>[Interesting that Reed is the only Black leftist they
>bothered to quote.
Yes -- I'm not surprised by the choice.
>New York Observer
>
>October 22, 2001
>
>Left Falls Apart as Center Holds
>
>By Rick Perlstein <rperlstein at observer.com>
This tendency of prominent leftist intellectuals to defect, in increasing numbers, to pro-war & pro-American imperialist positions has existed before September 11, 2001. Think of Yugoslavia, East Timor, and so on.
Rick Perlstein writes: "It would just be too, too ho-hum to report the fact: A predominance of lefties, both name-brand and rank-and-file, feel not altogether too different about the war against terrorism than-well, Republicans." However, he mainly interviewed "name-brand" left celebrities; he bothered to interview neither local organizers nor rank-and-file activists. To see a completely different picture, come & visit us in Columbus, Ohio.
Perlstein again: "And the Brooklyn Greens and War Resisters League's peace vigil at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Flatbush on primary day this past Thursday revealed their 'fifth column' to resemble a toothpick: Eight adults and three children standing quietly, holding 8-by-11 signs about an 'eye for an eye making us all blind' drew less attention than a couple of Fernando Ferrer leafletters a few paces down the street."
However, in Columbus, Ohio, we got more than 200 people on the S29 local march & rally against the war, at the same time as sending 20 to Washington D.C. to join the rally organized by the International A.N.S.W.E.R. Mark D. Stansbery (my trusted religious left comrade) and I called an anti-war meeting on the day one of the WTC & Pentagon bombings, & since then we haven't stopped growing. We have many regular anti-war activities: candlelight vigils on Tuesdays, 10:30-11:30 p.m.; anti-war teach-ins on Thursdays, from 5:00 p.m.; Women in Black vigils on Fridays, 5:00-6:00 p.m.; Anti-War Coalition meetings on Sundays, from 5:00 p.m.; the Peace Camp on the Oval at the Ohio State University, 24 hours, 5 days a week. Coming soon: anti-war film series on Mondays, from 7:00 p.m. The first two films to be shown are _Hearts and Minds_ and _The Panama Deception_. There have & will be many other actions & meetings of working groups & member orgs of the Anti-War Coalition as well -- too numerous to mention them all here.
Also, we are organizing for a big anti-war action on Saturday, November 10, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., with puppets & street theater, in protest against the Battelle Memorial Institute (at <http://www.battelle.org/>), which gets a lot of tax dollars to do bio/chemical weapons research, including Anthrax. The November 10 action will be held in conjunction with the Campus Progressive Conference "Building Alliances for Progressive Action" (for more info on the CPA conference, visit <http://www.osu.edu/students/CPA/>). We'd like everyone from Ohio & beyond to come!
Perlstein quotes Ellen Willis: "'I've just felt sort of an enormous sense of disconnection to the antiwar movement,' she said. 'To do nothing is unacceptable.'" What irks me even more than pro-war & pro-American imperialist positions of defectors is that it is *they* who are *doing nothing*, sitting on their asses, endlessly fantasizing about military campaigns in complete detachment from the reality of modern warfare & U.S. imperialism. Anti-war organizers, however, are *doing a lot*.
-- Yoshie
* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Anti-War Organizing in Columbus Covered by the Media: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/media.html>