March 19th was a modest success for the antiwar movement in Chicago. It was great to get thousands of folks back onto the street to oppose the war and occupation. It should be obvious and clear to anybody who made their way to Oak and Michigan that we did not, unfortunately, have the forces to make the city of Chicago respect our democratic rights to march down Michigan Avenue.

However, the demonstration was still successful in getting several thousand folks back onto the streets to oppose the war and occupation. Folks should remember that the antiwar movement is still in recovery from a period—especially during the 2004 election—in which large protests were few and far between. During this time, a lot of folks who had opposed the invasion of Iraq grew defensive around key points such as self-determination for Iraq, etc.

We should take whatever momentum we got from Saturday’s protest and use it in our efforts to rebuild the struggle against the war in our neighborhoods, campuses and unions. For example, building the anti-recruitment efforts at University of Illinois-Chicago, in Albany Park, at Senn High School.

The focus among a small number of people in the Chicago antiwar movement on where exactly folks marched or did not march on Saturday, and singling out certain groups, etc. is absolutely counter-productive to the effort of rebuilding the antiwar movement in Chicago.

First of all, it is entirely unrealistic given the confusion among many folks who attempted to assemble at Oak and Michigan and were unsure as to whether they would be able to march at all until they happened on the feeder march, etc. Certainly, we did not set out, nor did we, "split" the march. Why on earth would we?

Regardless of what our organization did or didn’t do on Saturday, we think it is a mistake to be singling out any individual or organization. Roughly 1,000 people ended up marching down Clark Street. Attacking folks for marching down Clark instead of marching one block to the east is obviously absurd.

Not only that, singling out individuals and groups to be treated as though they violated the antiwar movement over a minor issue following a day of confusion, is particularly destructive and divisive. It is especially so given the current political climate of attacks on the left, civil liberties and the witch-hunts against Arabs and Muslims, left-wing professors and folks such as Lynn Stewart. These are, presumably, the things this protest was supposed to oppose.

The folks who attack other organizations in this manner need to ask themselves, who is it that benefits from splits and finger pointing in our movement.

Aside from destructiveness, all this avoids the real issue. While we all wanted to march down Michigan Avenue, we did not win that fight. While it may have been good to push the issue, the simple fact is the strength of the antiwar movement is not quite there yet.

We have work to do to get to the point where we can mobilize the forces we need, not only to march down Michigan Avenue, but to STOP THE WAR.

The antiwar movement is going to have to set aside petty differences and work together in order to build that sort of movement. Our focus should be to build the largest possible movement that agrees on the fundamental demands of Saturday’s protest: Bringing the troops home now, ending the occupations of Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and Haiti, defending our civil liberties.

That movement, by necessity, is going to include the 1,000 people—both individuals and members of different antiwar organizations—who marched down Clark Street.

Finally, our organization formally requests that Chicago Indymedia remove the sectarian attack on our organization—and others—from the lead article on the March 19 protests.