Chaos in the US antiwar “movement”

16 thoughts on “Chaos in the US antiwar “movement””

1. So how about the situation here in the US?
   “The US Department of Defense may be routinely spying on US anti-war organizations to determine whether their planned activities could endanger military bases or recruitment drives, according to a document.”
   http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/7000%2F20051214%2F0320000002.htm&ewp=ewp_news_1205pentagon

2. Dear Helena,
   These are great posts, this one and the previous. A lot of people must be grateful, like me, to see these matters aired frankly and openly.
   I think you have hit the nail on the head with the bit that says: ‘UPJ … started out as “United for Peace”, and became “United for Peace and Justice”. This was, imho, a monumental mistake. Why try to build a big coalition addressing a broad range of issues when a big coalition that focuses on one issue would surely be more effective on that issue?’
   In practice it is impossible to build a broad coalition on a broad range of issues. The more that come on board the more issues they bring with them, but also the more people are turned off. So pretty soon it dies.
   The way to go big is to have one simple proposition and the biggest possible such proposition is this one: peace.
   I suppose there is a long organising tradition in Britain (I learned a lot there) but this battle still has to be won every time. I don’t have first-hand information but I am qute sure that it has been a difficult task to shape up the Stop the War Coalition. One of the components of it is the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) which is not temperamentally much different from the characters behind the ANSWER coalition. There are some of them here in South Africa. Their first resort is invariably to the big “platform” and long shopping-list of demands, and they are aggressive.
   So there is a problem to handle relations with the SWP (or I.S., as it is sometimes known). The British have done outstandingly well in constructing the relationship that they have got and keeping it going. It must have a lot to do with the leadership qualities of Andrew Murray and Lindsey German, each of which is from a different side of this particular historic fence.
   I think it is an excellent idea to use the good offices of the British. It is not necessarily wrong to start a new organisation, either. But whether it should be an actual branch of the British one, I doubt. It would be good if both big US organisations could have serious bilaterals with the Stop the War Coalition, though. With any luck it’s happening already.

3. Salah, I’m sure they are! Hey, maybe they even enjoy reading JWN!

4. Someone sent me an email several years ago about two books about how to organize politically. I don’t remember the titles.
   I am not myself religous but my experience has been that church groups seem to organize effectively. I think there was some effective opposition to the war before it started.

5. Unfortuntately, chaos of the US antiwar movement is caused by 2 main factors:
   — GOP propaganda starting from Fox
   — Direct GOP pressure
   As for problems with UPJ, etc, IMHO, they are quite secondary 🙁

6. Dear Helena,‎
   Let them spy who cares…‎
   One point I would like to make here a bout antiwar movement/ Antiwar solidarity ‎what ever names we can give the goal is one stope the war that’s all we need, my ‎point is I read and heard that US the most religious nation in the world! Correct me if ‎I am wrong please, so I don’t see or read any church or religious groups from US or ‎out US companying against the war. Dose that mean hey are with US administration ‎and supporting them or they are just quite they don’t care?‎
   In many occasions some of the commentators requested that Muslims religious ‎leaders to condemns the killing of innocents around the world those killer we don’t ‎know them just claming thorough the internet they are Muslims but the are not, so ‎where are the Christian religious leaders from this war that starts on fails bases and ‎lies all we know the war is chose of necessity for US and others.‎
   Where is Join Drs. Schuller I & II from ‎Crystal Cathedral Ministries‎ which they plane for ‎‎50TH ANNIVERSARY SUNDAYS DECEMBER 18, 2005 or Ben Heny or Chuck Missler ‎from Koinonia House‎ and others from this war?
   Its there duty to fronting the nation and talk on behalf of the nation and to guide them ‎against this war?‎
   Or they just collecting money and get visits of Holy Lands and that all we see and ‎hear from them….‎
   Any action we can take to attract these churches with our campaigning against the ‎war, did we need too send letters to them? Or do we need to talk to them and organise ‎some thing with them?‎
   Hope some will take the initiative and do the work with the Christian Religious ‎Groups not just sending their team to deadly land like CPT Team, now the time to ‎come forward and make all the voice load to stope this war…‎

7. Salah– the church I belong to, which is formally known as the Religious Society of Friends, is one of a number of churches with sizeable congregations here in the US that have historically always been pacifist churches. We hold to the original teachings of the Gospels that are against war, and never signed on to the doctrines of “just war” that many churches adopted around 400-500 years later.
   Other historic peace churches with congregations here in the US include the Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, the Amish, etc.
   Many members and congregations from these churches have been very active in the fight against the current war. So too have members and some congregations from other churches like the Catholics, the Episcopalians, Baptists, etc. Check out, for example the Sojourners movement (many Baptists), the Mary knoll Brothers and Sisters (Catholic), the Episcopal peace Fellowship, etc. If you look down the list of organizations affiliated with UPJ (link in main post above), you can find quite a number of Christian religious bodies.
   Of course, even many people in believe in “just war” theory (which I don’t) have disagreed with the present war as being unjustified…

8. Oh dear — now you are writing about something I actually do know something about and I guess I’m honor bound to leap into this.
   In the interests of grounding this discussion, here’s the complete UFPJ statement (couldn’t find a contact email address on the site.):
   From: Leslie Cagan
   Date: December 12, 2005 12:52:12 PM PST
   To: ufpj@lists.mayfirst.org
   Subject: [UFPJ] UFPJ Rejects Future Work with ANSWER
   Reply-To: lesliecagan@igc.org
   Ending the War in Iraq, Building a Broad Movement for Peace and Justice, And Our Experience with A.N.S.W.E.R.
   From the Steering Committee, United for Peace and Justice
   December 12, 2005
   United for Peace and Justice aims to build the broadest, most diverse movement for an immediate and complete end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. We see this as our immediate priority in the long-term effort to build a durable peace and justice movement that connects domestic and international issues. We are committed to working in a way that makes it possible for the widest array of people to come together around common aims, including communities of color, military families, Iraq war veterans and other veterans, the labor movement, youth, religious community, the women’s and lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender movements, professional organizations and community groups.
   As our coalition moves forward, we try to evaluate our experiences in order to strengthen our efforts and overcome our shortcomings. In recent months, a difficult and controversial aspect of our work has been our engagement with International A.N.S.W.E.R in co-sponsoring the September 24, 2005 Washington, D.C. Rally and March. Following this experience, and after thorough discussion, the national steering committee of United for Peace and Justice has decided not to coordinate work with ANSWER again on a national level. Here we want to share with all UFPJ member groups our summary of this experience and the decisions we have made as a result.
   In spring 2005, based on previous experiences, UFPJ did not believe it would be productive to make coordination with ANSWER a centerpiece of our September 24 efforts. (See memo dated May 23rd – click here: http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2853). We had a particular vision for this specific action:
   (1) its central demands would hone in on ending the war in Iraq, thus sending a focused message to the U.S. public and providing an entryway into the antiwar movement for the expanding number of people prepared to turn out for a protest demonstration; and
   (2) the connections between the Iraq war and Washington’s overall empire building, the U.S. support of the illegal occupation of Palestinian land, racism, repression and injustice at home would be articulated in accessible and creative ways, not only via rally speakers, but also at an interactive two day peace and justice festival, and throughout a 12 hour concert.
   We did not believe ANSWER shared this perspective on the September 24 activities. Therefore we decided that working with them would hinder rather than help in maximizing the breadth and impact of such a demonstration at an urgent political moment.
   As September 24 came closer and some circumstances changed, we changed our perspective. Regarding the weekend in general, the spotlight Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath put on racism and class inequities led us to highlight the demand for Funding Full and Just Recovery in the Gulf Coast. Regarding our relations with ANSWER, our concerns grew about the potential confusion of having two totally separate demonstrations in the same city on the same day. We seriously considered the thoughtful concerns expressed by some anti-war groups and activists that an agreement for a joint UFPJ-ANSWER action needed to be worked out. As a result, after much reflection and without unanimity among us, we reversed our earlier decision. With the help of mediation by U.S. Labor Against the War, we worked out an agreement with ANSWER for joint sponsorship of the September 24 Rally and March (but not other weekend activities). (See the text of the agreement, click here: http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=3161).
   There were two positive results of this agreement. First, we avoided the problem of two completely separate demonstrations in Washington, DC on September 24. Second, the rancorous public dispute over the whos, hows and whys of September 24 was largely ended for the important period immediately preceding the action.
   But there were many negative results as well.
   First, ANSWER violated the terms of our agreement in ways that substantially and negatively impacted September 24’s message and impact:
   (1) ANSWER did not honor the agreed-upon time limits for its sections of the pre-march Rally, going more than an hour over in one section. The time was to be evenly divided in 30 minutes segments alternating between the two coalitions. Besides the impact in terms of disrespect to other speakers and the attendees in Washington, DC, this meant that the C-SPAN broadcast of the rally presented a one-sided picture of the antiwar movement to the U.S. public. In the extended ANSWER section broadcast on C-SPAN, there was in fact very little focus on, or explanation of, the central demand motivating hundreds of thousands of people to attend the demonstration: U.S. Out of Iraq Now.
   (2) ANSWER delayed the start of the March for an hour past the agreed upon time. We learned that morning that while our agreement with ANSWER was to begin the march at 12:30, the permit ANSWER had negotiated with the police had the march starting at 1:30. This led to confusion, which in turn prevented the agreed-upon lead contingent carrying the agreed-upon lead banner (“End the War in Iraq, Bring the Troops Home Now, Justice for Hurricane Victims”) from actually leading the March. This diluted the March’s message – especially in terms of media images of the March’s front rank. It also jeopardized relationships between UFPJ and the representatives of several organizations whom we asked be part of the lead contingent of the March. An antiwar movement still not as strong as we need to be when compared to the tasks before us, in which developing relationships of mutual trust and accountability is of vital importance, can ill afford such short-sighted and narrow-minded practice.
   (3) ANSWER did not turn out many volunteers to provide for fundraising, security and media operations for the March and Rally. UFPJ was also short of volunteers, but the much smaller numbers from ANSWER meant that many of the practical burdens of attending to the needs of the crowd fell on UFPJ, while ANSWER concentrated its attention on extending the time their speakers were on the stage.
   In our view, it was because we had insisted (against ANSWER’s objections) that the terms of our agreement be made public; and through the costly expenditure of time and energy to deal with one issue after another in the weeks just before September 24, that additional problems were avoided. However, the interactions required to accomplish this were tremendously difficult and stressful, taking a major human toll on the UFPJ representatives participating in meetings with ANSWER. UFPJ has made our share of mistakes and no doubt some of us may have made intemperate and inappropriate remarks in the heat of political difficulty. We also see that while our agreement with ANSWER did not require us to do so, the fact that we did not inform them about the plans to include speakers during the late afternoon/evening concert might have contributed to the tension. But the souring of the political atmosphere is largely due to ANSWER, which, in our experience, consistently substitutes labels (“racist”, “anti-unity”) and mischaracterization of others’ views for substantive political debate or problem solving – both in written polemics and direct face-to-face interactions.
   Beyond all this, the priority given to negotiating and then trying to carry out an agreement with ANSWER hurt rather than helped galvanize the participation of many other groups and individuals in the September 24 activities. In part this is simply a question of where time and resources were directed. But it also stems from the bridges ANSWER has burned over the years with other broader forces in the progressive movement. Many longtime antiwar and social movement activists – and many groups only recently embracing mass action against the war – have had the same kind of negative experiences with ANSWER that we did in the run-up to, and on September 24. Some people, and some UFPJ member groups, believe this stems from ANSWER’s political and strategic perspectives. Others attribute the problems to what is often called style of work, or to issues about democracy, decision making and control. Whatever the case on this level, co-sponsorship with ANSWER on September 24 was welcomed by some in the antiwar movement but limited or prevented completely the participation of others.
   This is not surprising: “unity in the movement” doesn’t happen in the abstract. Especially when up-close coordination is involved, unity takes place between specifics groups and individuals, and choices to work in close cooperation with certain groups with certain approaches simultaneously means choosing not to work in the same fashion with other groups. Of course we all dream of a situation where everyone gets together as one cooperative movement family. But we still must deal with politics as they are, not as we wish them to be. Sometimes it is necessary for groups with extremely bitter relations to cooperate for a common aim. But there are many circumstances when effective movement building and the long-range process of developing unity is better served by different groups pursuing different courses, until conditions change or the groups themselves evolve and transform.
   In terms of UFPJ’s relationship with ANSWER, our national steering committee has concluded that the latter path is best for the foreseeable future. We did not have consensus. But by a more than two thirds supermajority we voted on December 4 not to coordinate work with ANSWER again on a national level. We simultaneously recognized that other settings and situations may be different. We make no recommendations or mandates on this issue to UFPJ member groups in local or constituency-based areas, who will continue to decide whether and/or how much to coordinate efforts with ANSWER based on their own experiences, conditions and judgments.
   The tasks in front of the anti-Iraq war movement and all of us who are struggling for peace and justice are immense. Yet this is a moment of great opportunity, as popular anger at Bush’s wars against people abroad and at home grows, and as an expanding number of organizations – many with massive constituencies among poor, working and oppressed peoples – are willing to consider taking up aggressive protest mobilizations. United for Peace and Justice will redouble our efforts to push forward the antiwar movement and to bring the broadest and most diverse array of people and groups into the struggle for peace and justice.
   _______________________________________________
   UFPJ mailing list
   Post: UFPJ@lists.mayfirst.org
   List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj

9. Having sent along the UFPJ statement, now I think I should answer your point about adding “Justice” to the UFP program.
   Helena — when we fail to include “justice” alongside peace, we ratify the race and class barriers to political participation that are the norm in the US.
   When Bush started his war, what demographic was most distrustful of this imperial adventure — do you know? The African American community never drank the koolaid; they always knew this war was an immoral fraud. Other communities of color were less certain of this, but they have, far more rapidly than white folks, moved to an understanding that something rotten is being done to Iraq. The US labor movement is a fairly pathetic shell but it too rapidly generated a formation “US Labor against the War” that has some traction in labor.
   None of these folks trust middle class, white peace churches to give a damn about their life and death issues. With good historic reason, unfortunately. And these are the people least served by the current US imperial agenda. They are the natural mass base of an antiwar movement, not those of us in the poltical class who understand immediately that our longterm interests are being trashed. White peace folks have to PROVE that they mean it if they want to work with the mass of people who might actually oppose the war.
   And so you get weak accomodations like naming a peace outfit UFPJ. And you get continual efforts to find effective institutions within the communities you want onboard to ally with. And there, you get to the other problems inherent in building an antiwar movement.
   Institutions that might provide leadership are weak in the communities of color for the very good reason that the whole thrust of contemporary right wing dominance is to pull out and buy off a few individuals while keeping down the large majority. And it is has worked: we get a Colin Powell and a Condi Rice, but we no longer have a Black church with broad moral authority to denounce the war. Some communities have locally strong leadership, but most don’t. Building an antiwar base becomes a slow process.
   Furthermore, though the big white middle class peace outfits like AFSC and Peace Action are nominally on board with the big US peace coalitions, they have balanced maintaining their organizational integrity (and donor base) against the need for the wider movement and chosen not to throw down more than nominally.
   The result of this last is that people like you have indeed been to the big demos put on by UFPJ and local equivalents — and that is great. But you don’t even know that even the largest of them, February in NYC in 2003, were put on by less than 20 manically overworked people who had almost no infrastructure. They did a pretty good job, but without institutional support from members of the political class AND legitimacy among the disadvantaged communities in the US, you aren’t going get a mass peace movement here.
   And yes — there is substantial communication with the Brits among the core of the UFPJ set.

10. Stand outside of churches with pictures of dead Iraqi and Afghan children — http://www.informationclearinghouse.info has some very poignant ones.
    When people *of faith* have to see the results of their government’s actions and their own inaction in stopping it –have to see the real human cost — support of the war amongst mainstream Americans will go to almost zero.
    Antiwar marches preach to the choir — make the soccer moms of America look at that dead baby in Iraq, the one who looks like their little one did, and then the wars will stop.

11. Stand outside of churches with pictures of dead Iraqi and Afghan children — http://www.informationclearinghouse.info has some very poignant ones.
    When people *of faith* have to see the results of their government’s actions and their own inaction in stopping it –have to see the real human cost — support of the war amongst mainstream Americans will go to almost zero.
    Antiwar marches preach to the choir — make the soccer moms of America look at that dead baby in Iraq, the one who looks like their little one did, and then the wars will stop.

12. Jan, hi– thanks so much for putting so many thoughtful points into this discussion, which are helping me to think thru the issues.
    I have been totally aware, all along, that most African-Americans never bought the pro-war arguments… And obviously the relationship between the war abroad and socioeconomi issues at home has been there all along. (That formed the bulk of what I said when I spoke to our City Council about making C’ville a “City of Peace”, back in January 2003.) So I’m not at all denying that there IS a relationship, or that we should talk about it…
    It’s just, I guess, the distractedness of UFPJ that concerns me. On the next comments board Rozelle (I think) writes that what’s needed is not so much a big nationwide organizational structure but excellent communication. I totally agree with the need to focus heavuily on communications, with or without the nationwide structure. But UFPJ’s communications are an absolute shambles today! My recollection is that back in 2003 they were much better– and they’ve gone majorly downhill since then.
    For example, why not get something speedy and compelling up on their website to announce the excitement of the London conference and– crucially– the need to start organizaing for next March 18-19? But instead of spending the small amount of time needed to do that they presumably spent many, many hours of leadership time going over the details and exact wording of their complaint against ANSWER and what they would do about it.
    Really, what a distraction.

13. Well, we’re certainly in agreement that ANSWER is a distraction — in fact, I have longed feared it is something worse…
    And UFPJ is not nimble, to put it mildly. They’ve sacrificed that for inclusivity and concensus in the debased political form that works so sluggishly among people who do not know and trust each other. I think one of the failings of US progressive organizing is that we’ve too often latched on to an ideal notion of concensus without any grasp of the social contexts, like Quaker meetings, that actually ground the practice — thereby hamstringing ourselves. Simple majority rule might serve us better — and since it is all voluntary, we get majority rule by default as the losers tend to go home.
    However, I will continue to insist that any U.S. peace movement has to think long and hard about where its real constituency might be found and work diligently to reach that base despite the fact that doing so will guarantee that it must work outside mainstream discourse. The mainstream will come around when it has to. The Iraqis have forced the question — unhappily for them.

14. Why chaos in the US antiwar movement? JPost provides certain insight on this.
    JONATHAN S.TOBIN. Joe Lieberman’s finest hour http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1134309586830&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
    Lieberman was sure he was going to be inaugurated as America’s first Jewish vice president in January 2001. He certainly came close enough to victory but, along with Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, he found himself having to swallow an electoral college defeat following the bitter dispute in Florida which decided the election.
    As such Lieberman is an icon not just of American Jewish achievement but as a “martyr” of what many bitter Democratic partisans still claim was a “stolen election.”
    In speeches and a widely read opinion column that was published in The Wall Street Journal on November 29, Lieberman has debunked much of the rhetoric being spouted by his fellow Democrats and laid out the case for perseverance in Iraq.
    Far from being “immoral” as many have claimed the war to be, Lieberman believes the American purpose in Iraq is highly moral: the overthrow of a bloody and dangerous tyrant and the attempt to replace his regime with a functioning democratic state.
    Lieberman understands that the United States is engaged in a world war against Islamists who intend the destruction of the West. “If the terrorists win [in Iraq], they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East,” Lieberman has warned the country.
    All this has created anger among Democrats who saw the American public’s predictable impatience with a long-term overseas military commitment as an issue to ride to victory.
    The writer is executive editor of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.

15. To narrowly focus on stopping this war, without also focusing on stopping the imperial neolib/neocon ambitions which led to war, is imho, to not stop future wars. I can’t work with organizations that either support continuing the war/occupation or oppose naming the causes of the war. Do we want this movement to not even stop one war, and then fall apart, or do we want it to show the causes of future wars, and prevent them?
    Both UFPJ and ANSWER have attracted hostility here in DC by ignoring local anti-war organizations, by scheduling their anti-war marches on the same days as twice-yearly anti-IMF/WB actions (without acknowledging the latter), etc.

16. The actions of the US Government and its corporate state controlled media are those of traitors to the American People!
    http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
    I think we need to re focus some of the debate back onto the media. We could surround their glass houses in NYC with tens of thousands of Americans who are tired of being lied to.
    I don’t understand how any patriotic American can still belong to the Republican or Democrat party.
    Thomas Jefferson calling: The time for revolution is now
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1890.htm
    Twenty million people converge on Washington and demand the resignation of the entire government, that’s how.

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