RE: [Marxism] Antiwar demonstration in Washington

["David McDonald" <dbmcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The problem with volunteers, at least volunteers like me, is that they often
feel they ought to have something to say about what happens, and with
ANSWER, they don't. I'd dearly love to hear you refute that with reports of
meetings you attended where the "unifying demands" of US Out of Everywhere
were debated openly and then voted on. Or any other political decision of
substance. I repeat my experience from Seattle for the third time: ANSWER
came into the room and announced that they had called a demo for September
24th, had held a full and democratic discussion, and somehow magically
arrived at precisely the same slogans as ANSWER nationally. The only problem
with that discussion is that no one outside of their immediate coterie knew
about it. If that's your idea of how to orgasnize revolutionary political
intervention in the antiwar movement, go for it.

So, without delving into into the details of September 24th, I think it can
be given that ANSWER was short of volunteers because of their utterly
pernicious method of organizing. I'd like to see you defend that.

The Seattle demonstration was maybe 3,000 people, tied for last place in
Seattle mobilizations against this war with March 19, 2005 and April 12,
2003, both demonstrations plagued by unity problems. The San Francisco demo
was estimated at 25,000 -- not much for San Francisco, where crowds of
100,000-200,000+ were routine in the run-up to the war. London at 10,000 was
1/200th the size of Feb 15. Washington at 500,000 is great, but I credit
that to Cindy Sheehan in the main.

The politics of UfPJ were better because they had to share the platform with
ANSWER and their normal wishy-washy formulations ("Down with the Bush
Agenda") would not have stood up to the forthright "Out Now" of ANSWER. That
is the entire point of forcing UfPJ into coalitions and not allowing them to
dominate the political stance of the action by splitting the movement to
create a politically pure pole of attraction. But ANSWER didn't force UfPJ
into a joint rally--they had to be dragged kicking and screaming; USLAW,
Cindy Sheehan and the solar winds did that.

Just to be real -- any level of volunteers can be overwhelmed by a big
enough crowd and it may not mean anything politically. I have never
participated in a major Seattle march/rally where anything like the needed
number of volunteers was actually available. It is routine for me to wade
into the crowd to recruit volunteers into collection-bucket duty on the
spot. At other times I have issued two buckets to each volunteer and told
them they had to recruit someone from the crowd to help them. This is all
post-WTO experience on my part.
I greatly fear the chaos that will result if we have a major demonstration
attacked by cops with the level of security volunteers we usually have.



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