Freedom Socialist • Vol. 28, No. 4 • August-September 2007

The divided anti-war movement needs multi-issue politics and grass-roots initiative

by Val Carlson

Credit: dc.indymedia.org

To anyone surfing the internet, the anti-war movement appears to be everywhere with something for everyone. ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is protesting Sept. 15 in Washington, D.C.; Troops Out Now Coalition (TONC) is organizing a Sept. 22-29 encampment and march in the capital; the United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) coalition is planning Oct. 27 regional demonstrations; and hundreds of local vigils, teach-ins, and rallies proliferate.

However, the anti-war movement isn't impacting the government and corporate America, which are conducting the fourth year of a numbingly murderous war with no end in sight.

Anti-war organizations are attempting to address this disconnect: UFPJ by trying to more strongly influence Congress, TONC with an escalation in tactics "from protest to resistance," and ANSWER through "turning up the heat in Washington, D.C." Many grass-roots activists, however, are frustrated with competing demonstrations that fracture and dilute the movement.

UFPJ assembly still clings to the Dems. My colleague Stephen Durham and I attended UFPJ's June 22-24 Third National Assembly in Chicago, respectively representing the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) and Radical Women (RW), both UFPJ member organizations. We brought three motions to the body.

We motivated that UFPJ adopt a multi-issue program in order to build a unified anti-war movement and that it mobilize people around the demand "Stop the war on working people at home and abroad!" We urged that UFPJ stage vigorous protests at the Democrats' 2008 convention, as well as the Republicans', and support alternative candidates who are anti-capitalist and anti-war.

And we proposed that UFPJ call for a summit where the major national anti-war groups could jointly plan a united, massive, multi-issue demonstration in D.C. and coordinate ongoing activities.

Some rank-and-file delegates favored these ideas. However, Communist Party (CP) members and other liberals in UFPJ leadership argued against our initiatives and carried the day. They also defeated motions to support the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, take on specific proposed actions to oppose Israeli aggression in Palestine, and make coalition decisions by majority instead of a two-thirds vote.

The leaders gave inspired speeches about linking with other movements for social justice, but refused to incorporate the demands of these movements into UFPJ's program. Then they used the argument that UFPJ should work more with immigrants, people of color, labor, and other movement groups when they opposed our motion for a summit — as though these actions would be mutually exclusive rather than complementary.

The same needs of the profit system that drive the war in Iraq also propel the attacks on those groups and on women, queers, people with disabilities, and other oppressed people in the U.S. and abroad. Broadening UFPJ's slogan of "End the war in Iraq, bring the troops home" and expanding its demands would spotlight this and help activists in other movements see the anti-war movement as their own.

If the anti-war movement is to grow strong enough to stop this war and prevent the next, it must grow not only numerically but also politically. It must indict and oppose the system that survives on endless aggressions. Ending one conflict will not eliminate the social and economic ills plaguing the world's people: this is one of the prime lessons since the Vietnam War. International capital will always move from one battlefield to the next to maintain its control over the planet's resources — including the global working class.

Instead of addressing this fundamental problem, UFPJ leaders promote reliance on the Democrats — a strategy the reformists, including the CP, never abandon, no matter how many times it fails. Although UFPJ does not officially endorse specific candidates or parties, support for the Democrats permeated the Chicago gathering.

The opening speaker, politician Tom Hayden from Progressive Democrats of America, praised the anti-war positions taken by various Democrats and concluded that enough pressure on Congress will eventually bring the troops home. CP members, liberals such as Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies, and others echoed that position throughout the conference. The CP's goal for this period is to elect a Democrat president. They will hobble the anti-war movement in order to drag out "Bush's war" to help defeat him in 2008.

Socialist Action was the one other left group whose representatives spoke out at the assembly. They called for regional mass mobilizations focused on the demands to stop funding the war and bring the troops home, while also urging UFPJ to include in its leaflets subordinate demands opposing occupations, wars, and threats of war from Afghanistan to Cuba.

However, SA believes that the movement's strength is measured just in numbers, and that the way to attract multitudes is with a lowest-common-denominator program. SA voted against all three motions by RW and FSP.

In the end, the assembly prioritized pressuring Congress, decided to hold demonstrations in six to eight key cities on Oct. 27, and encouraged UFPJ members to take part in decentralized actions around the country.

Let's make the movement move! Meanwhile, both ANSWER and the Troops Out Now Coalition have much stronger multi-issue programs than does UFPJ. But their sectarianism, lack of democracy, and high-handedness with respect to decisions affecting the whole movement contribute to anti-war fragmentation.

So, too, does their competition with each other, which in large part stems from the fact that TONC is led by the Workers World Party (WWP), while ANSWER is led by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a 2004 split from WWP.

In a widely circulated statement, ANSWER is calling on anti-war groups to "come together" in support of its proposal to mobilize a million people to descend on D.C. in November 2007 or March 2008. But many grass-roots activists, including some we met at the UFPJ convention, have been burned in past attempts to work with monolithic ANSWER and are reacting with understandable skepticism.

The main peace groups have all proven they can separately mobilize hundreds of thousands of protesters. They must now work together to call out the millions who hate the butchery, torture and waste of lives. If the leaders continue to hold back, the rank and file must demand it and step forward to make it happen. People are dying — we need an anti-war movement that wants to stop the war!

Urgency, democracy, and a radical, integrated vision will attract the best and truest fighters. In a joint effort with exploited and oppressed people everywhere these could change not merely the deadly symptoms of the capitalist system, but the system itself.