[lbo-talk] "Cadre"? Re: dalai lama in nyc

[Chuck0]

> The audience cheered a statement that essentially credited the WWP with 
> single-handedly creating the peace movement. The truth is the peace 
> movement would have shriveled up if it had not been for the formation of 
> new democratically-run broad based groups like Peace and Justice. The 
> April 5th Coalition organized a highly successful demonstration in 
> Oakland without any substantial ANSWER aid and totally outside its control.
> I spoke from the floor for two minutes critical of the WWP and 
> International ANSWER.  No one else said a single syllable in support of 
> my view.  And the leadership of the East Bay DSA was in the audience. 
> All in all a shameful event.

You have to wonder who was in the audience that cheered that statement. 
Must of been either WWP cadre or activists who are totally ignorant of 
the long history of peace movements in the United States. It doesn't 
surprise me that the WWP would utter such a lie, since lying is par for 
the course with their so-called "coalition."

They can't even get it right when it comes to the origin of their own 
coaltion. Here's a paragraph about their founding which ANSWER includes 
in all communiques:

"The Coalition organized the first national
demonstration against war and racism following
September 11 on September 29, 2001, which brought
25,000 people into the streets of Washington DC and
15,000 in San Francisco."

The ANSWER Coalition did *not* organize the first national demonstration 
against the war after 9-11. That distinction belongs to the 
Anti-Capitalist Convergence DC, which conducted the first national 
demonstration on the streets of Washington, DC several hours before the 
ANSWER event even took place. The ACC, along with the Mobilization for 
Global Justice and the Latin American Solidarity Coalition, had been 
organizing for the September 2001 anti-globalization protests for six 
months. In their typical fashion, the International Action Center tried 
to muscle in on the organizing and in June of that year announced their 
own competing anti-Bush rally for that weekend. Both the ACC and MGJ 
were subject to annoying efforts by the IAC to be a player at the table, 
but the IAC was pretty much frozen out.

After 9-11, the MGJ decided to call of their protests, the ACC changed 
their protest into an anti-war protest, and the IAC set up ANSWER in the 
hopes of establishing themselves as the new movement. Since the ACC had 
done most of the national outreach for the anti-globalization protests, 
ANSWER was able to take advantage of this publicity and the numbers 
coming to DC to claim that they had done this magic act of organizing 
"the first national demonstration against war and racism following
September 11..."

What's more, the existing peace movement did not put together ANSWER 
after 9-11. Folks involved in the peace movement and other concerned 
about the plans for war, had a huge meeting in Washington the week 
before the September 29 protests. There was much talk at this meeting 
about creating a national coalition, but ANSWER was NOT the result of 
this meeting. The ANSWER coalition was created by WWP and IAC cadre in 
the days after 9-11; it was not created via a grass roots process. The 
fact that a few cadre created this fake coalition allowed them to 
maneuver so fast in the weeks after 9-11. Remember that many activists 
were in a state of shock and that things were moving slowly, so it's 
simply hard to believe that a grassroots coalition was set up within 
hours of 9-11.

Chuck0