There should be more protests. We should have rallies every week, not every six months! Let's get out on the street more often.

You might live "la vida loca", but most of us are fully employed and just can't afford to constantly be out there protesting.

Very well said.

Oh the newspapers salesmen are not showin up to watch, that is a good thing. They are making a statement most other left groups have made it is nothing new. The only thing which is differant with the ISO is they want credit for doing what every other group has always done.

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

SINCE THE start of the Iraq war, antiwar sentiment has grown dramatically in the U.S. In 2003, 23 percent of the U.S. population thought the U.S. invasion was a mistake. Today, that figure stands at 58 percent.

Yet the antiwar movement had its largest mobilization before the war began, and more recent demonstrations have been smaller than those held several years previously, before public opinion had turned dramatically against the occupation.

On February 15, 2003, a few weeks before the invasion, as many as 1 million people marched through the streets of New York City--part of a weekend of protests worldwide that involved 10 million people in 600 cities.

Two and a half years later, on September 24, 2005, some 300,000 people marched in Washington at an event organized jointly by the two main national antiwar coalitions--United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER).

This fall, however, the antiwar movement has fragmented between competing calls for demonstrations. ANSWER’s Washington protest on September 15 drew just 10,000 people, and UFPJ didn’t even call a national demonstration, opting instead for regional mobilizations on October 27.

Why does the antiwar movement today seem weaker and more divided now, even though antiwar sentiment is stronger? And what can be done to take the struggle forward?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ONE REASON has to do with the general political period in which today’s antiwar movement has developed.

Mainstream U.S. politics still bears the scars of a decades-long conservative dominance that began with the Reagan presidency in the 1980s. While opinion polls reflect a shift to the left in consciousness on key political questions, the level of social struggle has remained low, and the left is substantially weakened--both organizationally and in terms of its ideas--from the high points of the 1960s.

The movement against the Vietnam War grew up in a very different environment. It benefited enormously from the political atmosphere created by the 1960s civil rights movement.

Antiwar activists had the positive example to follow of building local grassroots organizing centers, which could feed into larger national efforts. The lunch counter sit-ins and integrated Freedom Rides showed the strength of combining civil disobedience tactics with mass action.

Also, civil rights activists found that they had to rely on their own strength as a movement instead of putting their hopes in politicians--because they were confronting a Jim Crow establishment in the South run by the Democratic Party, just as antiwar activists came up against a war run by the Democratic President Lyndon Johnson.

The civil rights struggle served as a model for how to organize and a setting for learning important political lessons. And above all, its success gave rise to the conviction that struggle did work.

Today’s antiwar movement needs to relearn those lessons, but doesn’t have anything like this kind of immediate experience to guide it.

Thus, when the U.S. government defied the massive protests of February 15, 2003 and launched the invasion of Iraq anyway, many of those who demonstrated drew the wrong conclusion that protest didn’t work--for the simple reason that there were no contemporary examples of a sustained, effective and grassroots movement to look to.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE PROCESS of rebuilding the antiwar movement has also been hampered by the weaknesses of the leading forces within it.

In its call for regional mobilizations on October 27, UFPJ stated: “To force a decisive change in government policy, we have to make the antiwar majority more active, more visible, more difficult to ignore. We have to stand up vigorously against the cynicism that says: there is nothing we can do.”

In reality, the sense that “there is nothing we can do” exists among UFPJ member organizations as a symptom of the coalition’s disorientation--to which leaders of UFPJ contributed by retreating from talk of a national mobilization this fall, and setting October 27 as a date for regional mobilizations, with Washington D.C. conspicuously absent from the list.

Meanwhile, the other main national antiwar group, ANSWER, has also found itself at a dead end. It has continued to make calls for national protests, but they are smaller and smaller.

ANSWER’s problems stem from its top-down methods that exclude other antiwar forces. Few individuals or organizations outside its core want to work with it--no more so now after ANSWER’s sponsoring organization Workers World split into competing groups.

The mood was very different after the Democrats took control of Congress in the November 2006 elections.

UFPJ had kept a low profile before the 2006 vote--as in 2004, when it rejected holding an explicitly antiwar mobilization, instead joining protests against the Republican National Convention in New York City, while tailoring its message to fit in with the pro-war campaign of John Kerry.

Nevertheless, the Democrats’ victory was seen by UFPJ as a vindication of its strategy of “[building] a bipartisan peace bloc in Congress that can set the date for troop withdrawal and force Bush and the Pentagon to end the occupation,” Judith Le Blanc, a UFPJ national co-chair and leader of the Communist Party USA, wrote in the People’s Weekly World.

But this strategy makes the movement a hostage to the politicians. Thus, when the “peace bloc in Congress” caved last May and voted for the Bush administration’s demand for $120 billion in war funding, the renewed confidence of UFPJ activists turned to demoralization. At the UFPJ national assembly in July, delegates expressed a sense of isolation, despite the reinvigoration of local activism following the November election.

Many activists felt betrayed by the Democrats’ failure to stand up to the Bush administration, but UFPJ’s failed strategic orientation--of tailoring its activities and mobilizations to a Democratic Congress it expects to at least limit, if not end, the Bush administration’s ability to prosecute the war--remained unexamined and unchanged.

The problem has emerged in an even more extreme form locally in Chicago. To plan the October 27 protest, the UFPJ affiliate Chicagoans Against War and Injustice (CAWI) held invitation-only organizing meetings that excluded other antiwar organizations.

The movement was presented with an already decided plan for a demonstration that included a speaking invitation for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley--an insult to the hundreds of antiwar marchers illegally arrested by Daley’s police on the first night of the war in 2003, and anyone who faced the intimidation tactics of riot cops at protests since.

CAWI leader Carl Davidson, a former figure in Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s, not only defended the invitation to Daley, but argued that the antiwar movement in general, and the left in particular, needed to “set certain things aside” in order to build alliances with Democrats and even Republicans willing to go against the Bush White House.

What is the antiwar movement expected to set aside? Essentially, anything that the politicians might object to--even if that means conceding on basic demands for an immediate and complete U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

This is the exact wrong way to go about trying to end the war. The key is building a strong grassroots movement, independent of both the Democrats and Republicans, with the power to force the politicians of both parties to abandon their support for the war.

This understanding is especially important now as leaders of the Democratic Party prepare not to end the war but “take it over” from the Bush administration after the 2008 election. At a recent debate, all three of the party’s top presidential contenders--Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards--refused to say they would have withdrawn U.S. troops from Iraq after a full four years in office.

The emphasis of the antiwar movement shouldn’t be on alliances made at the top of the political system in “building a bipartisan peace bloc in Congress,” in LeBlanc’s words--but on building a struggle from below.

That, after all, is the lesson of the 1960s and ’70s struggles--that mass action at the grassroots compelled both Democrats like Lyndon Johnson and Republicans like Richard Nixon to answer to the demands of the social struggle.

What’s needed now is a focus on building local bases of antiwar activism around basic points of unity. These local formations--at colleges and high schools, in neighborhoods and cities, on military bases and in workplaces--provide the best way to help people overcome their sense of isolation, in activities like teach-ins, speakouts and pickets, that bring opponents of the war together. And these local bases in turn can serve as the building blocks for larger national events.

The guiding principles for the movement can be simple and straightforward--like the three demands of Iraq Veterans Against the War: immediate withdrawal; a commitment to health care and other services for returning veterans; and payment of reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage inflicted by the U.S. occupation.

Strategically, the movement needs to understand that three inter-related ingredients are required to end the war--the resistance of Iraqis to the occupation, a domestic antiwar movement stepping up the pressure at home, and a revolt of U.S. soldiers that can undermine the ability of the U.S. to continue the war effort.

The interplay of these elements ended the U.S. war in Vietnam. Today, there is no shortcut to building an antiwar movement that again helps bring these different dimensions together.

[ www.socialistworker.org/2007-2/648/648_07_Movement.shtml ]

Davidson writes "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."

Please list the many speakers you have actually confirmed as of this date.

As for the Socialist Worker article, I've written them, and we'll see if they print my note.

Essentially, I said the politics of the day were firmly 'Out Now' and the linking demands on our materials--all have been informed of this, it's in all our materials and will be the banner under which everyone speaks. We're not budging from it. If anyone has a different position, they'll have to adapt to us, not us to them.

And the ISO timeline is wrong on the inner life of the coalition. The ground floor decision to build this as a coalition of all forces against the war, left and center, including elected officials, of any party, was the one made the first day. The decisions to invite certain political figures was made further done the pike.

As for the confirmed speakers list, it's a work in progress.

But the only confirmed elected officials are Joe Moore and Rick Munoz.

Imam Malik Mujahid, head of three mosques and chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, will speak.

Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi-Palestinian journalist, will speak.

Stacey Haley, one of the military families national leaders, will speak.

Jan Schakowsky, Kathy Kelly and Jess Jackson were asked, but they are speaking in other cities that day.

A number of other union leaders, community leaders, church leaders, immigrant rights leaders, women's leaders and student leaders have been approached, but not confirmed.

It will be a fine program that serves the antiwar cause well.

Rather than get tangled in a mess of 'what ifs?', it might be better to get engaged, help make decisions, big and small, and build a powerful event, working both with folks you agree with and those you don't agree with, to end this horrible war.

I like the focus.

I mean, I agree with, or at least sympathize, with the various specific incarnations of the general anti-imperialist approach, but they do diffuse the basic message, and confuse, or alienate, a lot of potential supporters. I suspect that's behind the decrease in turnout over the years.

This war is bad enough that "Out Now" is the right message for this demonstration.

If Daley, Durbin or Obama addresses the crowd at an "Out Now" demonstration, that's great. But I suspect they'll decline for exactly that reason. Daley has the least to lose politically but, on the other hand, he's the most cautious of the three. Durbin's the only one who's taken any chances so far, and he still hasn't taken enough chances.

Carl, how can anyone "get engaged" and "help make decisions, big and small" with this particular event when you have stated over and over that those that disagree with your method of organizing ARE NOT WELCOME to even voice their disagreements? Your position the entire time has been to tell people who disagree with the strategy, tactics and focus of this protest to either shut up or go home. It's pathetic.

That is not what I've said.

I've repeated, time and again, that we are building a left-center coalition around 'out now' and related slogans, and if you are in agreement with that basic orientation, welcome aboard. And there are plenty of decisions, discussions and debates over how to improve things, or do things in various ways, within the framework.

But if you want to change the whole framework, and go back to the anti-imperialist bloc aiming its main blow at all politicians generally, especially antiwar Democrats, you won't find much interest.

Otherwise, the door is open and we need all the help and participation we can get.

"a left-center coalition around 'out now' and related slogans, and if you are in agreement with that basic orientation"

What about those that are in agreement with that "basic orientation" but who happen to think that INVITING PRO-WAR POLITICIANS is COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL TO THAT??? Those are the people you've basically told to take a shut up, no debate, no discussion. Period.

Don't pretend otherwise Carl. Lying doesn't work well for you.

There is a critical lesson in the un-endorsement by the 8th Day Center for Justice and the ISO (and the disinclination by other groups to endorse in the first place) -- namely, we have a right to expect minimum standards from the antiwar 'leadership', and those minimum standards do not include inviting politicians who torture, illegally imprison people for exercising their constitutional rights, and otherwise abuse the public trust to speak at a public pro-peace rally. In addition, I'd add that minimum standards to not include being lectured by politicians like Durbin, Obama, Schakowsky or any of the other Illinois senators and congressmen who've voted to bankroll this war -- and they all have at one point or another.

Minimum standards. Don't give your opposition political cover. That's very different than building a united front in which all unite under one main slogan or slogans and push from that core place of unity. None of the invited elected officials -- not one, with the exception of the local aldermen -- have not acted at one point or another in DIRECT OPPOSITION to the will of their constituencies in terms of the war (and in Daley's case, in terms of a basic respect for human rights at home).

It's an insult to anti-war sentiment across the political spectrum, from right to left, to invite these yahoos -- but it's a mighty tasty sop to 'leaders' in projects like the CPUSA and union locals who are desperate to hold together their shaky/shady ties to some Democratic Party elected officials.

How sad that Carl and his fellow organizers cannot see that this decision moves in exactly the opposite direction of sentiment on the ground in this nation, including folks from Goldwater conservatives to ardent anarcho-communists. How the hell did they get it so wrong? In part, because they refused to extend the initial organizing conversation beyond their own tiny circle.

Democracy has many uses, including helping some of our 'leaders' see beyond the myopia of their own shortsightedness.

Since it is quite likely that Daley, Obama, Etc. will decline to speak because of the "out now" message, is it possible to use that as a way to embarress them politically? Or educate more politically inexpereinced liberals?

'Scribbler' gets more of the point than you do, 'Focus.'

Besides, how do you define 'the opposition' on the war, the target of the main blow, and the one to strip allies away from? I aim at Bush, the NeoCons and the DLCers like Emanuel. You want to aim at Schakowsky, Gutierrez and others who will vote your way on a few issues, but not others, and waver in between, this way and that.

The orders to pull out all the troops from Iraq will be given by a President of one of the two parties, backed or pushed by a majority of Congress, in turn pushed and/ or threatened by mass insurgency in all the institutions of civil society, government and the military.

Believe me, it's going to take tactical allies with far worse than Daley to accomplish that, and we don't even have that yet.

Our job is to get from here to there in the fastest way possible. If you've got a better plan, lay it out, but a bunch of left posturing, telling us everything we already know about Daley, and two bucks, will get you a ride on the CTA.

Good try, Carl, but it won't wash. The attempt to differentiate between the "good" pro-war politicians and the "bad" pro-war politicians lets you promote your political allies, while taking the rest of us along for the ride.

Schakowsky and Gutierrez, like all the rest of the Chicago area Congressional delegation, voted for the latest war appropriation. In fact, while a few years ago Schakowsky had been voting consistently against Iraq/Afghanistan war funding*, and Gutierrez had a mixed record, with the new Democratic Congress, they've been solidly in the PRO-war funding camp. So you want to reward their rightwards drift with speakers slots? Yes, what a brilliant strategy!

This isn't "left posturing," it's talking about the "awful truth" that Dem partisans don't want to hear about, especially as they attempt to get us all ga ga about the 2008 elections.

The U.S. wasn't kicked out of Vietnam due to a phantom alliance with "peace" Democrats, it was kicked out by:

1) the armed struggle of the Vietnamese,

2) a politically independent, international anti-war movement that had moved beyond symbolic peace demonstrations to direct action combined with mass marches, and

3) a direct action anti-war movement within broad sectors of the U.S. military itself.

#3 was greatly facilitated by #1 and #2. We've got a long road to hoe to get #2 back to within anywhere near the strength we saw during the Vietnam War. Arguably, we've got to do much better this time around, as Iraq and surrounding countries are much more strategic to U.S. world domination than Southeast Asia ever was.

All this suggests that we've got a lot of work ahead of us, and phantom hopes that Democratic Party power brokers are going to help get us there are a big diversion from this task, and just about the most absurd get rich quick scheme one could devise.

The leading Dems have clearly articulated their fealty to American domination of the region by saying that a Democratic presidency would ensure troops in Iraq through the end of their first term, 2013. Believing that you can ally with these people and thus get them to end the war is like believing in the Tooth Fairy.

* For those who don't know her and her voting record, Schakowsky's "anti-war" credentials were quite lousy even when she was (symbolically) voting against Iraq/Afghanistan war funding. Self-describing herself as a "proud Zionist," she has the most hawkishly pro-Israel/anti-Palestinian voting record of the entire Illinois delegation.

Yes, Andy, all that about Vietnam is true, and the main factor, to be sure.

But back then a Democratic Congress cut off the money, State Department people like Ellsberg exposed the Pentagon Papers, the NYT printed them, all sorts of establishment figures backed the Vietnam moratoriums, and Nixon ordered the last troops out.

Not simply of their own accord, for sure, but getting them to that point is required, isn't it?

If you can't see a difference that makes a difference between, say, Schakowsky on this war, and Bush and Company, that you're not nearly as smart as I've always assumed you were, and I'll just rest my case on that.

Along with Danny Davis and Bobby Rush, she's recording some radio and cable ads today to get people to our 'Out Now' rally on Oct 27, and I urge everyone here to do something to mobilize new forces for the event and our movement as well.

Carl said:
"If you can't see a difference that makes a difference between, say, Schakowsky on this war, and Bush and Company, that you're not nearly as smart as I've always assumed you were, and I'll just rest my case on that. Along with Danny Davis and Bobby Rush, she's recording some radio and cable ads today to get people to our 'Out Now' rally on Oct 27."

Oh great, Carl, so she's using anti-war rhetoric to score political points against a lame-duck Bush regime, while at the same time, along with Rush and Davis, voting billions FOR the war and keeping silent about the pro-war candidates in her own party, who are most likely to be the next President and pledged to carry the war through at least 2013.

Jeeze, Carl, I'll bet the people of Iraq will really appreciate that (rhetorical) difference. She supports the war, albeit with hipper rhetoric. I'm sure it's really affecting the body count.

If you can't tell how similar that is to the current regime, Carl, I guess you're not nearly as smart as I've always assumed you were.

I'll just rest my case on that.

Fine, Andy.

...'nuff said. Our differences are clear enough to all concerned.

Scribbler writes: "Since it is quite likely that Daley, Obama, Etc. will decline to speak because of the "out now" message, is it possible to use that as a way to embarress them politically? Or educate more politically inexpereinced liberals?"

Sure. But you'd have to flip the script. Rather than extending a sanitized invitation to elected officials, the first step would have been to publically challenge rather than passively 'court' those with a absymal record - Obama, Daley, ect - in pre-march publicity to support the demand for Out Now! in advance of the march. Then, and only if they agree, extend an invitation to show up and voice that support. But insist that they take a clear, unambigious stand against the war that supports the immediate withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq as well as an end to funding for the war - taxpayer dollars that could be better used to provide for public health, affordable housing, transportation and the educational needs of the our kids. While you're at it, ask them to take a stand against attacking Iran as well.

However since it is far more likely that targeted major politicians will decline or refuse to respond,( which it now appears they are doing anyway because of scheduling conflicts) plan on leaving empty chairs on stage with their names prominently displayed to drive the point home. Remember that this is Chicago, and in the figurative spirit of Uncle Al's time honored adage “You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone...” be sure to include this little tidbit about empty chairs in your final media advisory, making sure every politician who fails to respond positively to this challenge gets a copy in advance. Without exception.

And finally, day of, have as many speakers as possible make the point that while our elected officials may refuse to answer a Oct. 27 public call for accountability to the antiwar majority, they can run, but they can't hide. The action is the message.

In the runup to the Oct. 27th march and rally, organizers could have extended these challenges at pre-event pickets or other creative events outside or better yet inside these politician's respective offices, emphaizing Oct 27th as a deadline for meaningful action. Doing so might have just possibly provided a local hook to generate a little local corporate media attention in advance. And this campaign could have been an chance to stop simply paying lip service to pressuring elected officals around the war, and make Oct. 27 a real opportunity to do so. But that's apparently not what the organizers have in mind here.

Instead, it's likely we'll be offered a varient of the Pelosi shuffle if any of the major politicians decide to show - something along the line that electing whatever Democrat secures the 2008 Presidential nomination and securing a veto proof Democratic majority in Congress remains the only real viable formula for possibly ending the war at some later date. A prelude to "Go, Hillary - Out in 2013

Meanwhile the body count in Iraq will continue to climb.