RE: [Marxism] Re: anti-imperialism (An experience with building a coalition against "empire" in New York City)

["David McDonald" <dbmcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

For the record: I joined the SWP in 1977, as Fred notes, as part of a fusion
of 45 people working their way from the Schachtmanite tradition toward
revolutionary politics. I had no experience of the antiwar movement from the
inside although as a dutiful son of the 60's I participated in all the big
west coast actions from the Century City police riot in August of 1968 until
the end of the war, looking for trouble. So my understanding of the SWP's
fight against the war comes from Out Now. Thank goodness for indices, or I
would never have found the following quote from that instructive work, a
quote from a contemporaneous letter written in confidence (and therefore
more honest and to the point than other, public, statements, according to
Halstead) by an SWP activist reporting on the political lay of the land in
1966, around the time of the elections, following a campus tour:

"The general attitude on campus seems to be heavily loaded with pessimism
and a trend towards multi-issue or at least multiple issueism. There is also
a wave of anti-demonstration fever running around. I can't tell if this
recent or just one of the periodic dips in the anti-war movement. The fight
over withdrawal openly appears to be over but as multi-issueism creeps in
there is a tendency to compromise on this point so as to get the 'broadest'
group together.

"On a number of campuses the anti-war committees, after being single-issue
organizations for a bit more than a year, have affiliated in one way or
another with SDS[....]What seems to be lookied for here is a nationally
organized group which is so broad that there will be no interference and no
absolute responsibilities to it. The SDS affiliations are also a sign of the
single issue vs. multi-issue confusion.

"The pessimism manifests itself in the following argument: 'We can't end
this war. Perhaps we can end the war ten wars from now. So let's organize
for that and prepare.' This leads to multi-issueism[....]" (Out Now,
Pathfinder Press, paperback edition, 3rd printing, 2001, p. 246).

So perhaps this late-comer to the organized antiwar movement can be forgiven
for thinking that the SWP counterposed immediate withdrawal to allegedly
more broadly political goals in its coalition work.

This being said, there is much I agree with in Fred's recent post, and
little that I disagree with. I am well aware of the danger of slogan creep.
I believe that until very recently I am the only person on this list (and I
find this amazing) who has criticized ANSWER for splitting the existing
coalitions running up to the March 20, 2004 series of nationally coordinated
local actions with its demand, which I have repeatedly called "ludicrous" in
several posts, of "US Out of Iraq, Palestine, and Everywhere" and into which
they sucked ISO, Socialist Alternative, the Freedom Socialist Party and a
host of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian organizations.

Perhaps I was sensitized to this by the manner in which it occurred in
Seattle. Here, the first several organizing meetings led to a split. There
was one moment when a local leader of moderate forces, the newly elected
Executive Director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, said that his
organization could not participate in a demonstration that called for US Out
of Palestine because of the presence in his umbrella group of various
temples, whom he thought would give him grief over it. He stated he had no
objection to including Palestine in one of the subordinate slogans on the
leaflet, and supported the idea of a speaker on Palestine at the demo from
the Palestinian community (neither of these things had ever happened before
and thus would have marked a distinct local step forward in recognizing the
connection between the struggle of the Palestinian people and the US war on
Iraq). The forty or so people in the room, some anguished, some not, then
proceeded to vote on precisely a slogan that drove the main moderate players
out of the room.

A nanosecond later one of the inveterate UfPJ-oriented sectarians proposed a
demonstration he could accept to this Church Council person, and the bulk of
the organizing forces (minus Seattle's ultraleft and also minus the
Palestinian groups, who went with the broader forces and happily or no
accepted the offer to speak at the UfPJ demo) immediately organized their
own demonstration, to which the ANSWER-led foirces were forced to orient,
but now from the outside, with no effect on its politics or organizing
methods. Personally, I stuck with the UfPJ forces but it mattered little.
The damage was done, the demo was perhaps 1/10 or 1/15 the size of the Feb.
15th demos, and the UfPJ forces  have parlayed their gifted influence with
the Church Council mercilessly.

Only the intervention of Black activists incensed at their exclusion from
the organizing process forced a semi-open process this year, leading up to
the March 19th actions. And even then, so much time elapsed before this
occurred that many crucial decisions on March 19th were made privately, by a
self-selected group of Democrats, church folks and the radicals who carry
water for them. March 19 was lackluster in the extreme in Seattle. As I have
said before, Louis Jourdain would have had no trouble in recognizing
Seattle's attempt to round up the usual suspects for March 19. As head of
the outreach committee, for instance, I organized a Saturday posting
mobilization, duly voted for with no dissent by the coalition, to which 1
person came.

I agree with Fred that mass action ought to be the principle we adhere to.
It is, however, tricky to get there. I do not believe it is principally a
question of the right slogans. You cannot, for instance, without serious
effort, find a Black person in Seattle who supports the war. Yet here the
antiwar movement's penetration into the Black community is dismal. Even
respected Black activists who are able to organize significant events in the
Black community on other issues have trouble turning the existing antiwar
sentiment in the community into actual mobilization. This is only partly, in
my opinion, a result of the existing movement's whiteness,l although that is
definitely a part of it.

Clearly ANSWER's answer, which is to touch on every possible base (US Out of
Everywhere, remember) is worthless as an organizing principle. The fact is
that the antiwar movement is unable to mobilize even the people who already
agree with our demands to take to the streets.

There is one axis of the struggle where I see independent action occuring.
By this I mean action independent of our efforts, action that comes from the
population as a whole. That is the fight against military recruiters on
campus. There are almost daily reports of activities by students to limit,
counter, or expunge military recruiters. Often these come from high schools.
A particularly inspiring episode occured locally in Tacoma and is recounted
here (thanks to Mark Jensen):

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2737/

What is interesting about this modest upsurge around military recruitment is
that people seem to have found their way to the biggest weakness of the war
effort: personnel, bodies to fight. On the one hand young people are the
immediate targets, and they seem to see this struggle as a way to assert
themselves against the overwhelming adult control over their lives. Note
that none of the school authorities, anywhere to my knowledge, take this
question on on its politics; they grouse that the students have failed to
follow the rules, when often, usually, it is they who attempt to skirt the
rules while insisting on the letter of the law for their charges. But also
many of these little struggles end in SUCCESS, as in Seattle Central
Community College and Foss High School in Tacoma. In addition, there is a
lot of quiet and not so quiet organizing around this issue among people in
the antiwar movement; a small group in Seattle has been meeting, making
contacts, talking to PTAs, trying to find interested students, developing
literature, and the like.

David McDonald






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