[lbo-talk] DC

[Nathan Newman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven L. Robinson" <srobin21 at comcast.net>
-But the frightening thing is that if they
-disappeared,  who would fill their shoes?  I shudder to think about what 
the
-anti-war movement would look like in the Bay Area if they disappeared - a
-couple of RCP fronts and some non-profit executive directors holding a 
press
-conference? SR

To repeat the history that I have mentioned every time people make this kind 
of statement:

Within weeks of 911 in New York City, over 800 people representing a wide 
diversity of groups met in New York City to plan antiwar actions.

However, despite a majority voting to create a broad mainstream effort, 
sectarians hijacked the meeting and largely destroyed the coalition efforts 
through the usual tactics.   And so it took almost too years for that same 
general group to come together again in United for Peace and Justice.  So 
ANSWER walked into the vacuum created by that sectarian destruction.  I 
don't actually know if ANSWER allies were the ones who engineered the 
collapse of the original coalition in NYC but they definitely benefitted 
from it.

Yes, it's a tragedy that the broader left is too disfuse to survive the 
political assaults of sectarians, but don't give me the crap of telling me I 
have to thank ANSWER for existing to make up for the insanity of other 
sectarian groups who make it impossible for anything other than another 
sectarian group to do organizing.

Although I will say that when that original group of United for Peace & 
Justice finally called its own march in spring of 2003, it was far larger 
than the march yesterday in DC, without question the largest march I've ever 
seen excepting the pro-choice march back in 1989.

Nathan Newman