Reply to ISO:

We'll remove you immediately. That's entirely up to you.

We would have appreciated the courtesy of a discussion with us.

But our key demand, and main theme of the day remains 'Out Now,' and all invited speakers and endorsers are informed of this, and that this is the banner they will appear under.

Our program of the day is supporting 'Out Now' or the language of the Referendum and the AFL-CIO, 'immediately begin and orderly and rapid withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq.' That is the stand of the committee and the coalition it has brought together, the largest yet in this period.

We have invited and confirmed many speakers for 'Out Now,' starting with George Martin, national co-chair of UFPJ, Stacey Hafley of MFSO and many others. We will add more. We are only about half-way through this process, but expect to have a great program that will serve the entire coalition well.

Moreover, none of the elected officials you named have agreed to even appear, much less speak, at this point. They were invited, with low expectations that they would actually do so, at the suggestion of some of our new mass allies in this effort. If any do agree, given the politics of the day, it would be more to our advantage than theirs, and it implies no support on our part of any particular statement, vote or position they have taken in the past. If anything, it is another form of pressuring them to move in our direction, since we are certainly not budging from ours.

Finally, it's one thing to pull together a coalition of the left, and rapidly make changes and adjustments when everyone is more or less on the same page. It's quite another the pull together a coalition reflecting the political views of all those, from left to center, that oppose the war. Things that appear simple in one context are not so simple in another. We've known for some time that some are not interested in this task, or do not understand its importance for bringing this war to an end, sooner rather than later.

But that is our main concern, stopping this horrible war, not the fortunes of any given politician, save, perhaps, for Bush, who all of us would like to see out of office and out of the war making business, sooner rather than later.

For Peace and Justice
Carl Davidson