I don't think that "rallies are the be-all and end-all," but coalitions like NION and ANSWER are basically coalitions to coordinate big anti-war demos, for which those with a wide variety of political persuasions can come out. Hence participation in them does not demand anything more than your going out to the demos that they organize.
At 1:25 PM -0400 10/22/02, Nathan Newman wrote:
>In the name of maximum turnout for this key month, they
>cross-endorsed-- something even I with my extreme dislike of the WWP think
>was the right thing
In this regard, anti-war activists today are doing better than at the time of the Gulf War, when two coalitions organized two different demos on successive weekends in D.C., split over whether to condemn Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait and whether to advocate the extension of the economic sanctions against Iraq as an alternative to the war.
Kevin Coogan wrote in _The Hit List_ (November/December 2001):
***** The Bush Administration made it clear to Husayn that he was on a tight deadline, and that any failure to meet that deadline and withdraw his forces would result in war. The first anti-war coalition, the National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East, strongly opposed the idea of a deadline and advocated the extension of the sanctions policy against Iraq as an alternative to military action. The National Campaign also made it clear that no matter how much it was opposed to a war against Iraq, it also considered Husayn's invasion of Kuwait to be an undeniable act of aggression.
The National Campaign's stance on the Gulf War was challenged by a rival organization, the National Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East. The National Coalition bitterly opposed the National Campaign's support for the extension of sanctions. The Coalition argued that Iraq itself was the victim of "U.S. Oil Imperialism," which was working in cahoots with reactionary states like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the ruling class of Kuwait itself. The Coalition demanded, instead, that the Left uncritically defend "the Iraqi people" against both continued economic sanctions and direct American military intervention. The divisions inside the Left over this issue became so deep that both groups were forced to hold rival rallies in Washington in January 1991. *****
It seems that eventually most liberals and leftists who were once opposed to the National Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East (the precursor for the International Action Center, according to Coogan) have by now come around to the view that economic sanctions on Iraq are wrong.
What happened to the National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East? Does it still exist or has it morphed into something else?
At 1:25 PM -0400 10/22/02, Nathan Newman wrote:
>what an effective left will need to promote to avoid just lurching
>from crisis to crisis
It's hard to say what will build an effective left. You often advocate doing a door-to-door campaign. I think that activists are interested in doing that, when there is something that they can take door to door, whether electoral campaign literature (be it for a political party or a ballot initiative) or anything else, which will serve as a conversation opener. You can't just knock on doors without bringing something in which people you want to talk to can participate. What might that something be if you want to advance the position that war and empire-building are not in the interest of working people in the USA? -- 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/>