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All Out on September 24!
by Jeff Mackler /
September 2005 issue Socialist Action
The Sept. 24 nationally coordinated and united anti-Iraq War
demonstrations set for Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles
promise to be the
largest mobilizations in the United States since the war began more
than two years ago. Other sizable demonstrations are scheduled to take
place on the same date in Toronto, London, and many other cities worldwide.
In the U.S., millions of people have come to understand that the
Iraq War has been a fraud from the beginning. National polls put support
for President
Bush’s war policies at an all-time low. An Associated Press/Ipsos
poll (Aug. 22-24) reported that only 37 percent of Americans support Bush
on the war, while Newsweek in early August put the figure at 34 percent.
From the “reddest” of the states, like Utah—where 2500 mobilized on
Aug. 22 in Salt Lake City to protest Bush’s speech to an assembly organized
by Veterans of Foreign Wars—to the more than 100,000 who mobilized in
over 1600 U.S. cities in 50 states in mid-August in solidarity with
Cindy Sheehan, the fight against the Iraq War has taken a major leap
forward.
While the most visible promoters of the August vigils were
internet-based groups like Moveon.org, TrueMajority, and Democracy for
America, which promote various “phased-withdrawal” solutions associated
with an assortment of “lesser-evil” Democratic Party politicians, Sheehan’s
message has been loud and clear.
“I want George Bush to honor my son by bringing the troops home
immediately,” she states. “I don’t want him to use my son’s name or my name
to justify and more killing.”
“Cindy,” as she is endearingly referred to by millions today, began
an Aug. 6 vigil on the road leading to President Bush’s vacation ranch in
Crawford, Texas. When government
pressure was applied to remove Sheehan
and her growing number of supporters, an amiable Bush neighbor
donated a portion of his property for what became a month-long protest
site, visited by antiwar activists from across the country.
Sheehan vowed to continue her vigil in Washington, D.C., until the
president agreed to meet with her to explain why her son died for nothing
in Iraq. Army
Specialist Casey Sheehan, whose name has been widely adopted at
newly established Camp Casey sites across the country, was killed in Sadr
City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. Since then his mother has become an ardent
antiwar activist.
Undoubtedly, Sheehan’s vigil and incisive commentaries have helped
to unleash and give visible expression to the deep and growing antiwar
sentiment felt by millions.
“I want him [President Bush] to tell me just what was the noble
cause Casey died for.” she declared. “Was it freedom and democracy?
Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to
expand American imperialism in the Middle East.”
Sheehan continued: “We’re not freer here, thanks to your Patriot
Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of
Palestine and you’ll stop the terrorism. There. I used the “I” word,
‘imperialism,’ and now I’m going to use another ‘I’ word, ‘impeachment,’
because we cannot have these people pardoned.”
Bush’s supporters and their corporate media pundits, despite great
efforts, have proved incapable of blunting the impact of Sheehan’s assault.
Fox News
“reporter” Fred Barnes called Sheehan a “crackpot,” while
super-rightist radio commentator Rush Limbaugh denied reality by insisting
that Sheehan’s “story is nothing more than forged documents.” “There’s
nothing about it that’s real,” he railed.
But real it is. The lies pressed forward by both Republicans and
Democrats to justify the plunder and looting of Iraq and the associated
murder of over
100,000 Iraqi people have been stripped away in the face of a truth
that cannot be denied.
Sacrificing lives for corporate profits
The American people are learning fast and hard that their sons and
daughters are being sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit and greed.
Nearly 1900 GIs
are dead and tens of thousands more wounded with no end in sight,
while the Iraqi resistance grows in strength and popular support despite
the overwhelming U.S. military superiority and daily slaughter.
In the United States, unprecedented trillions of dollars are
allocated to the war machine to further enhance the profits of the
military-industrial complex and bolster the imperialist project in Iraq and
worldwide. Simultaneously, vital social services and entitlements won
decades ago are being cut to pieces.
A million industrial jobs are lost yearly, along with pensions and
health-care benefits, all in the name of keeping a crisis-ridden U.S.
capitalism competitive in already glutted world markets.
The direct relationship between imperialist war (Cindy Sheehan’s ‘I’
word), and the massive attack on working people at home is better known
today than ever and a central explanation for the growing antiwar
sentiment. This sentiment was
reflected in the AFL-CIO’s muted but critical resolution on the Iraq War,
approved at its July 2005 split Chicago convention (see Socialist
Action, August 2005). Subsequently, the Los Angeles County
Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, interpreting the resolution as an “Out Now!”
position, voted to
“support the national mobilization against the war” set for Sept.
24.
The July meeting of some 500 delegates to the Teamster union’s
National Black Caucus demanded the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from
Iraq and urged the national Teamsters union to follow suit. The
International Executive Board of the Steelworkers union passed a resolution
on Iraq demanding, “Bring the Troops Home Rapidly,” which repeated the
wording
of the demand in the antiwar resolution approved at the AFL-CIO
convention.
Leaders of US Labor Against the War, a national trade-union
coalition that initiated the passage of some 18 antiwar resolutions for
submission to the
AFL-CIO convention, has obtained permission from the AFL-CIO to use
the steps of its Washington headquarters for a pre-march labor rally
against the
war on Sept. 24. This is an unprecedented step for the national
labor federation, which has historically distinguished itself for its
subservience to U.S. imperialism’s foreign policy.
Coalitions unite for Sept. 24
Following a series of mid-August negotiations, mediated by leading
antiwar and labor activists, the nation’s two largest antiwar coalitions,
United for
Peace and Justice and ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism),
now co-sponsors of the Sept. 24 actions, reached agreement on all disputed
issues.
The agreement ends months of needless posturing on both sides,
wherein each group had embarked on organizing separate and competing D.C.
demonstrations in different locations on the same date. The unity agreement
specifies that the central themes of the mass protest will be “End the War
in Iraq!” and “Bring the Troops Home Now!”
Within this framework and in the best tradition of united-front
mass-action politics, each coalition will be free to produce its own
literature and banners and organize its own contingents as it chooses. The
planned 90-minute rally will begin at 11:30 a.m. at the Ellipse in front of
the White House, and a march
will then proceed down Pennsylvania Ave. It will include an equal
number of speakers to be selected by each group as well as agreed upon
“celebrities.”
The center-stage banner will feature the above demands while
separate on-stage and march banners indicative of critical issues advanced
by each coalition will also be prominently displayed.
The ANSWER coalition’s demand, “End All Occupations from Haiti to
Iraq to Palestine,” will likely be featured via its literature, speakers,
and banners on
the stage and in the march.
The agreement was achieved due to the pressure exerted by several
concerned groups—especially the Emergency Ad Hoc Committee for a United
Demonstration in Washington, D.C., which organized 350 organizations
and prominent individuals to demand a united Sept. 24 action.
Socialist Action actively supported and campaigned for this critical
unity initiative. Its success was based on each coalition’s subordinating
longstanding organizational frictions and rivalries to a principled
compromise that resolved an important dispute over the issue of Palestine.
ANSWER dropped its original insistence that opposition to the
U.S.-backed Palestine occupation be a common demand of both coalitions.
UFPJ dropped its original view that the Palestine issue be excluded
altogether. In this framework, both
coalitions agreed that each could use their own on-stage and march banners
to highlight their own critical issues, including Palestine, an agreement
that Socialist Action had advocated and fully supported.
But the impasse highlighted the fact the new antiwar movement has
yet to find a mechanism to avoid such disputes in the future. Such a
mechanism must
eventually allow for the full and democratic decision-making of the
movement’s rank-and-file activists.
During the Vietnam War era, this was achieved by the periodic
organization of mass national decision-making conferences, open to all and
based on one-person-one-vote. At the height of the movement, some
conferences attracted more than 5000 activists. The movement’s differences were
openly and
democratically debated and resolved.
Today, relatively small and narrow groups of individuals most often
decide the national antiwar movement’s politics and major activities. When
this severe limitation gives way to the direct involvement of the ranks,
the movement will be primed to take the next major step forward. The fact
that both coalitions
responded positively to the pressure exerted by 350 leading
organizations and individuals was an important step in this direction.
The united Sept. 24 mobilizations afford antiwar fighters a new
opportunity to reach additional millions with the truth about the Iraq War
and to qualitatively advance the struggle to Bring the Troops Home Now!
All Out for Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles! End
All U.S.-Supported Wars and Occupations from Haiti to Palestine!
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