I'd like to know what the hell UFPJ has done for the past year. They sponsored a big march exactly a year ago, and I have no idea what they've done since. They did almost no work for this event from what I can tell. I am not an expert on the UFPJ's every day doings, but from what I can tell they didn't do much all year, then ANSWER came to them and said it was doing a big rally and march on the anniversary and UFPJ made the decision NOT to sponsor it. In New York City, the War Resisters League was planning a march and direct action, with some help from the IWW, Socialist Party, Veterans for Peace and so forth so the UFPJ allowed the WRL to stick up a UFPJ-endorsed tag on the event, but from what I know there was very little organizing besides that.
So basically, from what I have seen at least, UFPJ has been basically moribund for over a year. The two things I've heard about them for the past year is they decided not to be part of the event ANSWER was planning, and they at probably some late date decided to sponsor but do little for the WRL event.
As far as ANSWER being the fringe, ANSWER's rally and march had thousands of people. Here's a picture I took of part of the crowd:
http://images.indymedia.org/imc/nyc/image/9/large/pict0140.jpg
Believe me, the UFPJ-sponsored event had nowhere near this many people. So who is the fringe?
To my eyes, ANSWER was against this war from day one and thus was a major force in the early anti-war movement. By the time of the big march last year, UFPJ had become the major force and ANSWER had been somewhat pushed to the side (although they had a presence at the march last year and were a co-sponsor). The liberal/social democratic UFPJ people obviously don't want much anti-war activity at this time, so they've sat on their hands and done nothing all year except decide to not work with the ANSWER "fringe". The one minor thing they did was allow WRL for this one event to say the UFPJ sponsored them, and do nothing to organize or promote it. Who knows what UFPJ did in the rest of the country.
"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."
This statement strikes me as ridiculous. For the UFPJ liberal/socdems this year, the choice has been to not be unified, but to not even coordinate different rallies this year. More people are not on the streets because UFPJ's liberal/socdem leaders do not want more people on the streets.
