[lbo-talk] DC: Costs of big marches

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Tue Sep 27 19:50:14 PDT 2005



>I do not think that marching in DC is a very effective way of hampering
>the imperial war machine. In the Vietnam War fragging was the main factor,
>while the loudmouths in DC claimed all the credit. Absent evidence of
>any fragging in Iraq, the best bet is sabotaging the recruitment effort,
which
>according to The Nation, some Hispanic groups are already quietly doing.
>
>Wojtek

Yes, in addition to a significant sprinkling of family members and Iraq war vets, that was the other new thing about this march, lots of counter-recruiting info and efforts, some of it high school student-led. All this discussion of whether big rallies "do" anything ignores the part where people are organized, that is, learn stuff and make connections by, for example, learning about counter-recruitment efforts they can duplicate at their school or meeting other anti-war families of troops in Iraq.

A woman at the Military Families Speak Out tent, where I volunteered for a while, had a t-shirt with a photo of her son and "George Bush killed my son" in big letters around it. While I was there another grieving mother came by. She hadn't heard of the group, but came to the rally because of the publicity Cindy Sheehan was getting. I saw other family members of dead troops stop by the tent, too, bursting into tears from the combination of grief and relief of finding other anti-war families.

Also for the first time there was actually a labor rally and march starting _inside_ the AFL-CIO headquarters, led by Labor Against the War. About 1,000 of us marched from there to the larger rally site. That was new, and based on a resolution passed at the last convention. At that rally, Curtis Muhammad of Community Labor United and the New Orleans People's Committee gave the strongest speech.

No, we didn't storm the White House, but things are getting more rooted, down to earth and serious in the trenches.

Jenny Brown



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