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Anti-War Movement Casualty of In-Fighting
 (CNSNews.com) - With new polls showing that more than half of Americans believe the war in Iraq is going badly and that Iraq will never become a stable democracy, you might think that anti-war groups in the U.S. would be trumpeting their influence. Instead, the groups appear to be caught in their own brand of civil war, criticizing each other for management styles, sympathizing with Communist dictators and pandering to the media. They have bickered over alleged racism and even over issues like who would get more microphone time and pay for the portable toilets at anti-war rallies. The feuding appears to have precluded any kind of nationally coordinated anti-war rallies from happening on March 19, the third-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Small, local protests are planned by various anti-war groups around the country.  "The souring of the political atmosphere is largely due to ANSWER, which, in our experience, consistently substitutes labels ('racist,' 'anti-unity') and mischaracterization of others' views for substantive political debate or problem solving," reads the open letter issued last Dec. 12, by the group United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). It marked the opening salvo in a war of words that has been fought on the groups' individual websites and all over the blogosphere. In announcing that it would no longer coordinate activities with International ANSWER, UFPJ criticized ANSWER's links to the Workers World Party (WWP), a group that allegedly had supported atrocities committed by Communist regimes around the world.
International ANSWER's leader - former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark - was also singled out for criticism after providing legal help to some of the world's most notorious ousted leaders. "Ramsey Clark, the visible leader of the International Action Center, is a founder of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, and has also provided legal representation for some accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He has more recently volunteered for Saddam Hussein's legal team," Weinberg noted in his column late last fall.
 In a Jan. 10, 2006 article entitled "The War within the Antiwar Movement," published on CounterPunch.org, anti-war activist Lenni Brenner defended International ANSWER against the attacks. Brenner, who is not a spokesman for International ANSWER, questioned why UFPJ had aligned itself with "demagogues" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. "Demagogues use prevailing fanaticisms. Jackson & Sharpton meet that dictionary definition. Their party's leaders would swim across oceans of snot, stark naked, chasing after Zionist money."
International ANSWER's steering committee issued its own response in a Dec. 16, open letter, accusing UFPJ of repeatedly attempting to break up the anti-war movement and behaving in a "petty" manner. "The justifications cited in their December 12 split declaration are embarrassingly petty and astonishingly trivial for a U.S.-based antiwar movement, especially given the gravity of the war itself and the monumental human suffering in the Middle East," the Dec. 16 letter from ANSWER's steering committee alleged. ANSWER also claimed that it was UFPJ that had dominated the stage at the anti-war rally. "UFPJ had the stage first at the joint rally. They went over their time. They advised A.N.S.W.E.R. to take an equal time. UFPJ then retook the stage and began telling the crowd to march, even though A.N.S.W.E.R. still had its second segment left," the letter from ANSWER charged. ANSWER rejected criticism that it had failed to provide enough volunteers for the Sept. 24, 2005 rally. "UFPJ provided not one volunteer," ANSWER charged while noting that it paid "the full cost for the stage, sound, porta-Johns, back-stage set-up and other expenses for the joint rally." "UFPJ did not pay one cent," the open letter stated. When contacted on Tuesday, Hany Khalil, the coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, declined to comment on the split between his group and ANSWER. Shawn Garcia, the national organizer for ANSWER said the feud between his group and UFPJ was "a bad thing." "Obviously it's a bad thing. We are not unified and stuff like that and they are breaking up the anti-war movement," Garcia told Cybercast News Service. "They refuse to work with us, and that is what they are putting out there. So we will see what develops in the next couple of months. We said we want to work with them. We think that is the best way to go about things," Garcia said. A third anti-war group, Mobilization for Global Justice (MGJ), has now also entered the feud. Mobilization for Global Justice has accused UFPJ of "racism," for limiting the speech of Virginia Setshedi, a black South African woman who addressed the Sept. 24, 2005, rally in the nation's capital. Setshedi "was treated by UFPJ in a manner bordering racism," [sic] read an open letter from MGJ dated Dec. 1, 2005. "[Setshedi] is a truly visionary activist and a dynamic speaker, and yet was given only three minutes to speak after a long procession of well-known U.S. speakers who were given five minutes each - and often took longer than that," the letter claimed.  MGJ also accused UFPJ of being obsessed with press attention. "The grassroots has no role in determining the political vision of the coalition; the vision and message are driven by the needs of getting on CNN and the New York Times," the letter stated. MGJ acknowledged that the anti-war movement might be hurt by the growing bitterness among its most prominent groups. "We know that fracturing and factionalism weaken the movement - and that is not what we seek - but it is equally true that conformity, unwillingness to engage in real debate, and a refusal to air real differences when they exist can stifle and eventually kill a movement," MGJ stated. UFPJ fired back at MGJ in a Feb. 10, 2006 open letter, claiming to have been "surprised" by the allegations regarding the September 2005 rally and blaming International ANSWER for the problem involving speaking time. "When ANSWER ran significantly over their allotted times it had a negative impact on our speakers," UFPJ explained. UFPJ also found itself the target of the D.C. Anti-War Network (DAWN). Earlier this month, DAWN passed a resolution declaring that it would never pay any money to UFPJ for anti-war activities. The group cited dissatisfaction with UFPJ's management style and suppression of local anti-war voices. "The peace movement is falling apart," declared Raoul Deming, a member of the District of Columbia chapter of Free Republic, a conservative group that supports the Iraq War and frequently clashes with the anti-war activists. "The major leaders of the anti-war movement are totalitarian, Stalinist or Marxist. They just mistreat the smaller groups that come to support them. They don't listen to them, they don't provide them funding. ANSWER and UFPJ, through their totalitarian management, have aliened a majority of the peace groups," Deming told.
Posted by: Steve 2006-03-15 |
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