All along the antiwar mobilizing, there's been a de facto choice to emphasize unity with the fringe like ANSWER and the result has been that, while over 50% of the public disapprove of Bush's Iraq policy, yet the antiwar movement can only muster a handful of people in the streets.
It's a pathetic failure by the leftwing antiwar movement.
Nathan Newman
----- Original Message ----- From: "Lance Murdoch" <lancemurdoch at gmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 9:46 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] M19 in New York City
I went to the anti-war thing in New York City today. UFPJ and ANSWER didn't even coordinate and had overlapping times, damn both of them, they're both thick-headed (yes, UFPJ too). Plus the UFPJ one had hundreds and the ANSWER one had thousands. Anyway, the War Resisters League organized the first one, and UFPJ gave it a benediction, other groups were involved as well. Catholic Worker, the Socialist Party, Veterans for Peace and the IWW all endorsed and were there. We marched to Times Square and over a dozen of people lay down on Broadway, including David McReynolds (and three Wobblies), and were arrested. Later I went up to the ANSWER march and talked to people tabling for groups such as the League for the Revolutionary Party, Communist Organization for the Fourth International (which was a split from the Revolutionary Socialist League, which split from the International Socialists, which was founded out of the Independent Socialist Club, a lot of whose members were from the International Socialist League which...well, I'll be merciful to myself and all and stop there).
Pictures are here:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/145509
Lance
P.S. Did I forget to mention this - UFPJ and ANSWER not coordinating is D-U-M-B. If you're not going to hold a rally together, at least frigging coordinate. Damn. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk