> 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.
Um, Lance, UFPJ was one of the primary coalitions that organized protests during the RNC convention last summer. I went to their march, which was much bigger than most of the ANSWER marches I've seen. ANSWER was a total non-factor in the RNC protests.
> So basically, from what I have seen at least, UFPJ has been basically
> moribund for over a year.
See the RNC protests.
> 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?
ANSWER is the fringe and you know that. UFPJ is the mainstream coalition now and they understand the political price they would pay if they worked with ANSWER again. Of course, the folks in UFPJ also understand that these efforts at collaboration from ANSWER are fake. I saw the WWP/IAC do similar crap in Washington. It's all a fucking sectarian game for the WWP.
> To my eyes, ANSWER was against this war from day one and thus was a
> major force in the early anti-war movement.
I think you mean to say that the leaders of the WWP/IAC were the first group to organize a front group after the 9/11 attacks. The ANSWER coalition was put together on paper before the IAC/WWP even managed to have a meeting of the groups in its coalition. Let me point out that it took the regular peace movement several weeks to put together a national meeting to talk about strategy and organization. That meeting happened a few days before the first antiwar protests (with the first national protest being one organized by anarchists, not ANSWER).
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.
I have a problem with UFPJ's liberal politics, but I suspect that they've done more organizing than the cadre over at ANSWER.
> "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.
What we really need are more movements that are engaged in direct action against the Pentagon, the war machine, and capitalism. People shouldn't be waiting around for UFPJ to do something, nor should they do anything for the whackos running ANSWER.
Chuck
