Fw: David Corn: troubling origins of the anti-war movement

[Nathan Newman]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marta Russell" <ap888 at lafn.org>
>As the article makes clear, Corn is reflecting a lot of activists views who
>debated endlessly whether they would even attend the event because of its
>dominance by the WWP.   When I know many activists with decades of
>organizing experience who debated heavily on whether to attend, and many of
>them decided not to, this means that even greater numbers of non-organizers
>were not organized to attend.

-So where is their demo -- when is it scheduled?
-What are they getting done?

These folks aren't necessarily antiwar activists-- they have homeless folks
or other issues to take care of and aren't going to drop that work.  But
when they won't support a rally because of its alienating rhetoric, it's a
problem for the movement.

And for many of those organizing against the war, Oct. 26 WAS their rally,
for better or worse.  In the name of nonsectarianism, they endorsed and
organized people to get to DC, which is why the event was as large as it
was.  But the problem is that it would be larger if so many folks weren't
alienated from this kind of event.

Those who are opposed to the WWP get hit for opposing working with them, but
if they advocate separate rallies, that's seen as divisive as well.  I am
all for the rest of the antiwar movement telling the WWP to go to hell and
organize events separate from them.  I quite enjoyed the NION event and the
RCP hand in it was almost invisible-- I was doing NLG legal observing and I
had to ask around to figure it out, a good sign.

>As Corn notes, with 40% of the population agains the war, the numbers at
>these rallies are not that impressive given the large size of DC rallies
>that have happened with other crucial issues in the past.
-Please
-name a recent protest in which over 100,000 showed up except for the
-Million Man March?  Maybe the Promise Keepers?  No recent demos have
-opposed government policy directly that I can recall.

I don't know what you would count as recent.  The gay rights Millenium March
in 2000 was estimated from 200,000 to 800,000 people.  The lower figure is
probably closer to the mark, but it was still 2 to 4 times as large as
October 26.

The Webster pro-choice march back in 1989 was at least 500,000 people.

NOW organized a rally in 1995 that was probably on the scale of the October
26 march (estimates by organizers up to 200,000, meaning about half).  You
don't remember that march?  That's because marches of 100,000 are impressive
but nothing earthshaking in the scheme of such things.

In the last twenty years, there have been a handful of really large rallies
pushing over 200,000 folks:

The Million Man March
The Webster pro-choice march, 1989
Millenium March, 2000
Solidarity Day, pro-union, 1981   (about 200-400,000 folks)
Housing Now rally, 1989 (a few hundred thousand folks up to overblown
estimates of 500,000)

And yes the Promise Keepers

>If activists who only needed to take a Metro ride to the rally didn't show
>up, you know that literally hundreds of thousands of other people were not
>mobilized for action who could have been with a broader organizing message
>and effort.

-So let them organize one.  Where is Labor?  Is that a broader
-message?  As I recall all the anti capitalist demos have had a wide
-range of separate groups who do their thing. The Seattle Turtles,
-Labor, the black block, etc.

"So let them organize one?"  Yep there's the attitude -- sort of a "love it
or leave it" view of organizing.  As I said, the folks I know are doing good
work in the rest of their life; they don't have time to do the antiwar
organizing but wish those who were did not allow sectarian apologists for
mass murder to run the stage.

 >I say take the sign that 100,000 showed up as a GOOD sign and go forward.

Except it could easily be the high point, as it was back in the Gulf War
when large rallies before the war started were as large as they ever got.

-- Nathan Newman