community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
People Power: It’s time to stop the war ourselves
by By Aimee Allison and David Solnit
Thursday, Nov. 22, 2007 at 4:11 AM
It’s time to stop the war ourselves. A new strategy is emerging from below to make it happen. It can be seen in the Pittsburgh Organizing Group’s “Troops Home Fast,” a month-long, around-the-clock vigil held in September 2007 outside Pittsburgh’s Recruitment Center.
From Yes Magazine, Winter 2008
We need a strategy to end the occupation of Iraq and stop the next invasion, in Iran or elsewhere. One reason it’s been hard to mobilize people since the invasion of Iraq is the absence of a clear logic as to where our efforts are headed.
What will another march, continued lobbying, or even a nonviolent direct action add up to? How will we actually stop this war and prevent the next one?
As we approach another presidential election, we have to look soberly at the history of candidates who mobilized anti-war sentiment only to reverse course once elected. Woodrow Wilson was elected on his promise to keep the United States out of World War I and Richard Nixon was elected on his promise to bring troops home from the Vietnam War. Most members of Congress who were elected in 2006 on promises to bring the troops home have done little or worse.
The solution is written in the mountain-road blockades and mass mobilizations in Bolivia that have driven out transnational corporations like Bechtel and Suez, and even the country’s president in 2003. It is written in the farm-worker-led Taco Bell boycott victory of 2005, and in the immigration-rights boycotts, walkouts, and mobilizations. It’s in our own history of workers’ and women’s rights, environmental, and civil rights struggles. It’s called people power.
Slamming Shut
the War Chest
The polls say Americans are done with spending money in Iraq. What's it going to take to get Congress to follow the will of the people.
See sidebar.
It’s time to stop the war ourselves. A new strategy is emerging from below to make it happen.
It can be seen in the Pittsburgh Organizing Group’s “Troops Home Fast,” a month-long, around-the-clock vigil held in September 2007 outside Pittsburgh’s Recruitment Center, to call for immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq and an end to military recruitment in Pittsburgh. The counter-recruiting actions have met with attacks by police dogs, electric cattle prods, “tasers,” and pepper spray, but their organizing has become contagious. Counter-recruitment is the fastest growing and most hopeful strategy of resistance to war in Iraq.
This strategy can also be seen in last summer’s gutsy Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) bus caravan, during which veterans traveled to military bases across the country—at times facing arrest on base—to talk with the active-duty soldiers who will fight (or resist) the war in Iraq. One of the first active-duty IVAW chapters formed at Fort Mead, Maryland, in the wake of the caravan.
Kelly Dougherty, director of IVAW, explained their strategy at a recent workshop: “The U.S. war in Iraq is this unstable upside-down triangle. It’s supported by a lot of pillars like the military, public opinion, war profiteers, the school system, media, Congress, the president, and the oil industry. If we can weaken those pillars, that will weaken the war as a whole.”
For the vets and active-duty soldiers of IVAW, this strategy has translated into their “Truth in Recruiting” and “GI Resistance” campaigns. IVAW members have been challenging military recruiting, supporting GI resisters, and organizing recent vets and active-duty soldiers.
If we identify the pillars that support the war, and choose thoughtful campaigns with creative tactics to remove them, then we will have a viable anti-war strategy.
Pillars of War
A group of people in a college classroom are participating in a workshop on “people-power strategy to end the war.” They are asked to name “the pillars of support that the U.S. war in Iraq depends on” which, if removed, would “prevent the war and occupation from continuing.”
“Troops!” someone shouts out.
That person is asked to step forward and become that pillar by holding up part of a mattress with the words “War and Occupation of Iraq” taped to it.
Another person says, “Corporations, like Halliburton.” That person becomes the second pillar holding up the “War and Occupation” mattress.
“Media that persuades people to support the war and misinforms them.” The person steps forward, and the mattress has three pillars.
The workshop facilitator asks, “What are some ways we can weaken or remove these pillars of support? Let’s start with troops.”
“Counter-recruiting, so they can’t get enough soldiers.”
“Supporting soldiers who refuse,” someone else offers.
“Resisting a draft that they might turn to if we are successful at counter-recruiting.”
“If we do all these things, will that weaken or remove the pillar of troops?” People agree that it could, and so that pillar is removed and the mattress lurches, held up by just two pillars.
The same exercise is done with the “corporate “ and “media” pillars. The “War and Occupation” mattress collapses.
People Power
People power can assert the democratic will of communities and movements to change the things that matter when the established, so-called democratic channels turn out be little more than public relations for elite rule.
Every successful movement in the United States—from the workers’ and civil rights movement to victories in anti-corporate campaigns today—and every successful effort to topple a dictator in recent history has relied on people-power methods.
The term was popularized by the 1986 Philippine uprising against the U.S.-backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos; military resistance and mass direct action mobilizations were central to his ouster.
If we, as a movement of movements, adopt a people-power strategic framework, identify the pillars that support the war, and choose thoughtful campaigns with creative tactics to remove them, then we will have a viable anti-war strategy.
It’s clear that we are not all going to agree on any one (or two or three) campaigns, but it is possible for us to consciously adopt and promote a people-power strategy that makes our various efforts complementary and cumulative. We think of it as a massive umbrella under which we can—whether we are a national organization, a local group or a decentralized network—make our efforts add up.
The Battle of the Story
A final key ingredient for a successful strategy is our ability to frame our own struggles, or to tell our own story. If we act defensively within the framework of the United States government and their “war on terror” story, we will always be on the defensive. If we allow them to define reality, we will always lose. If we limit ourselves to defensively arguing that there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq, or that there are none in Iran, for example, without challenging the legitimacy and cost of the United States being an empire, then we are operating in a reality defined by those in power. We have to be able to understand, fight, and win the “battle of the story.”
The courage of young people in the military, on the campuses and in the streets is showing us how to assert our people power. It’s clear that more and more folks in the United States and around the world have the courage to resist. Can we find what lies at the root of the word courage—le coeur, or heart—to assert our power as communities, as movements, and as people to reverse the policies of empire and build a better world?
David Solnit, anti-war, global justice, and arts organizer, was a key organizer in the WTO shutdown in Seattle in 1999 and in the shutdown of San Francisco the day after Iraq was invaded in 2003. He is the editor of Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World.
Aimee Allison is an Army veteran and conscientious objector. She leads counter-recruitment activities and actively supports veterans who are healing from their war experiences. She is a contributor to 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military.
Excerpted from Army of None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War and Build a Better World.
See http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/302/58/
Find out about the authors’ tour myspace.com/armyofnonebook
www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=2107
Popular Power Means Contending in the Electoral Arena as Well
by Carl Davidson
Thursday, Nov. 22, 2007 at 6:55 PM
carld717@aol.com
All of us opposed to this war, including the authors of this strategy, face the task of getting all the troops home--not doing away with the two party system, not doing away with corporate rule, not reforming the Congress or the White House, even though reforms in the direction of any of these, however minor, would be welcome as a byproduct of stopping the war now.
'Out Now' is a good demand for the antiwar movement and popular power because it asserts a perspective that is independent of any conditions on the battlefield or that the liberals in Congress or the commander-in-chief may want to set. Obviously, we don't have Commander Kirk's transporters to beam 'em back instantly, but sticking to that political demand will have far more positive impact on what modalities of withdrawal are worked out by diplomats or generals than any other.
The authors of this strategy express some dismay at the Democrats in Congress, or at least many of them. And they should, as do a good number of antiwar elected Dems do as well. Everyone knows the Dems are all over the map, and forces in the center and right may break from Bush and the war with other views--redeployment, insertion of UN or other regional forces, etc--which may or may not be to Bush's advantage, and we can deal with them case-by-case, but always standing firm on 'out now' and its political significance.
But none of this frustration over wavering and flip-flopping means the electoral arena can be downplayed, discounted or ignored by a popular power strategy.
Any number of allies will waver between 'out now' and 'out in 12 months', from day-to-day, bill-to-bill, speech-to-speech. That's the nature of liberal allies, but it's foolish to put them in the same camp as Bush and the warfighters because of it. We just keep the heat on no matter what.
We have a solid majority for 'out now' at the base. Now we have to get one just as solid for 'cutall funds now' or even 'cut all funds except what's needed to bring 'em all home rapidly and safely' and register it in a clear way, such as by putting it on the ballot. It's tedious door-to-door work, but it has to be done to get a Congress that will cut off the money. All the sit-ins and CD events are fine in their offices, but the numbers in election and poll results are needed to back them up.
You don't win at the top what you haven't organized at the base. On the campuses, you haven't even got a majority of students to take action yet, and Obama draws more and bigger crowds than us. Our work is cut out for us,
Our internationalist duty demands that the priority is ending THIS war and bring ALL of these troops home, sooner rather than later.
Doing so, along with staying in the streets and supporting resisting soldiers, will require defeating pro-war politicians of either party and electing antiwar politicians, mostly likely Democrats, and perhaps, in a few cases, Greens.
To get elected not only means votes, it means an grassroots capacity, independent of either party, rooted in our movement and allied movements, to make the war the central issue and bring large number of antiwar voters to the polls to take down the most pro-war incumbents. In most cases, it will mean casting a vote against a Republican by voting for a Democrat, but not every case.
The war ends when the streets are full and ungovernable, when soldiers and officers refuse to fight and potential recruits refuse to join, and when a Democratic Congress cuts off the money
It has to happen if we're to get from here to there. The grassroots insurgency is the engine of popular power, but all three componets are needed. If you don't like one, pick another. It's not crowded on any front.
If anyone has a shorter route, I'm all ears, and don't tell me stay in the streets, because I'm already completely behind that. Many people in the antiwar majority in the country, however, are not yet ready to go in the streets, so it is incumbent on us to find the forms of struggle that will engage them in the best way, rather than surrendering the electoral arena entirely to the liberals and the right.
We have a war to stop. Let's get on with it in every way we can.
Carl Davidson
Now residing in Raccoon Township, Beaver County
Davidson a fraud.
by @
Saturday, Nov. 24, 2007 at 10:52 PM
Carl, Chicago didnt want you, Pittsburgh doesn't either.
If anyone would like to know the kind of backwards organizing and politician ass kissing that Carl Davidson is so keen to, just ask anyone from chicago or visit ANY of the posts on Chicago Indymedia about the october 27th march.
Carl Davidson is responsible for inviting the Mayor Daley, who ordered the arrests of 800 anti Iraq war protestors in 2003 to the Oct 27th march. He also invited Dick Durbin and Barak Obama, both of whom continue to fund the war or are absent when votes come up. Not to mention putting the names of groups who never endorsed the Oct 27th march, on their website and fliers. Davidson's October 27th website also featured pictures of an anarchist youth march that took the streets in defiance of the police and the liberals backing Davidson, and he refused to take the picture down after being confronted about it. Carl Davidson has been virtually shunned from much of the Left, both radical and not in Chicago.
Pittsburghers should be wary of Davidson.
Earth to Carl
by Sam
Sunday, Nov. 25, 2007 at 7:09 PM
Subordination to the Democrats is the #1 reason for the movement's current anemic state. It's not a matter of falsely counterposing mass action to support for Democrats. It's a matter of recognizing that the very *function* of the "progressive" wing of that party is to render social movements ineffectual through co-optation. You, of all people, should realize that by now.
Goodness, all those sins..
by Carl Davidson
Monday, Nov. 26, 2007 at 1:35 PM
carld717@aol.com
Goodness, quite a few sins to be spread to the Greater Pittsburgh area.
I welcome everyone here to read the debates, some still ongoing, on Chicago Indymedia on Oct 27, Venezuela and other matters. You can find a longer record on my blog, listed below. If you read seriously, I think you'll find I'm not guilty of most of them.
If you think I'm 'shunned' by most of the left, you need to get out more. I've got a very long list of kudos from our work on Oct 27, saying 'it's about time.' If you check the Oct 27 web site, oct27chicago.org, you'll find we not only united the vast majority of the left--DSA, CPUSA, CCDS, Socialist Action, ANSWER and World Can't Wait, not to mention the vast majority of the antiwar movement, save for four relatively small groups, plus ISO.
If you go of YouTube, and look at the videos, you'll find we had greater labor and African American participation than any peace march for decades. And that was because we broke with the 'left bloc mentality'--that's where you have a hundred little groups in the room, every one of them to the left of the CPUSA, and you think you have a 'broad coalition'--and proceeded to do our best to build a genuine coalition of the left and center around 'Out Now.' My key complaint is that we didn't bring in even more people from the center.
If you're serious about ending this war, you have to form alliances with people to your right, at all levels, who oppose the war in one way or another. The suffering in Iraq is too great for a longer, 'purer' path. We have to fill the streets, help the soldiers organize, and get a Congress that will cut off the money. If you don't like one task, pick another, but get on with it. If you have a better way, make your case. I'm all ears.
For the record, I'm a member of the Green party, not the Democrats. I've spent 40 years trying to break up the Dems and supplant them with something better, to their left, and still do. But I'm smart enough to know two things: You need a good relationship with some of their left wing to do it, and you don't do it by using tactics that elect Republicans and others farther to the right.
We formed an alliance with a few antiwar Democrats around 'out now' to oppose those defending the war from either party. If that constitutes 'subordination to Dems' in your book I plead guilty, but it's rather silly. We need alliances with more of them, and to grow the Out of Iraq caucus, not shrink it--and to push them to better positions as well. Same goes for GOP critics of the war, of which there will be more before this is over.
If you want to get rid of the two party system, first, organize independent nonpartisan grassroots groups with an electoral capacity as well as a direct action capacity. Without that, it's all idle cafe chatter, because you have nothing in the way of organization to do electoral politics WITH. Second, reform the elections laws to look more like New York's or San Francisco, allowing fusion and IRV for starters.
A key task of revolutionaries is to know what time it is and how to count.
The first question is whether we have revolutionary or nonrevolutionary conditions at hand, because they require different sets of strategy and tactics, at least if you're serious about these things. And being able to count helps you make an accurate assessment of what ordinary working-class people and youth think about thing, and the trends among them. What the left thinks is important, but what the masses, especially those beyond the left, think is even more important.
So yes, I'm now based in this neck of the woods, at least for a chunk of the year, and have deep roots here. And just as in Chicago, I'll do my best to raise the level of debate above shit talking, and project a point of view that Indymedia folks would do well to consider, because it hardly belongs to me alone.
What happened to the first comment?
by Sam
Monday, Nov. 26, 2007 at 10:01 PM
The one about sloganeering or some such? I didn't get to read it. Where did it go?
Hey Carl
by manny davis
Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 at 3:13 AM
These people who are attacking you don't have a clue on how to build consensus and find common ground. They are the "radical activists" who are just bored white kids who want to disrupt shit and find fault with anything they don't understand. I don't agree with you on much, but admire your drive.
Bored kids...
by Carl Davidson
Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 at 3:38 AM
carld717@aol.com
Thanks, Manny.
But I was an alienated 'white kid' who called himself an anarchist 40 years back, when I wasn't too far away from being a Beaver County greaser in a gang jacket.
There's some sense the the quip that the difference between an anarchist and a socialist is about 20 years.
But the radicalizing youth are critical to the revolutionary process, whatever their class roots and whatever they think at any given moment.
Which is one reason I engage them, and try to learn a few new things as well. I don't jump into their organizations, like some nostalgia freaks do. I've got my own to build. But I do challenge them, along with everyone else, when I think it makes sense to do so, like in this debate on how to stop this damnable war.
Thanks Carl for your answer
by manny davis
Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007 at 1:02 AM
I agree that the youth are the key to any social change in any nation. But to think that the "war" can just be abandoned is not an option, in my opinion. Do you think that we are in a war for our very existence? I do, and I also think that America as I have known it and loved it for almost 60 years is in danger of being destroyed. Not by military force, but from within. I believe that the anti war movement is aligned with the socialists and communists who have been slowly destroying America for many, many, years. Their ultimate goal is to destroy what America is. Is that what you stand for? Thanks in advance for your answer.
What is America?
by Carl Davidson
Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007 at 5:15 AM
carld717@aol.com
Destroy 'what America is,' Manny?
Which one? The America of Empire, or the America of Popular Democracy?
I've worked all my life to oppose the former and defend the latter.
When I was 22, I went to Mississippi, hooked up with SNCC and the Deacons for Defense, and marched 250 miles to prove Black men and women could carry a sign along a highway and register to vote, after James Meredith was shot. Since the Democrats had an all-white party there, I backed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Which one was the true America? It's more complex than you might think.
Years later, one of my high school teachers asked me what led me, a Beaver County hillbilly greaser kid, to do such a thing. 'You did,' I explained. 'Every morning for 12 years you had us place our hands on our hearts and say '...and liberty, and justice, for all.'' What they didn't realize is that some of us took it seriously, and did what was called 'UnAmerican' at the time--we crossed the color line.
That's how I got started. I also stood with the 5000 Vietnam Vets who threw their medals back at Congress to make the point that they pledged to defend the constitution, not wars for empire and oil.
So yes, I'm a communist, but as American as Apple pie. I'm also a Woody Guthrie patriot who believes in defending the country against fascists and theocrats. Google my name and terrorism and you'll find a long piece I wrote a month after 9/11 on the popular and democratic way to deal with criminals like bin Laden, the opposite of Bush's disaster, that I took a lot of heat for, but it holds up pretty well. I've got at least five great grandfathers who fought in the American Revolution, two great uncles who signed the Declaration of Independence, and dozens of relatives who spilled their blood against the slaveocracy--and all of my clan are blue collar, not blue bloods.
I know very deeply what the Founders stood for, at least those who opposed slavery. They were libertarians, for the most part, and would turn over in their graves at what the right wing demogogues try to pass off as 'Americanism' these days.
My Marxism goes back to Marx's buddy, Wedemeyer, a General in the Civil War, to DeLeon, Debs and Big Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and William Z Foster--all Americans. But I'm connected to the Irish patriots, too, and when I met with the Vietnamese in the 1960s and 1970s, I was awed by their humanity and courage in the face of the America of Empire, and their willingness to see there was another America, too.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. If you really want to defend this country, ask yourself, very deeply, what are its best values that you really want to uphold, and then do what precious few sunshine patriots do: actually read and study the Documents of the Founders, and meditate on their revolutionary core, and what it might mean today.
I'll tell you the first thing on the list, right at the top. End this outrage of an unjust war, against both our class interests, our interests as an American people, and our common human decency we share with everyone on the globe.
Make the Election All About the War
by Carl Davidson
Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007 at 5:39 AM
carld717@aol.com Raccoon Twp
[Here's an installment from my blog that may be of interest for continuing this discussion.]
I think it's good that United for Peace & Justice is stressing engagement in the 2008 electoral process and working with resistance to the military and recruitment, as well as an ongoing support for mass and direct action.
Many people, however, are perplexed and even discouraged. Some say the Democratic leadership has wimped out, so lobbying or working the electoral arena is 'useless' and 'doesn't work.' Others say we've had one mass mobilization after another, the war goes on, and thus demonstrations 'don't work' either.
But it's just one-sided and wrong to start off saying none of our tactics are working much, and the conditions are too difficult to accomplish much anyway.
No single tactic or protest 'works.' We fight, we fail, we fight again, fail again, fight again, over and over, until we win--and we will. We have a just cause, and if we do our work steadfastly and well, it will prevail.
That's because what does work is the accumulative effect of all our activities, over time and in combination. We are waging a 'war of position' where, step-by-step, we capture institutions and gather strength. In doing so, we are laying the groundwork for a 'war of manuever', a time when people in their millions erupt decisively and bring the war to a halt.
And don't kid yourself for a moment that we're not listened too or taken note of by the powers that be. They may strike a pose that they don't, but take my word for it: they probably pay more attention to our activities, and take us more seriously, than we do ourselves.
Here's how I'd frame it:
This war ends when three things happen.
The streets are filled and ungovernable, the soldiers and officers won't fight and youth targeted for recruitment won't join up, and when a Democratic Congress cuts off the money.
Now think backwards in time, and then lay the foundations in strategy and tactics on how to get from here to there.
Here's another point I'd stress: How do you measure success in any given battle?
Certainly not by whether the war ends because of it, for the simple reason that no single battle is going to end the war.
You measure success by whether or not you are better organized and have more fighting capacity after the battle than you did before you engaged your adversary. Conversely, is your adversary more isolated, divided and thus weaker than before?
So when we do any of these things--filling the streets, counter-recruitment and GI support, and electing people who will cut off the money and/or defeating those who won't--the main focus is best put on how we build OUR organizational strength. Not only whether we can reach out more broadly and pull more new forces into our camp, but also whether we considate our gains and deepen our abilities with new skills and resources.
We are fairly skilled at filling the streets. We are catching up on our work with soldiers and military families. But we are relatively weak on our electoral skills.
So that's what I'm going to focus on here now--not because it's the most important thing for this year--it may or may not be--but because it's where we're weakest, relatively speaking.
It's also important to note that large numbers of the antiwar majority in the country, millions of them, are not activists and are not yet ready to take to the streets. But that doesn't mean they won't do anything. They often will take up other forms of protest. For instance, in Chicago in 2006, 800,000 cast a ballot for 'Out Now', but no more than 25,000 all told have taken part in street actions that were primarily against the war in Iraq.
We can't just lead antiwar activists; we have to develop forms of engagement for non-activist antiwar people as well, especially if we want the ranks of the activists to grow.
To start, we have a major obstacle to overcome. We have been corrupted by decades of ultraleftism toward the electoral process. Because we have a dollarocracy with rotten choices, some people think they have the luxury of avoiding this arena, except, perhaps, at the last moment when on Election Day, when they'll tail after the most liberal option and cast a ballot.
That's EXACTLY what the Democratic Party bigwigs want us to do, and it's exactly wrong.
We have the electoral system history has placed in front of us, not one we'd like to have. But that doesn't mean it can't be structurally reformed. Even if it isn't reformed soon enough, this is still where one of the major battles is, and if you want to wage struggle on that front, you better do it there, and you better build something of your own to do struggle WITH. Otherwise, you might as well go fishing or let the Democratic Leadership Council types eat you for lunch.
How do we do it?
Step One. Start where you are, with our actually existing neighborhood-based, school-based or workplace-based peace and justice groups. If you're not rooted in this way, then step zero-to-one is to form such a group, because without one, your electoral activity is so much cafe chatter.
Step Two. Take stock of the electoral capacity of your group. How many of you have worked an election before? How many of you are deputy registrars or certified poll watchers and election judges? How many of you know where YOUR PRECINCT stands on the war--for, against, and undecided--AND THE VOTERS NAMES AND WHERE THEY LIVE? Most of you probably score low here, which is the point I'm trying to make. Step Two's task is to bring almost everyone in your group up to speed on these skills; mainly by having those who know how to do it train the rest while you're doing the work.
Step Three. Build your lists. You need a list of every registered voter, you then need to survey and "ID" them of where they stand on the war. You need to know where the unregistered voters most favorable to us are, then register them, in the thousands, expanding the electorate in our direction. You need lists of supporters, lists of donors, lists of election activists, or who might become active. These lists and skills then belong to YOU, not the Democrats or any other party or candidate. In my book, the true Leninists, in non-revolutionary times or otherwise, are those who get and grow the lists.
Step Four. At this point, you have something to begin intervening in election campaigns WITH. You have a means to put referendums and initiatives on the ballot, and the means to bring your own voters, especially new ones, out to the polls to vote on these measures. It also means political candidates now have a reason the pay attention to you in a more significant way. Having an important popular and moral message is not enough. Politicians, for the most part, pay more attention to messages that have money or organized voters behind them. Since our money is not that significant, we make it up with voters. When you do so, you begin to amass what's called 'clout,' and the means to deploy it.
Step Five. Who are your friend and allies? We don't win on our issues by ourselves. As Jesse Jackson puts it, we are only one patch in quilt, one stripe in the rainbow. We have to find others, who may have other priorities, but still agree with us on the war, to form a wide nonpartisan alliance, rooted with similar forces at the base, that can focus even more 'clout' into the election season and beyond.
Step Six. With these previous steps in motion, we have much more ability to bring the war into all the campaigns of the two major parties. I would certainly make the presidential campaigns a priority, if for no other reason than that's where the public attention is. We can compel candidates or their spokespeople to address our issue, and to a degree, establish an antiwar pole--candidates' night debates, candidates' score cards, and nonpartisan public forums of various sorts--a pole that has some clout behind it, that can't be easily dismissed. Its nonpartisan nature means ALL candidates claiming to be critical of the war have to pay attention to it, precisely because they don't have it in their hip pocket. In fact, the day you declare yourself for this or that candidate is the day your clout gets severely reduced.
We need to pay attention to Congressional and other races as well, demanding of all candidates that if they won't serve the antiwar majority, then who will? Because if they don't, we'll find someone else to do the job, if not in this round, then the next.
Some of the Democratic strategists like to think we can be ignored because we have nowhere else to go. They couldn't be more wrong, since we can go Green or we can go fishing, and, if we're well organized, we have a measure of how many votes they can lose in the process. As a nonpartisan alliance with our own organizations, our own lists and resources, we can't be put in anyone's back pocket or be taken for granted. They do so at their peril.
Finally, there's very little I've mentioned above that a 501C3 can't do. If you don't agree, then set up a C4 or just an ordinary nonprofit with no tax exemption, to get the job done. In Chicago in 2004, we called our group 'Peace and Justice Voters 2004', and it served us very well, then and for years afterwards, including our ability to put the war itself on the ballot in Illinois, and many other matters.
At the end of this 2008 cycle, whatever happens directly around the war, we will come out of it much stronger, much more politically astute, and with much more enhanced grassroots popular power. Apart from ending the war itself, that's how I would measure success, and to achieve it, we need to set aside all the old ultraleft, semi-anarchist caveats about elections in this country--if you think they're bad now, wait until you get in the thick of them. I won't prettify them, but let's get on with it. It's a challenge, but it's a critical dimension of politics in non-revolutionary times, and it doesn't matter whether you like the task or not. It simply has to be done; there's no getting around it.
Jurassic Park Revisited.
by Shatov
Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2007 at 10:06 AM
With apologies to Phil Ochs.
'Sure, once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to anarchist meetings
Learned all the old Wobbly hymns
Ah, but I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal '
In Davidson's case, the difference between a former Maoist and an liberal opportunist isn't twenty years ( acutally more like thirty) it's a grant.
Welcome to Pittsburgh Indymedia, Carl.
Liberalism? What a hoot...
by Carl Davidson
Saturday, Dec. 22, 2007 at 3:35 AM
carld717@aol.com
A grant? Wish I had one, I'm surviving on social security, and selling my own skills on the side. No, I've worked for a living all my life, in the real world, and any 'grants' obtained by groups I worked with, well, let's just say that when it got to be my turn to get paid, very little, if anything, was left.
The last grant I had was working with ex-offenders, just out of prison, teaching them to salvage and rebuild computers, get some tech certifications, so they could made a living or get into school, or both, rather than wind up back in the slammer. If that's liberalism, I plead guilty. I think I made about $10 an hour on that one, once all the bills were paid.
Likewise for my electoral projects, which call for grassroots groups to build their own capacity, so they can work the polls on their own, build their own strength, in a nonpartisan fashion, so they don't have to tail behind the Dems, and begin to accumulate the means to project their own program and candidates, in nonpartisan alliances.
In nonrevolutionary conditions, you can run up a red or black flag, and see who salutes. Or you can think a little about what actually enables you to engage people on their terms, and develop radical projects, organization and fighting capacity. If you think that's liberal, then I also plead guilty. What's more I can point to quite a few projects where I've worked with liked-minded people to produce some results that I'll match with you any day of the week.
In fact, I was thinking of doing a workshop for the upcoming skill sharing sessions, something like 'Working in Elections for Serious Radicals.' Think I'd have any takers?
Obama and the primaries
by Carl Davidson
Wednesday, Jan. 09, 2008 at 1:06 PM
carld717@aol.com
The most important thing about the primaries so far is the vast expansion of turnout. For those urging that we stay away from the electoral arena, it's something to ponder, since a good number of 'changer seekers' aren't paying attention to your advice, if they heard it at all.
A large number of young people, who oppose the war for the most part, are entering the world of political activism through the form of working for Obama. And most of them did it without consulting me, you or anyone else. And not only Obama. Some do it through Edwards, Richardson and Kucinich, too, as I'm sure you know well.
I'm suggesting that we need to make common cause with all of it critical of the war, not just the left wing--but not by jumping on the Obama bandwagon.
How? Peace and Justice groups can go door to door, register voters, identify the antiwar voters, and get them to the polls, to vote on a local resolution to cut off funds, and keep all the lists, resources and skills to ourselves, not giving anything to the Dems, and not endorsing anyone. Call it independent party-building if you like. But since none of us can do everything, there a dozen ways to work out an alliance with youth for Obama, Kucinich people, and so on, to do the work, alliances that will last longer than the election, whatever its outcome, if they're done well.
My point is that a large portion of the antiwar majority in the country goes to the polls and votes, for whomever. For instance, in Chicago, we put 'Out Now' on the ballot in 2006, and won 81-to-19, with 800,000 votes. On the other hand, we never had more than 25,000 on the streets, all actions combined. The antiwar majority, including the new and dynamic Obama youth, is comprised on many more than those who hit the streets, by a factor of 5 or 10.
We have to find ways to work with these people, to unite with them as best as we can, and to find common forms of action. If you want to lead an antiwar movement, you have to have an approach to all of it, not just those willing, now, to hit the streets. These are the masses of ordinary people. We can't end the war without them, no matter who they vote for or what candidates they like.
The election will be over in November, but I doubt if the war will be over. In brief, to stop this war, we have to form alliance with people, not necessarily candidates, to the right of us politically. If you disagree, and think we can do it without them, I'd like to see you make your case.
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