Rebuilding an Antiwar Movement for 2005
Press Action
Sunday, December 19, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/cummings12192004/
By Jordy Cummings
America is losing the war. We all knew this would take place. We need to build public opinion and prepare public opinion for a triumphant homecoming of troops who no longer have to be used as colonial gendarmes. In short, we have to rebuild the American antiwar movement. While the Republicans and Democrats alike are trying to distance themselves from popular opinion, popular opinion must reassert itself. Only then will a cushion be created that Gerry Ford sat on when he cashed his chips in.
In 2003, and into early 2004, there seemed to be a real anti-war movement in America. Peace vigils in every town, mass rallies in big cities. In 2004, as we have seen, this turned into either the ABB movement, or spending so much time arguing with the ABBrs that not a march, not a rally was held anywhere that simply called for an end to the occupation(s) of Iraq, Palestine, Haiti.
I gave a talk early in the year, at a “multifaith” rally. It was me, the Jew, a Jesuit-in-training from South Bend who I’d once met through my travels in the American hippy culture, a religious Muslim schoolteacher and lover of critical theory who later proved that he knew more Judaism than me, and an organizer from an unnamed sectarian group who grinned anytime I brought up the word “socialism,” but otherwise seemed none too enthusiastic except to show off her World Social Forum swag.
After we all gave our talks—mine concerning the relationship between Jewish theology and human redemption, about the “Shema” and Primo Levi’s conception of Palestinians as the Jews of the Middle East, my new Jesuit friend about the interrelations between all monotheisms mixed in with some such Joseph Campbell-type mythologizing and my Muslim friend giving a serious talk about activist burnout and maintaining hope—this is where the small audience came in. See, we’d just given them all sorts of bad news. We tried to connect for them that it was not only a series of events going “wrong” but a world spinning out-of-whack.
One young kid asked us how to maintain hope in as Terkel puts it “troubled times.” I immediately started talking about the growth of international alternatives to Bush, a hope I still have. I talked of international law, and how we need to popularize how America and Israel are in breach. America had just been found tapping Kofi Annan, which I said showed that “the emperor had no clothes.” My Muslim friend continued on that point, talking about the different trading relationships developing in the G7. My Jesuit friend, and I’m sure he knows better by now, spoke of a “great liberal awakening” in America. He was still sure Howard Dean would be president.
Now it’s nearly a year later, and we need to rebuild this movement. The first thing we need to understand is that we can’t subsume our goals to either electoral or ultra-radical theories. On one hand we have to acknowledge that the march in New York during the Republican Convention was just one big mistake, not in the hundreds of thousands of militants and teenagers, and other folks. The mistake was to march “against the Bush agenda.” The entire march was subsumed into Democratic Party propaganda, led by sincere, but naive liberals like Jesse Jackson, Michael Moore and others. Michael Moore and Jesse Jackson will have to learn a tough lesson.
At the same time, we can’t expect to build a mass movement if we alienate constituencies that are not necessarily as radical as we think we are, let alone those who are more “radical” such as the sects who no matter how much they annoy me and you, are the only folks with the gumption to organize such large events. Some sects, like the seemingly merged with PIRG, ISO, are a little less robotic than others, but the overall fact remains that a successful antiwar movement has to be attractive to everyone from the Worker’s World Party to conservative readers of Antiwar.com. In fact, with such a coalition, the only folks who will feel left out are liberal redbaiters, forgetting that ultra-capitalists such as the Mises Institute folks are working with the “Commies” just fine. Liberals who have a problem with marching alongside the Workers World Party as well as their polar bourgeois opposite, can stay home. Everyone knows that the vast majority of demonstrator, and organizers, are not affiliated with one political school of thought or another. As for the liberals, they can stay home.
But if the liberals are more concerned about war than they are about the purity of their Rawls-given theories of justice, then perhaps they can realize that it is as much of an intellectual contradiction for a non-authoritarian (Hardt/Negri inspired) Marxist like myself to work with authoritarians in the sects. Yet it is more important to me to end the war in Iraq than it is to maintain the purity of my political views. For liberals who will work with Republicans on issues, say, against the Patriot Act, which included both standard left and liberal groups and also wingnuts like Phyllis Shiafly, have a lot of Chutzpah when they criticize Move-On for working with the WWP. Perhaps instead we should all look at why the WWP have been so successful in organizing rallies. Could it be because, unlike the mostly White anarcho-syndicalists and anti-globo activits, they make an effort to reach out to communities of color, and gain adherents not because of Sam Marcy’s Brezhnevism, but because they are good at what they do?
This is where everyone needs to take a deep, deep breath. This is supposed to be about halting a war, not talking about dialectics versus logical positivism.At this time it is a moral imperative for Americans to stop the war that is being committed in their names, regardless of what bedfellows they march alongside. A successful, weekendly if possible, antiwar march, that can take over the city of D.C. just like that, has to depend on a simple, clear concept of saying no to war and occupation(s.) The Palestine issue must remain front and center, but so should Haiti, Bolivia, Chechnya and Korea. Iraq should be the overall issue, from which other occupations will be taught about. There should not be an impression either to Palestinians that they are being ignored, or to anti-occupation Jews that their opposition role is not being fostered. One simple thing, following Stan Goff’s excellent advice not to spell America “Amerikka” is that the U.S. flag equals swastika symbol, though so beautifully used by the Cubans, must not be used—for tactical purposes. What about re-branding Bush as Pinochet? Rational or not, many Jews hate it when anyone is compared to Hitler. I don’t doubt as well that many Palestinians would not appreciate seeing Bush compared with the criminal Sharon. Sharon is much worse they would say (with agreement from me, no doubt.) Rebranding Bush as Pinochet, or as Franco would have the benefit of Pinochet survivors who have written extensively of the commonality between the two regimes. It is at least far more honest as to what has taken place already.
In terms of how, reportedly, groups have monopolized “Speakers” at rallies, perhaps we should all remember being at a rally one time or another and being damned bored with the speakers. This is where we should learn a lesson, both from my hometown, and from the NED and their street activities in the Ukraine. We had rock bands and rappers and DJs at our rallies. People go to rallies to add their bodies to an influx against war, not to hear a professor who they have read many times and comes off better from the page than the pulpit. The Barenaked Ladies, among other groups, led many rallies. It helps that in Canada, the cultural industry is very left wing, but representatives of the American cultural industry have a very special responsibility. Rallies as well should not be hosted by the typical campus moralizer in their best Bill Moyers/Jesse Jackson guilt-rendering liberal tone, but by, perhaps, standup comics. Every city has a standup community. Standup comics are almost universally antiwar.
Move-On must resist calls from some Democrats to Redbait them out of existence, and calls from others to “tame” them as a more “rational” antiwar front. As these liberals learn that their man Dean will not be allowed within ten kilometers of the DNC chairmanship, they will realize what others have long known. Eli Parisser and others are tremendous organizers. Anyone who doubts this should realize that they don’t preach to the crowd like we do. We must ask certain ABB types for apologies, but welcome the bulk of this awakening into a broad antiwar movement. Move On must allow history to take its shape, without pressure from Democrats and mainstream ACT type groups to “distance” themselves from other antiwar activists.
The most important thing to remember is that we are trying to stop a war. Anti-capitalists like me may say that capitalism is the root cause, feminists will say patriarchy, liberals the Bush crime family, libertarians the state, conservatives the decline of chivalry. We can all “know better” yet still work together. This is far more important than anything else, and it just might work.
Jordy Cummings, editor of Pure Polemics, lives in Toronto and can be reached at yorgos33ca@yahoo.ca.