Re: [Marxism] Hey, Antiwar Movement!...

[Eli Stephens <elishastephens@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

 From the SW article:

> Sheehan and ANSWER's unity proposal was further hampered by their attempt
> to hitch the Washington protest to an Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW)
> initiative organized for March 13-16-

"Hitch the protest"? What complete crap. When else would they suggest having a 
massive 5th anniversary march? In May? OF COURSE the suggestion was to have a 
demonstration on the 15th; SW's claim that this was motivated by the desire to 
"hitch the protest" to Winter Soldier is preposterous.

Whatever the past history between ANSWER and UfPJ, and whatever UfPJ decided 
about supporting or not supporting the proposed action, the bad actor in this 
affair, from my point of view, has been entirely IVAW, or, from what I hear 
(and 
I emphasize that point, I don't really know), certain forces or even just 
certain people within IVAW. The idea that a mass event and a very important, 
but 
nonetheless much more limited participation event, were counterpoised and that 
the demo would have drawn attention from Winter Soldier is absurd; if anything, 
they were completely synergistic and each would have probably received MORE 
attention if done in conjunction with one another.

> One is that ANSWER's credibility as an antiwar force has been damaged by
> its sectarian behavior toward other forces in the movement--and more
> recently, its insistence in inflating the success of its recent
> mobilizations and the potential for future ones.

More nonsense. The first half of the claim may be arguable; certainly there are 
many who see things that way. But the idea that people don't want to work with 
ANSWER because they "inflated the success" of recent events or overestimate the 
"potential for future ones" is just bizarre. If that deters someone from 
participating in joint actions with someone else, I'd have to say they weren't 
very motivated to participate in any actions to begin with. More logically, 
what 
would discourage such a group from joining in is precisely their pessimistic 
assessment of the potential for future actions, and consequently their lack of 
desire to participate in building such actions, seeing it as a waste of their 
time.


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