"Contemporary concerns include how militarism propagates racism, patriarchy, sexism, and homophobia, issues that newer staff see as intertwined. The WRL wants its reach to be as broad as possible, which is why staff and supporters have met with people living in conflict zones throughout the world. For example, in 2016 a group of U.S.-based anti-war activists originally from southwest Asia and North Africa traveled with WRL support to Greece and spent a month working with Afghani and Syrian refugees, interviewing them and subsequently sharing their stories with domestic audiences. Closer to home, the group’s No SWAT Zone campaign has, for the past four years, addressed the nexus between police violence and police militarization. “The SWAT trainings always include more than 200 vendors who want to sell equipment to police forces in our communities. They are often the same people who sell bombs for use abroad,” Smith says. WRL has worked hard to expose the connection between militarizing the police and police violence. One of the biggest trainings, called Urban Shield, takes place in the San Francisco Bay area. “We’ve worked hard to connect militarism to police brutality and violence,” Smith says. “We did a lot of the background research to identify Islamophobic speakers and hate groups that play a role in these gatherings.” The effort paid off. This year, The Stop Urban Shield Coalition pushed the host city, Richmond, California, to deny Urban Shield a meeting place."