-----Original Message-----
From: Macdonald Stainsby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Rad Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Leninist International
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> [In an Indymedia post, Rick Giombetti wrote:]
> ... Holding an anti-war rally on S29
>would be a bold and potentially hazardous action. Such a
>demonstration could be met with both police and counter-demonstrator
>violence.
>
>However, with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming the ACLU,
>People for the American Way, gays, lesbians, atheists, pagans,
>feminists and abortion doctors for the terror attacks and pogroms
>against Arabs and/or Muslims underway, now is not the time to back
>down from defending the Bill of Rights. There is no better time to
>stand up for principles than when they are deeply unpopular. If
>anti-Vietnam war protesters had postponed demonstrations until it was
>convenient and safe to hold them, then that movement would have never
>gotten off the ground. Also, and most importantly, by not pulling out
>of a planned and already permitted demonstration, the IAC will force
>the government to try to cancel it. This way an organization like the
>ACLU can make an issue out of the demonstration being canceled in
>court. [...]
While (of course) I entirely agree with Rick's major point (which is that
cancelling demonstrations is not a good thing and does not advance the
struggle), and will be working to build the September 29 demonstration
myself, I do think that, as things look now, the above sentences overstate
the physical difficulties of demonstrating in DC on September 29. I
personally don't expect physical violence against the action, or that the
government will try to ban it.
There are always risks and difficulties, and in fact there has been police
violence against demonstrations in the recent past, as we well know. But my
personal feeling is that there is not so much war hysteria yet that that
would be in accord with state policy.
Of course the state is having its own demonstrations and war rallies, which
it calls memorial services. (By the way this gives the answer to the people
who say that events like the Mexican Independence Parade are being cancelled
because of security concerns. Nobody was particularly afraid of attacks on
these 'services', you notice. No, of course it's all political.)
Attendance at a 'memorial service' yesterday in Chicago was semi-compulsory
for people on my job. Probably a hundred thousand people at least were
packed into the streets around Daley Plaza for a 'service' which was notably
lacking in sound equipment, so nobody from my firm was able to hear anything
except some distant singing and eventually everyone near where I was turned
around and left in mild disgust. It was not a very frenzied or pro-war
crowd. There were some flags, but not many. Some people started chanting
'U - S - A' at one point but they didn't keep it up for more than 30 seconds
and not many joined in.
While there are, of course, groups of racists and 'super-patriots'
organizing and carrying out their own actions, it seems to me that most U.S.
workers in most places think they are jerks, and the state has distanced
itself from them. My take on the 'mood of the workers' at the moment is
that they are thinking very hard about things. They want to help the
victims, and they are giving blood and money to do it. After that, they
would really like to find out 'who did it', and 'get' the ones who did it
somehow, and stop 'them' from doing it again. But among the majority there
is really not much frenzied sentiment for going out and killing large
numbers of people, or for overt racism at all. If someone had started
shouting anti-Arab crap at the 'service' yesterday, I honestly think people
would have physically stopped him. Most people are seriously just not in
the mood for that.
To be honest, I have to say that personally I am rather proud of the way my
co-workers and indeed the vast majority of the workers in the US have
behaved this week. They are trying to help people, they are grieving for
their losses, and it's true that they haven't been taught about the real
nature of US imperialism, but even so they are not getting carried away by
violent revenge fantasies, racism, etc. Some are, of course, but not most.
The workers are very thoughtful about the upcoming war. They think that
'something has to be done', but the state still has to prove to them that
the plan they have in mind is the 'something' that is really needed. And as
long as this is the case, I think the state is going to move cautiously.
They want to be viewed as the representative of the masses' outrage, not as
someone who is opportunistically whipping up a war frenzy. They want to be
seen as defending democracy, not trampling on democracy.
However, I think it's also true that a lot of people aren't in the mood for
strident anti-imperialism now. When I sent out the initial IAC statement to
our e-mail list, I got one very upset response from a woman who wrote "I
supported you in the past, but now you show that you are just as evil as the
right wing, taking advantage of this tragedy for your own ends." Of course
she might have lost someone in NY or DC. It's entirely possible. Of every
100 people on our mailing list in Chicago, what percentage do you suppose
know someone personally who died horribly in the attacks? 2? 5? I'm not
sure. Of course in New York the proportion must be much higher.
I think that that's really what the liberal organizations are thinking about
and what they're reacting to. I don't think they're afraid of being beaten
up or shot etc. I think they're reflecting a mood of large numbers of
people which is a really honest mood, which is that they really don't want
to 'do politics' right now and want to be alone or with their loved ones and
grieve. All week we have watched people getting killed before our eyes in a
horrible cataclysm, over and over again, and have been mentally putting
ourselves in the place of people calling on cell phones from doomed planes,
or from the 106th floor of the Trade Center; or jumping to their deaths; or
hanging outside the windows on the top floors and feeling the building begin
to collapse underneath them. We could all really use some time to recover.
I feel that way myself personally to be very honest, and I really have to
remind myself that I can't do that now because I'm a communist and because
the right wing isn't sitting at home grieving, they really are "channeling
their grief into action" by organizing racist actions and beating the war
drums.
So we have to go ahead, but I honestly think that whatever we do we have to
be very sensitive to the moods of the working class. I don't mean that we
shouldn't mobilize against the war. We must. But we have to do it in a way
which is sensitive to how the workers are really feeling, and not be
strident, or contemptuous, or 'rhetorical' etc. We shouldn't just
automatically hand out the same kind of antiwar leaflet, worded the same
way, that we were writing a week ago. On the other hand, at least everyone
is paying attention to the issue now. Psychologically, people want very
much to believe that Bush is 'doing the right thing', because if he's not,
the situation is pretty horrible. Well, it is pretty horrible, and we have
to say so, and I think they are giving us the ammunition to do it, but we
have to be sensitive about breaking this horrible news to people. It's sort
of like asking someone whose loved one has just died in some unpredictable
tragedy to donate the organs. It has to be done, but it has to be done with
empathy.
Just my personal take on it,
Lou Paulsen
member, Workers World Party, Chicago
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