I was talking about the anti-war stuff in my article, and implicit in my sentence which perhaps I should have stated explicitly was what have they done against the war in the past year. My concept of UFPJ is it is supposed to be an anti-war organization, not a shill for a pro-war Democrat. But since you bring it up this basically shows UFPJ for what it is - do nothing until it sees ANSWER taking over the anti-war movement and then the libs/socdems get together and have one big march before the war. Then in a presidential election year, they have two big demonstrations, one against the war, one against Bush. Kerry doesn't win so they sit on their hands while ANSWER organizes the first large explicitly anti-war demonstration in a year.
> 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.
Well great, we have a "mainstream coalition" that sits on its ass and does nothing against the war for a year. We did have a big anti-Bush/pro-Kerry rally, super. Let me put it this way - what has UFPJ done, or even said they planned to do, since Kerry lost, to stop the war?
> 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).
ANSWER had large anti-war rallies while the UFPJ types were still sitting around with their thumbs up their asses. My main conception of the libs/socdems after the ANSWER rally was David Corn going on Bill O'Reilly's show and denouncing the anti-war protests as being run by communists. So after the ANSWER marches, the main lib/socdem action I saw was to do nothing about the war, but to denounce the only people organizing rallies against the war. Evenutally, on February 15th UFPJ did have a big anti-war rally before the war. I wonder what would have happened if ANSWER hadn't been there to prod them into action. Without ANSWER, UFPJ leaders would have been able to tell people "TINA" - There Is No Alternative. With the existence of an ANSWER, if UFPJ sits on its ass, then ANSWER will take over the anti-war movement. So thank heavens for ANSWER.
> I have a problem with UFPJ's liberal politics, but I suspect that
> they've done more organizing than the cadre over at ANSWER.
I would say instead that they CAN do more organizing when they WANT to. So when pro-war Kerry was running against Bush, yes, as you said, UFPJ had large anti-Bush actions. UFPJ is the hare to ANSWER's tortoise - they have greater ability, but they seem more interested in sleeping than slowly but surely pushing forward.
> 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.
There were people engaged in direct action who were not ANSWER-affiliated yesterday. At the WRL/IWW/SPUSA/Veterans for Peace/Catholic Worker etc. event in Manhattan, several hundred people showed up, and three Wobblies, David McReynolds of the SPUSA and at least a dozen to two dozen people were arrested while engaging in direct action (blocking the street in front of the recruiting center).
My point is all of these groups are UFPJy groups, and did everything despite the UFPJ - the UFPJ did little aside accepting a request to endorse the event.
As far as not waiting for UFPJ, and considering ANSWER as too far out - imagine if all of these people organized into a coalition. Then we would have three coalitions - UFPJ, ANSWER and a third one. Which further splits things. All I know is the direct action anarchist (IWW plus non-IWW anarchists) and SPUSA/WRL etc. event had hundreds of people while the ANSWER rally had thousands of people. So I give credit where credit is due to ANSWER for that.
the main problem is UFPJ's liberal/socdem leaders, like all of the rest of the liberal/socdems have been sitting on their asses doing nothing. My only response to that is Go ANSWER! Sure, I'll attend the small little protests the IWW etc. protests, but when I see these small protests I realize who is the fringe and who is out there organizing. And if I didn't mention this before, the UFPJ-blessed event was lily-white while ANSWER had many blacks and Hispanics. So more kudos to ANSWER in that respect. The ironic thing about the liberal/socdem demo is that while it was more soft-spoken, it was actually more militant than the ANSWER demo.