PEACE...NOW! By Any Means Necessary
Tehran, March 6, 2026, 📸 Majid Khahi/ISNA/WANA via Reuters
In just the last five days, an estimated 1,300 drone strikes have killed more than 1,200 Iranians across 100 civilian sites, with 13 hospital bombings reported. Of those dead, 175 were schoolchildren between the ages of 7-12 as the U.S. and Israel preemptively targeted an all-girls primary school during their morning class on Saturday, February 28. In Palestine, Netanyahu has found an new excuse to resume its starvation campaign, closing the Gaza Strip border crossings, blocking critical aid like fuel and flour as the death toll has climbed to 72,117. So here we are. A genocide, a war, my tax dollars funding both.
Since Saturday, I’ve been thinking a lot about antiwar music, specifically songs coming out of the Iraq War period. One track that I keep coming back to is Le Tigre’s “New Kicks” off their 2004 album This Island. It’s quite a galvanizing song, sampling protest chants and soundbites from the likes of Amy Goodman, Al Sharpton, and Susan Sarandon, all speaking out against the Iraq War. What deeply bothers me, though—what I cannot get past—is that this song could have been made today. Twenty-two years later, “New Kicks” sounds eerily familiar:
We will not be violent!
No blood for oil!
"We will not go to war, for a selected president, who wasn't even elected!"
We must stand unbroken, unbowed, and unashamed
We need healthcare!
We need education!
We need freedom in this nation!
[...]
"Thousands of people have taken over 3rd Avenue and are marching North. The crowd stretches at least 15 blocks from 44th street to 59th Street
The police have just simply... given up."
[...]
This is what democracy looks like!
This is what democracy sounds like!
[...]
Peace now
Peace now
[...]
"We will not sell out!
We will not back down!
We will not compromise!
We will go forward
Until peace is on the world agenda!"
[...]
"We say no to war!"
No war!
Listening to “New Kicks” over the past several days keeps bringing me to tears. Tears of frustration, incredulousness, anger. Because we haven’t learned, we haven’t changed. It’s been twenty-two years and these lyrics hold true, word for word. The U.S, continues waging and funding atrocities across the world with total impunity. When is enough enough?
“New Kicks” reliably brings me to tears. Tears of frustration, incredulousness, anger. Because we haven’t learned, we haven’t changed. It’s been twenty-two years and these lyrics still hold true, word for word. The U.S, continues waging and funding atrocities across the world with total impunity. When is enough enough?
Throughout “New Kicks”, there’s the steady, demanding refrain “PEACE…NOW!” There’s conviction behind the chant; the demonstrators in the song mean business. Antiwar Americans mean business. They mean peace, now! But peace for whom? Peace for yourself? Peace for all? Peace for a select group? Peace for a government committing genocide? What is your framework?
“We will not be violent!” the song proclaims. I think this gets at the reason “New Kicks” sounds just as relevant now as it did back in 2004, and why we find ourselves still in living under these insane circumstances. Because too often the kind of peace we desire is one-dimensional. PEACE…NOW! only becomes important when it starts to infringe on our personal peace. And demanding peace from this position is not only delusional, but it also perpetuates a distorted view of violence, one that completely muddles and misunderstands those enforcing violence and the ones resisting it.
This becomes evident when, in order to resist violence, subjugated and vulnerable populations must resort to violence, and nonparticipants feel entitled and morally bound to weigh in on how these populations could and should resist better. Calmer. More peacefully.
If you insist that peace has to be achievable though voting, chanting, and signing petitions—if you are demanding non-violence from victims—you are automatically fucking over everyone who knows no peace, everyone who lacks the privilege of the personal peace you take for granted. You are the problem, the danger, you are why this brutal history continues to repeat itself.
By all means, have your personal peace now!, but recognize that the type of peace that serves humanity at large—the kind that restores dignity and safety and justice—is much, much more arduous and costly (deadly) to achieve. Understand that after trying the peaceful route over and over and over again with zero change to one’s material conditions, oftentimes resistance is the necessary action to reclaiming peace.
I’m not suggesting anyone does anything that they are uncomfortable doing. You don’t have to throw a punch or brick to show solidarity. What I am saying is when oppressed people and their allies resist violently or in any way that might feel disagreeable, you must support them. You must support their courage to live. You must stretch your humanity enough to trust in theirs.
As Iran defends itself, as Hamas resists and the Houthis fight on behalf of Palestinians, remember that all struggles around the world are connected. So choose the peace that lights the way to joy, existence, and liberation for all.