Couple things. First, I agree that it is extremely important that groups look beyond the points that divide them and act with a unity of purpose on days like M19. There's no question that many people were effectively trapped in Bughouse Square -- although CAWI members were able to get some people UP Oak St. from Bughouse to support the civil liberties effort on Oak and Michigan. It's unfortunate that some M19 partner projects elected not to stand by the 'no Clark St.' coalition agreement on Saturday, when they could have made a decision to send their people to Oak and Michigan or directly to the Federal Plaza instead of the designated protest pit. There was an option for projects that allowed members to completely avoid a possible arrest situation -- Federal Plaza -- and everyone who signed onto the coalition effort in January agreed that a firm line needed to be drawn with the City on the question of civil liberties. This is an extremely critical battle, and it is unhelpful when partners unilaterally elect for a 'third way' that does not support broader goals.

Second, I want to be very clear that the problem Saturday was certainly NOT slogans, and that many of our messaging difficulties arose around the effort to be as honest as possible with peace activists about the 'legal' situation on the ground. No question that the City's endless threats of arrest had a chilling effect on turnout.

I wholeheartedly agree with Davidson's call for expanded 'outreach' and good old-fashioned organizing. I would argue that the organizing approach should continue to focus on models that stress bottom-up democratic participation rather than the old, corrosive Alinsky-styled top-down 'leader' models.

I vigorously dispute the inference that one of the ways to do this is to 'mainstream' messaging. There was nothing not 'mainstream' and completely appropriate about Saturday's slogans. But the suggestion has been raised in this thread that inclusion of issues like Palestine may detract from basebuilding.

This is lethal, dead-wrong pseudo-logic. There is a split in one segment of the anti-war movement -- among people who oppose the war but are unwilling to tolerate criticism of Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories, and in some cases are unwilling to entertain even the most basic rights of Palestinians.

Many of those people elected not to attend Saturday's rally, which was co-MC'd by a Palestinian American activist. Others who did attend were ripped off about what they perceived as a pro-Arab spin from the stage.

We need to continue to struggle with these people, as groups like the Jewish American peace project Not In My Name are doing. We do not need to accommodate the incipient racism of some of these individuals by striking the issue of U.S. supported occupation in Palestine from our toolkit. Far from it. We need to redouble our efforts to explain to people that the U.S. policy of support for occupation abroad IN MANY DIFFERENT PLACES is a piece of whole cloth, intrinsically intertwined with an economic and political agenda that drives policy in the United States, as well. Palestine, like it or not, is front and center because of its central relation to dynamics in a larger region that is a core target of imperial expansion for the U.S. regime. And frankly, Palestine must also be front and center because what U.S. dollars directly bankroll in that land is an atrocity on its own -- and a key reason so many Arab and Muslim people view the U.S. with justified hostility.

Many many different voices spoke out from the stage on Saturday, from military veterans and their family members to activists who urge a more aggressive effort to challenge attacks on our constitutional rights. People of color also spoke out on a range of intertwined issues, from attacks on public education and affordable housing to U.S. militarism in lands from Vieques to Haiti. Palestine is front and center in the issue of the U.S. government thrust to empire, and the issue cannot and will not be ghettoized or stripped from the discourse to accommodate a handful of individuals who should instead be struggling with their own internal racism.

That would be like stripping the issue of women's equality from the movement against the Vietnam war, because it 'detracted' from the anti-war message. Folks in the grassroots appreciate and relate to the inherent honesty in a connect-the-dots analysis. That approach undoubtedly makes a few people uncomfortable because they dislike confronting the contradiction in their own uncritical support for a brutal U.S. backed regime. We should continue to help them face that contradiction, instead of co-signing their blindsidedness by striking the issue from our vocabulary.