A Tale of Two Movements
There's a difference between marching to stop the war in Iraq, period, and marching to stop the war in Iraq and to free Mumia, and to bring justice to Philippine war whores, and to sing the praises of a free Cuba, and to stop the unfair deportation of illegal U.S. residents who happen to be lactating Mexican mothers, and to preach the salvation of American black Muslims, and [ ...your favorite radical cause here]. The organizers of Friday's candle-light march on the White House understood it. The organizers of Saturday's march on the Pentagon didn't. And, I must say, I am sick to death of seeing the so-called "Answer" coalition having anything to do with anti-war demonstrations in Washington or elsewhere. The net result of their organizing can only help pro-war forces: who in their right mind would want to associate with such fringe crazies? Legitimate anti-war activists must — as Friday's march on the White House demonstrated — abjure inclusiveness to bring a better focus to the movement.
Friday's White House demonstration, organized by churches around the country and sponsored by the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, started with a series of workshops early Friday (I went to a small one led by Ray McGovern), then a prayer service at the National Cathedral plus other churches to handle the overflow crowd, culminating in a candle-light march on the White House. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the prayer service or march but a close family friend who I drove over reports that both (despite an awful 'wintery mix') were very powerful, very significant events. Attendees, a large number of whom came long distances from out of town, will continue the mission once home.
(I hope the service at the National Cathedral was recorded and will be made available in some form on the internet. Monday I will make inquiries and will update this blog post as needed.)
The point being to reach out to people who aren't anti-war and bring them to understand the justice of the anti-war position. It's hard work. It requires a high-level understanding of what's at stake. While to some extent that conversion process happens naturally as people find out more about the war on their own, we all have an obligation to help speed it up, which increases political pressure to end the war.
In contrast, the "Answer" coalition is merely piggy-backing its favorite hobbyhorses on an anti-war sales pitch (I watched their Saturday event on C-SPAN). It's not really talking to anybody except a narrow group on the left and even those it treats with contempt — not making any effort to intellectually justify its party-line, bombastic rhetoric on a catch-all of radical causes. Instead of bringing over undecideds it alienates them. And it has zero appeal for those in positions of authority. "Answer" is worse than a waste of time: it's an enabler of the very thing it claims to oppose.
What's important to note here, I think, is that a great number of people have been willing to come to march in Washington at various anti-war events (not Saturday's though, which had a trivial showing) in spite of "Answer", not because of it. What's desperately needed is a different set of anti-war organizers to help rally widely shared sentiment. Important ones will be found, increasingly, in the church community, coming late to the game but bringing important assets. Others, well, that's up to everybody out there. But "Answer" doesn't belong and explicitly should be marginalized as much as possible.
Added 3/30: Last week the National Cathedral made available a video of the prayer service.
Posted by George Kenney on March 17, 2007 11:13 PM 
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Comments
Perhaps at this stage focusing locally may be more meaningful to convert a passive opposition / anxiety into an active opposition to war and empire. Stan Goff a while ago had an interesting post about how we should be focussing on local congress critters (his word), rather than marches in DC...
Strategy, tactics & intelligence
http://stangoff.com/?p=455
Posted by: badri | March 18, 2007 7:35 PM
Somehow we must cut the Gordian Knot that gives us one trivial McProtest after another.
http://tinyurl.com/ygau7k
Erich Fromm once described "trivial" as an attitude that is concerned only with the surface of things, not with their causes or the deeper layers.
He wrote (c. 1973):
"How many billions of conversations have taken place in these last years about inflation, Vietnam, the Near East, Watergate, elections, etc., and how rarely do these conversations go beyond the obvious — the strict partisan viewpoint — and penetrate to the roots and causes of the phenomena that are discussed?"
He continued:
"Inasmuch as one cannot avoid bad company, one should not be deceived: One should see the insincerity behind the mask of friendliness, the destructiveness behind the mask of eternal complaints about unhappiness, the narcissism behind the charm. One should also not act as if he or she were taken in by the other's deceptive appearance — in order to avoid being forced into a certain dishonesty oneself. One need not speak to them about what one sees, but one should not attempt to convince them that one is blind."
— Erich Fromm, The Art of Being, Continuum 2000, pp. 20-24.
Posted by: Robert B. Livingston | March 23, 2007 12:00 PM