[Marxism] ex-stalinist set up UFPJ as a counter-balance to left leaning anti-war movement?

[Carl Webb <carlwebb@xxxxxxxxx>]

Antiwar Effort Emphasizes Civility Over Confrontation

by Kate Zernike and Dean E. Murphy

 

With the war against Iraq in its second week, the most influential
antiwar coalitions have shifted away from large-scale disruptive
tactics and stepped up efforts to appeal to mainstream Americans.

One of the largest groups, Win Without War, is encouraging the two
million people on its e-mail list to send supportive letters to
soldiers. Other groups have redoubled their fund-raising for
billboards that declare "Peace is Patriotic" and include the giant
image of an unfurling American flag.


Hundreds of antiwar protesters rallied on the beach in Santa Monica,
Calif., on Feb. 15. (AP Photo)

The changed tone comes after a week of street protests marking the
start of the war that reduced San Francisco to anarchy, turned
Chicago's Lakeshore Drive into a parking lot and paralyzed major roads
in Atlanta, Boston and other cities.

This week, the nation's largest antiwar coalitions said they were
abandoning their plan to disrupt everyday life. Instead, they said,
they would direct protests at federal institutions, corporations and
media conglomerates that "profit from war" in an effort to attract
attention but not offend most Americans.

The shift reflects a tension that has existed within the nation's
antiwar movement for months.

Radical groups like those weaned on the antiglobalization protests
that disrupted Seattle four years ago sought more civil disobedience.
More mainstream groups like the National Council of Churches were
afraid that confrontational tactics would only alienate the American
public.

At least for now, the more mainstream groups have gained the upper
hand. They have sought to cast their movement as the loyal opposition,
embracing the troops but condemning the war. Within the movement,
which includes everything from small groups in small towns to a large
alliance of more than 200 organizations, radical elements still exist.
But the larger and more influential groups have sought over time to
sideline them, deliberately excluding certain speakers, dismissing
certain tactics, marginalizing certain protests, in a determined
effort to avoid being dismissed as career malcontents.

The week before the war began, another major coalition, United for
Peace and Justice, declined to join in sponsoring a rally put on by
International Answer, a group whose names stands for Act Now to Stop
War and End Racism, saying its message was too left-wing and
alienating.

And even the umbrella organization that helped shut down San
Francisco's financial district last week began its more mundane
protests this week with an announcement that demonstrators interested
in thuggery should keep their distance.

"If we're going to be a force that needs to be listened to by our
elected officials, by the media, by power, our movement needs to
reflect the population," said Leslie Cagan, co-chairwoman of United
for Peace and Justice, and a career political organizer.

"It needs to be diverse," Ms. Cagan went on, "it needs to be large, it
needs to include the people who could be described as mainstream — but
that doesn't exclude the people who are sometimes thought of as the
fringes."

Even the more mainstream groups are full of people who have spent
large stretches of their lives on the front lines of protest
movements, from the civil rights struggles to antiglobalization
campaigns. But they say they have learned from their own mistakes. So
while attacking corporate America for driving this war, antiwar groups
have co-opted corporate strategies, rolling out media campaigns as if
opposition to war were a new kind of cola.

For weeks, public relations firms have sent news organizations daily
suggestions for interviews and "great visuals" that feature
protesters. Groups practicing civil disobedience make sure their
designated publicity person avoids arrest, to remain available to
television cameras. One organization even "embedded" reporters among
protesters the way the Pentagon did with its troops.

"The great lesson from Madison Avenue is repetition," Ms. Cagan said.
"If you get the same message out in different ways, you begin to break
into people's consciousness."

The New Era
Rallying Round the E-Mail Lists


Mariuccia Iaconi, 75, carrying a peace sign at an antiwar protest in
San Francisco on March 22. (Reuters Photo)

The last time a vast antiwar movement took American streets was during
the Vietnam War, so comparisons between this movement and that one are
inevitable.

The new antiwar groups take pride in the size of the crowds they have
been able to mobilize. They have grown a protest movement the size of
which it took Vietnam-era organizers four years to build — this time,
without a draft and even before the first body bags might shock people
into the streets.

United for Peace and Justice, for example, says it took only six weeks
to get 350,000 people to a rally in New York in February, and Win
Without War says it took four days to set up 6,800 candlelight vigils
the week the war began.

"I am rather pleased with the way things have gone," said Michael N.
Nagler, the founder and former chairman of the Peace and Conflict
Studies Department at the University of California at Berkeley. "I
have been monitoring the peace movement for almost four decades, and
often wringing my hands in despair for its lack of savvy and lack of
organization."

Still, it is a different era now.

Protest has become routine, no longer seen as an assault on the
country's values and culture the way it was when demonstrators
descended on Washington in the 1960's.

The Internet makes it far easier to organize swiftly and draw out crowds.

In fact, some might say this movement — which unlike the one during
Vietnam began before the start of the Iraq conflict — failed in its
most important goal: to stop the war before it commenced. Certainly
the protesters say they have learned that they need a long-term
strategy.

"It's tremendously saddening," said Eli Pariser, international
campaigns director of MoveOn.org, a member of the Win Without War
coalition, said of the start of the war.

"At the same time, there still is optimism that in terms of our larger
goal, which is to end this foreign policy that is so dangerous,
there's still hope, and quite a lot of it."

The Mobilization
In Diversity There Is Strength

The antiwar movement is a set of diverse groups that often overlap,
swapping staff, money, and office space, acting in concert and alone.


War protest signs in Manhattan near the United Nations on Feb. 15.
(NYT Photo)

Some are offshoots of well-known national groups with
multimillion-dollar budgets, large paid staffs and other agendas: The
Sierra Club and the National Council of Churches, the National
Organization for Women and the N.A.A.C.P.

Others are more obscure or formed explicitly in the context of the
war: Code Pink, September 11 Families For Peaceful Tomorrows, People
for a Gasoline-Free Day. And many cities have their own organizations
with their own distinct local flavor.

Direct Action to Stop the War, with no paid staff, no offices and no
formal fund-raising efforts, dominates the protest scene in San
Francisco.

One of its leaders, Patrick Reinsborough, had led an effort to
pressure Home Depot to discontinue the sale of products made with
old-growth trees. Another, Mary Bull, is the coordinator of the Save
the Redwoods/Boycott the Gap Campaign. She was once arrested, dressed
as a tree, outside the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in
Washington.

The coalitions against the war have drawn on the budgets and staffs of
the larger national groups that have joined in.

Many of the newer organizations are too fresh to have reported
finances to government regulators. But they say they have also gotten
money from various other sources, including the Barbra Streisand
Foundation; Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's; and Paulette Cole of ABC
Carpet and Home in New York City.

They say they have also raised significant amounts of money in smaller
increments online. Win Without War says it raised $400,000 online in
48 hours, with an average donation of $35.

The Mainstream Shift
Opposing the War, but Still Patriotic

When the antiwar protests began to gather steam in the fall, the
large-scale rallies were being run by International Answer.

Answer brought together an amalgam of demonstrators, including
antiglobalization protesters and longtime Socialists. Some of its
chief organizers were members of the Workers World Party, a radical
Socialist group that has defended Slobodan Milosevic and the North
Korean and Iraqi governments.

In the protest community, the group was especially known for good
organization: in some cities, Answer would go early in the year and
snap up protest permits for the largest public places on the best
dates. Last fall, many smaller groups opposed to the war were planning
to attend the rally Answer had organized for Oct. 26 in Washington.

But the afternoon before the event, representatives of about 50 groups
gathered at the Washington office of People for the American Way, a
liberal group that is known for causes like opposition to conservative
judges.

It was a diverse set, including Black Voices for Peace; the Institute
for Policy Studies, which is a left-leaning research center; and the
American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group. Many in attendance
knew each other from past protests.

For nearly a month in private conversations, they say they had been
sharing their concerns that Answer's oratory was too anti-Israel, too
angry. They worried that its rallies were not focused enough on the
war: banners in the crowd were as much about "Free Palestine" and
"Free Mumia" — a reference to Mumia Abu-Jamal, imprisoned for killing
a Philadelphia police officer — as they were "No Blood For Oil."

"Answer is a radical left group and not very mainstream in terms of
its image," said David Cortright, a veteran of the Vietnam War and the
protests against it, who attended the meeting as head of the Fourth
Freedom Forum, a research center promoting peaceful resolution of
international conflicts. "It was not the kind of movement I thought
would be able to attract the kind of mainstream support I thought was
out there."

They decided that afternoon to form a new coalition that would operate
apart from Answer. They named it United for Peace and Justice. It
immediately began planning small actions for December and January in
various cities, and a large rally in New York City on Feb. 15, where
speakers would be told that their remarks had to be about the war and
nothing else.

Later that same October day, eight people from the meeting went out
for dinner, worried, some of them say, that even their new alternative
to Answer would not get the support of important mass constituency
groups like labor, veterans and churches.

Over Chinese food, those eight agreed to create another group, calling
this one Win Without War. To join, said Mr. Pariser of MoveOn, one of
those attending, organizations had to explicitly sign on to the notion
of being patriotic and taking a "reasonable" stance toward a conflict
with Iraq, which at that time meant the continuation of weapons
inspections.

"Right from the beginning we tried to frame it as a message that would
go down well in broader communities than just the antiwar crowd," said
Mr. Cortright, another of the eight. "The average labor guy out there
wants to be seen in that mainstream, patriotic light."

Win Without War announced itself in December with a news conference
and a Web site identifying itself as the "mainstream" voice against
the war. Doing so allowed it to win members like the N.A.A.C.P., the
National Organization for Women, the Sierra Club and the National
Council of Churches and gain access to their mailing lists and
memberships.

"Affiliating with other organizations that don't normally get involved
in peace movements gave us a way to appeal to middle America," said
Bob Edgar, general secretary of the council of churches.

Answer itself continued to organize rallies. Mara Verheyden-Hilliard,
a steering committee member, said her group took the "most progressive
stand." She said the other coalitions included elements "far more to
the right."

And other smaller groups would spawn, local groups in various cities
and towns, national groups like Code Pink, which appealed to women,
and the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, which signed people up in advance
to commit nonviolent civil disobedience the day the war began.

But most of those groups affiliated in some way with one of the two
large national groups — if only to list their events on the national
Web site.

As time went on, United for Peace and Justice took on the job of
organizing rallies. Win Without War's task focused on the news media.
It took as its national director a former Democratic congressman from
Maine, Tom Andrews, who had been working with a public relations firm
hired by the coalition.

The Internet would prove crucial to both organizing and media. United
for Peace and Justice said 40,000 people signed up for e-mail
bulletins about actions against the war. Win Without War says its
e-mail list includes more than two million addresses. Earlier this
month, Win Without War created a worldwide candlelight vigil online,
allowing people to enter their ZIP codes to find the nearest one.

A crucial player in Win Without War's campaigns has been MoveOn, an
organization originally started by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to
provide a way for voters to go online to express their opposition to
the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

In January, Mr. Pariser sent out an e-mail message saying that the
organization wanted to buy a newspaper advertisement, and could raise
$27,000 privately if it could raise the same amount online.

The Debate
Civil Disobedience Is Toned Down

Within two days, Mr. Pariser said, online donors pledged $400,000, and
the group bought several newspaper advertisements, a radio commercial,
and ultimately, several television spots. One, in which a scene of a
small girl plucking daisy petals morphs into military images and a
mushroom cloud, borrowed heavily from the "daisy" commercial that
Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign used against Barry Goldwater in 1964 to
stir fears about nuclear Armageddon.

When the war started last week, United for Peace and Justice and Win
Without War were split over civil disobedience, the tool that many in
the antiwar movement had been saving for the start of hostilities.

United for Peace said it supported nonviolent civil disobedience,
while Win Without War said it did not. But as the general shift in
strategy swept the peace movement over last weekend, United for Peace
and Justice scaled back its advocacy of civil disobedience. Its Web
site now encourages those against the war to light a candle for peace,
to wear a black armband, to display a yellow ribbon.

Smaller regional groups seemed to take the cue, trading sit-ins for
bike rides for peace.

In New York, antiwar groups called for mass civil disobedience on
Thursday. There were more than 200 arrests but most protesters
remained orderly. They specifically fixed on Rockefeller Center,
because it is the home of General Electric, its NBC subsidiary and The
Associated Press.

Organizers say news media companies and companies like G.E. will
profit from the war, whether from high ratings, newspaper sales,
military contracts or payments to rebuild Iraq after the war.

The most notable example of the new tone came in San Francisco, which
had emerged early on as a hotbed of the antiwar movement.

Last week, the goal of the San Francisco umbrella organization, Direct
Action to Stop the War, had been to disrupt the city's everyday life.
Twenty intersections and thoroughfares were picked as places to stop
traffic, with demonstrators sitting on the asphalt and refusing to
budge.

More than 2,300 people were arrested in three days, the largest number
of arrests in such a short time period in decades, the police said.

The civil disobedience achieved its main goal of attracting attention
around the world.

But it also annoyed a good number of San Franciscans, most notably
Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr., a Democrat who is sympathetic to the
antiwar cause. At one point he urged the demonstrators to leave San
Francisco and converge on Crawford, Tex., where President Bush has a
ranch.

So at a meeting Sunday night at San Francisco's St. Boniface Church,
some of Direct Action's most active supporters, joined by members from
many other groups, including United For Peace and Justice, decided to
accommodate the mood of a city — and country — at war.

"We agreed to a change in tactics," said Renee Sharp, who when not
protesting the war works as an analyst for an environmental advocacy
group in Oakland.

"We no longer need to disrupt business as usual; we've made that
point. Our goal isn't to make life difficult for everybody living
here."

The shift was swift.

At a training session for protesters early Monday morning near the San
Francisco waterfront, a young woman in a knit cap took the microphone.
As had been the routine at other gatherings, she led the crowd of 300
or so in a recitation. "Repeat after me," she said. "I do not want to
answer questions. I want to talk with my lawyer."

But the script then deviated markedly from that of the weeks before.
After people pored over a poster board map and got their assignments —
most were told to block entrances to the Transamerica Pyramid building
— they were sent marching in a fairly obedient form of disobedience.

They headed down the sidewalk alongside the streets that last week
they had mobbed. This time they were in neat double file led by a
Franciscan priest holding two church candles. The procession was so
orderly, a large group of police officers having breakfast outside a
nearby bagel shop did not even budge as it passed.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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