> http://www.marccooper.com/
> On the Left, the official anti-war “movement†is equally off-kilter,,,
> Michael Pugliese
Thanks for ruining my weekend, Michael. ;-)
Last thing I ever wanted to see was this self-important blowhard of the left starting up a blog.
The sad thing is that I agree with Cooper about ANSWER and UPFJ driving the anti-war movement in the ground, although he comes at this from a disgusting liberal critique. the thing is that ANSWER has become completely irrelevant--an "emergency" protest they called for Washington turned out less than two hundred people. They are rapdily running out of money and support from the anti-war movement.
A friend in DC asked me on Friday night if ANSWER would even have a stage at their rally. I replied that they were low on funds, so they probably wouldn't have a stage. It turned out that they had one, but it must have been extremely small <http://images.indymedia.org/imc/washingtondc/media/image/6/4_10demo.jpg>.
Is that Brian Becker on a chair?
Last week I dashed off an editorial about the anti-war movement and about its future direction. I argued that organizations like ANSWER needed to be left in the dust because they are incapable of thinking outside of the box of self-interest, and all they ever did was lead everybody around the White House in circles. Lo and behold, not ten minutes after I posted that editorial, but I find out that ANSWER had called for an emergency demonstration this weekend...OUTSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE!
This demonstrates the poverty of their politics and the poverty of their anti-war strategy. They have done more to disempower anti-war peeps than they have in opposing the war. Has ANSWER managed to raise opposition to the war by even one percentage point? No, of course not.
The best hope for the anti-war and peace movements lies in the hundreds of local peace groups that organize independently of joke coalitions like ANSWER. And the alternative press should be recognized for the excellent job it has done to educate people about the war. In fact, I'll argue that the alternative press has done more to throw monkeywrenches into the war machine than all the ANSWER demos put together.
Chuck0
