1)IAC (the front for the WWP before ANSWER became the front for IAC) continued working on Iraq after the Gulf War, protesting the embargo, the bombings when nobody else was doing anything.
2)Most peace groups are very disorganized, partly because they involve people who are also dealing with jobs, school, children, grandchildren, friends and lives. Luckily, party-building groups don't have that problem!
3)The emerging, more organized national coalitions are still much newer than ANSWER.
4)ANSWER was strongly opposed to the war on Afghanistan, so while many other groups were dithering and processing about that, they were getting some structure in place. Ditto on Palestine. Both to their credit. And since they aren't democratic and don't much care about subtlety, it's no problem for them to quickly assemble simplistic messages on issues that most people think are kind of complicated.
lots of other reasons, but those are the ones coming to mind at the moment. you are right, a lot of those "co-sponsors" are tiny.
Liza
> From: "Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky at bellatlantic.net>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 12:42:08 -0500
> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Subject: Hollow ANSWER?
>
> I took a scan down ANSWER's 'co-sponsor' list and
> noticed there are few actual groups of any size
> or history on it. The main exceptions seem to be
> the Green Party and Women's International League
> for Peace and Freedom.
>
> There are some Jewish peace groups I know about,
> but I don't think they are very large. There are
> some Muslim ones that could be significant, but
> I don't know anything about them.
>
> There are lots of individuals or varying notoriety
> and importance.
>
> So I'm puzzled as to how they got the franchise,
> at least up till now, on the anti-Iraq activities.
> Is there so little left
> of the other cadre groups that WWP was able to dominate?
>
> Any enlightenment would be appreciated.
>
> mbs
>