McReynolds on A20 controversies

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Apr 9 14:34:40 PDT 2002


Chuck0 wrote:


> > Right. From the points of view of those outside the movement against
>> the war in the USA -- the US power elite, the mass media, Americans
>> who have yet to come out in opposition to the war, foreigners paying
>> attention to American politics -- the only thing that counts is
>> numbers. Political differences between
>> <http://www.internationalanswer.org/> and
>> <http://www.a20stopthewar.org/> will be completely lost on outsiders.
>> The more I think about this, the dumber the squabble -- separate
>> rallies on the same day! -- looks.
>
>Oh brother, yet another appeal to silence criticism because of some
>"bigger enemy."

There is no need to be uncritical of other groups with whom one attends the same rally. I just forwarded Rabbi Lerner's call for civil disobedience to many lists, though I don't endorse the content of the Tikkun demand (i.e. UN international peace-keeping force to "protect Israelis & Palestinians from one another"), because I think it would be great if lots and lots of American Jews come out and say no to Sharon, no to the occupation, etc. loud and clear, especially using civil disobedience.


>We know that answer. Because they are sectarian vanguardist parasites.

My recent local experience has brought home to me that WW/IAC/ANSWER isn't the only group with whom some anarchists have problems working together. Several local organizations (the Student International Forum, Social Welfare Action Alliance, Columbus United Students Against Sweatshops, Graduate Students' and Employees' Organization at OSU, Jobs with Justice [Columbus], etc.) in which I'm involved are jointly inviting Dan La Botz to give a talk in Columbus (about which I posted here a while ago). I flyered and posted an announcement to local progressive e-lists. Seeing the announcement, a locally well known anarchist piped up and argued that "Dan La Botz should not be allowed to speak to any group of progressive people," because in his opinion "Dan and his rotten Clique have ACTIVELY sided with the racist police state to jail militants, supress dissent and control the movement" [!!!] and are "authoritarian, anti-woman, anti-youth and racist" [!!!]. I guess my co-organizers and I are supposed to be grateful that the anarchist man in question merely slandered our guest and advocated a boycott of his talk, rather than threatening to come and disrupt the event.

The above is just one example among many like them.

wearily yours, -- Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>



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