The more the merrier. I've been busy organizing another network which doesn't have a sexy name. If I voted for the above list, I think United for Peace is going to pull ahead.
> Here's Seth Sandronsky's view of ANSWER:
>
> ***** Published on Saturday, December 7, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
> Coloring the Youth Peace Movement
> by Seth Sandronsky
>
> As war clouds cast their shadows on Iraq, the U.S. peace movement is
> growing. Part of that growth is coming from young, nonwhite people. This
> is a big change. It was clear to those who participated in the Oct. 26
> rally in San Francisco against the Bush administration's campaign to
> mentally prepare the U.S. public for an attack on Iraq.
>
> Whatever one thinks of International ANSWER (Act Now To Stop War and End
> Racism), the group is doing an outstanding job of organizing young
> black, brown and yellow people. They typically don't attend U.S.
> anti-war rallies, due mainly to the role of the nation's color line. The
> white peace movement gains nothing by burying its head in the sand on
> this sore subject. Honesty is the only policy here.
I'm pretty disappointed that left writers and journalists are buying into ANSWER propaganda on organizing with non-white groups. If you take it at face value, then yes, they are doing this. But so are other groups and coalitions. It's just that ANSWER has gotten bloodied in Round 1 of the activist reaction to their vanguardism, so now they are placing the race card like they know how to do. I maintain that ANSWER's efforts in this department are tokenistic, in the same way that the WWP and IAC have spent time recruiting tokens for their front groups in order to get street cred. This is why the IAC fights with the RCP over the Mumia support work. Vanguardists understand that their authoritarian politics are unpalatable to working people, so they organize front groups.
The proof of the pudding for ANSWER will be if they let people of color into leadership positions. Anybody can look at the leadership of the WWP and IAC and see lots of white people.
I hope that people take the reports of ANSWER's work with people of color with a grain of salt. Perhaps a big salt shaker or a salt block. The people behind ANSWER will put up a nice propaganda effort about organizing people of color, as they undermine other activist groups on race issues. Having seen organizers from the IAC pull this bullshit on one of my groups, I'm not going to mince any words on this matter.
Chuck0
------------------------------------------------------------ Personal homepage -> http://chuck.mahost.org/ Infoshop.org -> http://www.infoshop.org/ MutualAid.org -> http://www.mutualaid.org/ Alternative Press Review -> http://www.altpr.org/ Practical Anarchy Online -> http://www.practicalanarchy.org/ Anarchy: AJODA -> http://www.anarchymag.org/
AIM: AgentHelloKitty
Web publishing and services for your nonprofit: Bread and Roses Web Publishing http://www.breadandrosesweb.org/
"...ironically, perhaps, the best organised dissenters in the world today are anarchists, who are busily undermining capitalism while the rest of the left is still trying to form committees."
-- Jeremy Hardy, The Guardian (UK)