[Marxism] UFPJ leadership divides the antiwar movement

[Dustin <resistgwb@xxxxxxxxx>]

UFPJ leadership divides the anti-war movement


  It was with deep concern that we read a recent communication from  United for 
Peace and Justice, sent out on Dec. 12 by its national  coordinator, Leslie 
Cagan. It stated that the coalition had voted by a  two-thirds majority to no 
longer collaborate with the ANSWER coalition  in the anti-war movement.

  We salute the one third of the member groups who put the need for  principled 
unity of the anti-war movement first. They had the courage  to stand up and 
resist the pressure to support what is a totally  unprincipled measure, which 
can severely injure the unity of the  movement at a critical time when there 
are new openings to escalate the  anti-war struggle.

  The UFPJ document is filled with orga nizational complaints about  ANSWER. We 
believe that these organizational complaints are merely a  cover behind which 
the UFPJ leadership is readying an open shift to the  right, orienting to the 
so-called ?anti-war? elements in the capitalist  establishment and preparing to 
use the anti-war movement as a platform  for promoting the Democratic Party in 
the 2006 elections. We think that  beyond being an attack on ANSWER, this 
document was a reflection of the  aversion of the UFPJ leadership to 
anti-imperialist politics of  international solidarity and to the orientation 
that rejects support  for the Democratic Party.

  But some things must be reviewed for the record. In the preamble to  UFPJ?s 
declaration it referred to how they originally ?did not believe  it would be 
productive to make coordination with ANSWER a centerpiece  of our September 24 
efforts? and then went on to make a convoluted  explanation of why they had 
changed their minds.

  The truth about UFPJ and Sept. 24

  This is completely disingenuous. The facts are that UFPJ, after having  
called for a demonstration in New York City on Sept. 10, 2005, switched  it to 
Sept. 24 in Washington, D.C.?the same day and the same city where  ANSWER had 
already called for a demonstration. This precipitated a  crisis of disunity and 
confusion in the movement.

  It had the effect of forcing people to choose between going to a  
demonstration organized by anti-imperialist forces, who defended the  
Palestinian and Arab cause, or going to one called by the more moderate  
anti-war forces. This, in spite of the fact that there was a strong  political 
basis among the rank-and-file, new and old, for unity around  the question of 
bringing the troops home now, ending occupations, and  using money for human 
needs, not war.

  Fortunately, the progressive activists in the movement prevailed and  forced 
UFPJ to retract its plans for a separate demonstration.

  This hard-fought unity resulted in a major revival of the anti-war  movement 
in which 300,000 people came out and marched together. There  were, of course, 
many shortcomings of the demonstration, including the  fact that it was 
predominantly white and that the working class was not  a strong force in the 
demonstration. But those are major historical  problems that the movement must 
fight to overcome. These are matters  outside the framework of this dispute and 
do not diminish the success  of Sept. 24, such as it was.

  The UFPJ communication ostensibly based its decision on three grounds,  
arising from the Sept. 24 demonstration: that ANSWER went beyond its  
agreed-upon time slot and thereby got more coverage on C-SPAN, putting  forth a 
political message that was skewed; that ANSWER began the march  an hour later 
than agreed upon; and that ANSWER did not turn out enough  volunteers, thereby 
putting an added burden on UFPJ.

  ANSWER has given a detailed refutation of these charges. But whether  some or 
none of them are true is beside the point. Whatever  difficulties were 
experienced by UFPJ, actual or perceived, they pale  in comparison to the need 
to unite the broadest possible forces who are  devoted to the immediate, 
unconditional and complete withdrawal of all  U.S. forces from Iraq.

  All organizations in the anti-war struggle owe it to the Iraqi people,  the 
people of the Middle East, and the workers and oppressed people  right here at 
home to subordinate their own particular organizational  interests to 
maximizing mass mobilization, so long as it is on a  principled basis.

  The Iraqi people are suffering death and destruction every day from the  
onslaught of the U.S. military machine. According to Johns Hopkins  University, 
the Iraqi death toll now stands at upwards of 119,000. Tens  of thousands are 
in jails. Families are separated. Cities and towns are  in ruins from repeated 
U.S. military raids and air bombardments. The  Iraqi resistance fighters are 
giving their lives daily to expel the  colonial occupiers.

  The suffering and sacrifice of the Iraqi people in the daily struggle  are of 
such monumental magnitude in human terms that the UFPJ leaders  should be 
ashamed to even bring up their relatively minuscule  organizational complaints 
as a reason for breaking the unity of the  struggle against the war.

  But UFPJ?s motivation is not organizational. It is political. The  leadership 
of UFPJ has always been against the left and has always  oriented towards the 
Demo cratic Party. Those who constitute the  leadership today were in 
organizations that tried to isolate and  undermine the anti-imperialist forces 
and all militancy going back to  the Vietnam-War era. These leaders were in 
favor of ?sanctions, not  war? during the Gulf War of 1991.

  UFPJ was actually created in reaction to and in opposition to ANSWER  after 
Sept. 11, 2001, when ANSWER became the central force resisting  the Bush 
campaign of ?permanent war.? From the moment UFPJ was created,  its leadership 
resisted any united front and had to be dragged by the  movement, including its 
own member organizations, into united activity.  This happened on April 20, 
2002; Oct. 25, 2003; March 20, 2004; and  this past Sept. 24.

  UFPJ and the Democrats

  Up until now, however, the UFPJ leaders have handled their splitting  
activities one demonstration at a time, without openly elevating their  
opposition to ANSWER and, in reality, the whole anti-imperialist left,  to the 
level of firm policy. What has changed? It?s the combination of  the beginning 
of a split in the ruling class and the approach of the  2006 elections.

  John Murtha, the militarist Democra tic Party Congress member from Penn  syl 
vania who is close to the Pentagon, declared that ?It is time to  bring the 
troops home??when ?practical,? hopefully in six months. He is  for leaving a 
strike force ?over the horizon.? Murtha?s position  reveals a growing split 
among the generals and in the ruling class over  the war.

  Murtha, Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic Party leaders did not shed  one 
tear for the Iraqi people. On the contrary, they represent the  forces that 
want to find a way to salvage the interests of U.S.  imperialism, which has 
sunk into a quagmire with the colonial adventure  in Iraq. At the same time, 
they want to utilize the growing anti-war  sentiment, not to get the U.S. out 
of Iraq, but to get themselves into  office, where they will pursue a 
?multilateral? approach to securing  the interests of Washington, Wall Street 
and the Penta gon in Iraq and  everywhere.

  Leslie Cagan and the social democratic leaders of UFPJ took this as  their 
cue to put up a firewall between themselves and the  anti-imperialist left and 
stretch out their arms to what they hope will  be a bourgeois opposition. At 
the same time, they see Bush?s poll  numbers dropping, the Republicans beset by 
corruption scandals, and the  Demo cratic Party salivating in expectation of 
taking back the Congress  in 2006.

  Up until now, the UFPJ leadership had been forced to unite with the  
anti-imperialist forces because the capitalist politicians were nowhere  to be 
found in the fight against Bush to stop the war. Their criticisms  were 
restricted to what happened before the war?the lies about WMDs,  about Iraqi 
links to al-Qaeda, etc.?and how badly the war was going.  John Kerry was still 
calling for more troops until only recently.  Hillary Clinton was also a hawk. 
But now that the odor of a bourgeois  opposition has arisen from the halls of 
Congress, the UFPJ leadership  is anticipating new alliances to the right.

  This is not only a matter of speculation. Communications from U.S.  Labor 
Against the War (USLAW) reveal that before the UFPJ leadership  issued its 
attack on ANSWER, it was already in discussions about an  April action with the 
moderate and bourgeois forces, including USLAW,  Win Without War, NOW, PUSH and 
other moderate, social-patriotic forces,  all of whom are oriented to the 
Democratic Party.

  Democrats: a war party

  The Democratic Party leadership is firmly under the control of the  
imperialist establishment. The Democratic Party, on the whole, is a war  party. 
Virtually every Democratic president in the last hundred years  has carried out 
imperialist wars and interventions. Just in the last  half century, John F. 
Kennedy invaded Cuba and began the Vietnam War,  which Lyndon Johnson 
continued; Carter tried to invade Iran and started  a clandestine war against 
what was then a progressive government in  Afghan istan; Clinton carried out 
air wars against Yugoslavia and Iraq  and imposed genocidal sanctions on Iraq. 
The Repub licans, of course,  were part of all this.

  The social democratic, liberal and pacifist forces that the UFPJ  leadership 
is looking to form a bloc with, as opposed to  anti-imperialist forces, see the 
ascendancy of the Democrats as the  solution to the Bush reaction. But the only 
real way to push back the  reactionary forces of capitalism so as to end the 
war and benefit the  workers and the oppressed at home is to build an 
independent, militant  movement on the ground that is willing to fight.

  Winning Congress for the Democrats won?t end the war. Congress is a  talk 
shop. If it were more than that, at any given moment it could use  any one of a 
hundred reasons to impeach Bush, to cut off funds for the  war and occupation, 
to bring up Cheney on charges of being the ?torture  vice president,? and many 
other things.

  Getting the Democrats in the White House, where they will be  administering 
the aggressive, repressive capitalist state against the  people at home and 
abroad, is no answer either.

  The pages of this newspaper have advocated and encouraged anti-war  unity 
with ANSWER and all other progressive and anti-imperialist  forces, and will 
continue to do so where appropriate in the interests  of the struggle. Organ 
izational questions must be subordinated to the  task of ending the occupation.

  In that regard, we encourage the movement to call to task the  leadership of 
UFPJ and force them to reverse this divisive policy. The  solemn duty to get 
U.S. imperialism off the back of the Iraqi people,  to bring the troops home, 
and to defeat U.S. schemes to impose an  ?Iraqization? of the occupation 
requires the strongest unity,  independent of the parties of the war makers.


  from
  http://www.workers.org/2005/us/ufpj-1229/index.html


                
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