FW: [R-G] From ZMag on IAC et al

Liza Featherstone lfeather32 at erols.com
Mon Oct 28 11:08:41 PST 2002


[good piece on ANSWER/IAC/NION by Michael Alpert. I basically think people are doing exactly what they should be doing, working in coalition with IAC on these massive demos, pointing out where they disagree, and also organizing on their own in smaller scale, more creative ways. The more people who go to the IAC events, the less anyone can hear the creepy robot speakers, and more visible signs made by actual human beings. Interestingly, by showing up and working with IAC, rather than shunning them, the movement may be making the WWP increasingly irrelevant. -- Liza]

---------- From: DavidMcR at aol.com Reply-To: rad-green at lists.econ.utah.edu Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 12:39:53 EST To: 107disc at yahoogroups.com, asdnet at igc.topica.com, redyouth at ypsl.net, socialistsunmoderated at debs.pinko.net Subject: [R-G] From ZMag on IAC et al

As you all know, a round of antiwar demonstrations is planned for this

coming weekend, in Washington, San Francisco, and many other cities too.

These demonstrations are obviously profoundly important, and we have

been receiving many messages asking questions about the events as well

as about the broader logic of antiwar activism, its methods, prospects,

etc.

Stephen Shalom and I have prepared another of our Question and Answer

essays, this time trying to deal with the organizing concerns people are

raising. It is now online at the site, at the following url in case you

want to go direct.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=2527

The questions and answers try to provide activists with information and

formulations useful for organizing. They deal in turn with: why oppose

the war, how does our activism impact policy, how can we get enough

people opposed to war, single issue versus multi-issue organizing,

connections between war and other focuses, single versus multi-tactic

organizing, judging tactics, relating to groups whose politics we don't

like, avoiding sectarianism, and presenting alternatives to war.

The question and answer that we include below to give this update more

substance, though many of the other questions and answers are far more

fundamental in our view, is the one that seems to be on so many people's

minds right now, due to its timely relevance to this weekend. It is the

eighth in the sequence.

(8) How should we relate to groups doing antiwar work with whom we

disagree in significant ways -- the IAC and ANSWER, NION, and the war's

mainstream opponents? How do we evaluate all these? Should we work with

people we have serious differences with, avoid them, or what?

There is no universal rule for how to relate to those with whom we

disagree. If we automatically refused to have anything to do with any

person or organization with whom we had differences, then we'd be

protesting the war in demonstrations of two or three individuals.

Obviously, we need to take account of how much disagreement there is and

whether working with particular groups allows us to express a shared

agreement and further our goals, despite our disagreements, or whether,

on the other hand, working with particular groups restricts or

undermines our efforts in some significant ways.

One extremely energetic antiwar group is the International Action Center

(IAC). It is the leading force in the coalition ANSWER (Act Now to Stop

War & End Racism) which is calling the October 26 demonstrations in

Washington, DC and elsewhere. (IAC and ANSWER share a New York City

phone number and the latter's website features many materials from IAC.)

IAC is officially led by Ramsey Clark and is largely the creation of the

Workers World Party; and many key IAC figures are prominent writers for

WWP.

WWP holds many views that we find abhorrent. It considers North Korea

"socialist Korea" where the "land, factories, homes, hotels, parks,

schools, hospitals, offices, museums, buses, subways, everything in the

DPRK belongs to the people as a whole" (Workers World, May 9, 2002), a

fantastic distortion of the reality of one of the most rigid

dictatorships in the world. IAC expresses its solidarity with Slobodan

Milosevic

http://www.iacenter.org/yugo_milosdeligation.htm). There's of

course much to criticize in the one-sided Hague war crimes tribunal, but

to champion Milosevic is grotesque. The ANSWER website provides an IAC

backgrounder on Afghanistan that refers to the dictatorial government

that took power in that country in 1978 as "socialist" and says of the

Soviet invasion the next year: the "USSR intervened militarily at the

behest of the Afghani revolutionary government"

http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/resources/index.html) --

neglecting to mention that Moscow first had to engineer the execution of

the Afghan leader to get themselves the invitation to intervene.

In none of IAC's considerable resources on the current Iraq crisis is

there a single negative word about Saddam Hussein. There is no mention

that he is a ruthless dictator. (This omission is not surprising, given

their inability to detect any problem of dictatorship with the

Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan.) There is no mention that Hussein

is responsible for the deaths of many tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds

and Shi'ites. IAC's position is that any opponent of U.S. imperialism

must be championed and never criticized.

How do these views affect antiwar demonstrations organized by IAC or

ANSWER? They do so in two primary ways.

First, an important purpose of antiwar demonstrations is to educate the

public, so as to be able to build a larger movement. If the message of a

demonstration is that opposition to U.S. war means support for brutal

regimes, then we are mis-educating the public, and limiting the growth

of the movement. To be sure, some true things we say may also alienate

some members of the public, and often that is a risk we must take in

order to communicate the truth and change awareness. But to tell the

public that they have to support either George Bush or Saddam Hussein is

not true and is certainly not a way to build a strong movement. People

are not wrong to be morally repelled by Saddam Hussein. An antiwar

movement that cannot make clear its opposition to the crimes of both

Bush and Hussein will of necessity be limited in size.

The second problem with IAC-organized demonstrations is that the

day-to-day practice of IAC cadre often shows a lack of commitment to

democratic and open behavior. It is not surprising that those who

lionize the dictatorial North Korean regime will be somewhat lacking in

their appreciation of democratic practice.

Does this mean that people who reject these abhorrent views of the IAC

shouldn't attend the October 26 antiwar demonstrations in Washington,

DC, San Francisco, and elsewhere? No.

If there were another large demonstration organized by forces more

compatible with the kinds of politics espoused by other antiwar

activists, including ourselves, then we would urge people to prefer that

one. And there is no doubt we should be working to build alternative

organizational structures for the antiwar movement that are not

dominated by IAC. But at the moment the ANSWER demonstration is the only

show in town. And much as we may oppose Saddam Hussein, we also oppose

Bush, and the paramount danger today is the war being prepared by the

U.S. government.

So we need to consider various questions.

First, are those with antiwar views contrary to the IAC's perspective

excluded from speaking? Second, what will be the primary message

perceived by those present at the demonstrations and by the wider

public?

If past experience is a guide, IAC demonstrations will have programs

skewed in the direction of IAC politics, but without excluding

alternative voices. In general, the IAC speakers will not be offensive

so much for what they say, but for what they don't say. That is, they

won't praise Saddam Hussein from the podium, but nor will they utter a

critical word about him. However, as long as other speakers can and do

express positions with a different point of view, the overall impact of

the event will still be positive, particularly in the absence of other

options. Most of the people at the demonstration will in fact be unaware

of exactly who said what and whether any particular speaker omitted this

or that point. What they will experience will be a powerful antiwar

protest. And most of the public will see it that way too. (As was the

case during the Vietnam War too: few demonstrators knew the specific

politics or agendas of demonstration organizers.) Accordingly, and in

the absence of any alternative event, it makes sense to help build and

to attend the October 26 demonstration, while also registering extreme

distaste for the IAC, at least in our view.

Another significant antiwar organization is Not In Our Names. NION has

issued a very eloquent and forceful Pledge of Resistance opposing Bush's

war on terrorism, signed by prominent individuals and thousands of

others. NION organized important demonstrations around the U.S. on

October 6 and on June 6.

Significant impetus behind NION comes from the Revolutionary Communist

Party (RCP). RCP identifies itself as followers of

Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Their website http://rwor.org/) expresses

support for Shining Path in Peru (which they say should properly be

called the Maoist Communist Party of Peru), an organization with a

gruesome record of violently targeting other progressive groups. For the

RCP, freedom doesn't include the right of a minority to dissent (this is

a bourgeois formulation, they say, pushed by John Stuart Mill and Rosa

Luxembourg); the correct view, they say, is that of Mao (the "greatest

revolutionary of our time"): "If Marxist Leninists are in control, the

rights of the vast majority will be guaranteed."

Despite these views, however, RCP does not push its specific positions

on NION to the degree that IAC does on ANSWER. For example, while the

ANSWER website offers such things as the IAC backgrounder on Afghanistan

cited above, the NION website and its public positions have no

connection to the sometimes bizarre views of the RCP.

The case for participating in NION events is stronger than for ANSWER

events. It still makes overwhelming sense to build better antiwar

coalitions, but in the meantime supporting NION activities promotes an

antiwar message that we support, with relatively little compromise of

our views.

Another group that may support antiwar activities but with whom we have

serious disagreements are liberal politicians. Many of these politicians

have totally capitulated to Bush and the right, but a few of them have

been strong voices against war. Our diagnosis of and prescription for

U.S. warmongering differ substantially from those of antiwar liberals.

Should we participate in events where Democratic Party officeholders are

leading speakers? Again, the same basic logic applies. Does the presence

of the Democrat in some way prevent us from saying what we want to say?

(Sure, at an event where Democrat X is speaking, we won't be welcome to

give a speech denouncing X as a running-dog lackey of the ruling class.

But it is unlikely that this is what we wanted to say in our ten-minute

antiwar speech anyway.) And, second, what message does the public come

away with? If the whole event is billed as a "Let's Wait A Week for War"

demonstration, then no matter what we say our participation will be

contributing to a cause we don't support, pursuing war a week from now.

But as long as the demonstration has a clear antiwar position, the

presence and participation of liberal Democrats should not preclude our

participation. Indeed, if we were on the committee choosing speakers, we

would support including many speakers who didn't agree with us on many

things, but who were clearly antiwar and who could convey an antiwar

message to audiences that we hadn't been as successful in attracting.

Michael Albert

Z Magazine / ZNet

sysop at zmag.org

www.zmag.org

>>

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