>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".
The antiwar movement should have the 60% of the public who opposes a war without UN approval. If you are aiming for a "specific crowd" less than that, that's a form of sectarianism. But that's not the real point; the issue with groups like the WWP is that they almost never join a coalition they don't run. If another coalition picks a day for an event, they create their own coalition and try to take the day over. As Chuck will point out, just look at the globalization movement during the World Economic Forum where the WWP/IAC had to run their own event.
So they cry red-baiting when people object to them dominating a group, yet they never support efforts they don't control. That's sectarian.
>My guess is that the American people for the most part don't know who
>the WWP is and really don't care.
They care because they experience the effects-- droning sectarian speeches at rallies, spokespeople from various front groups who are all really members of the WWP and spouting the line, and for more experienced activists, the reality is very clear.
>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...It took the Vietnam Anti-war movement years to get -off the ground.
See my other post on the effectiveness of that movement. But my point was that the beginning of the protests before the war started was the high point. They screamed "no blood for oil" and the military ran a campaign that minimized US deaths-- undercutting their simplistic message. That was actually where my dissent from left "peace" organizing grew since it seemed so stupid and misguided, recycling rhetoric from the Vietnam era that was meaningless in the new context. And this war shows that the military has learned infinitely from past wars and the antiwar movement has learned little.
-- Nathan Newman