Disabled people -ADAPT - have protests at least twice a year -- major ones and most groups don't come out in support of our demos. It is usually about 500 crips out in the rain, in the streets. We don't even get mention in the "progressive" media. I guess we must be spewing out alienating rhetoric. That is a joke. So this just reinforces my point -- where are the organizers whom all will follow? The mythical organizers?
>
>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.
I was just on a NLG convention panel in Pasadena on the Supreme Court's Olmstead decision and in home support services. Were you out here for that? If so, wish I had known to look you up.
>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
I am confused about what "sectarian" means to people. Seems to me that each of these marches had a specific crowd in mind devoted to one issue. Disability movement matters have been accused of being "sectarian".
>
>
>"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.
My guess is that the American people for the most part don't know who the WWP is and really don't care. They haven't followed left party splits. I think this listserve is an exception. There are anti-war protests around LA composed of many different groups which have been ongoing for months now. These groups are around, so why didn't they take the lead? They went to San Francisco which turned out another 10,000 or more on the West coast.
>
> >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.
>
-
Is the lack of participation in Gulf War protests to be blamed on the
organizers? I don't think so. Typically when a war starts so comes
the American patriotic duty (or induced fear) not to intefere with
one's government. It took the Vietnam Anti-war movement years to get
off the ground.
Marta -- Marta Russell Los Angeles, CA http://www.disweb.org