wearing their hoods."
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