Hi Pen-l,
Well, I was at the Emergency Mobilization to End the War in Yugoslavia held
June 5 in San Francisco and attended by about 5,000 people. Compared with
the WSWS commentary below on the June 5 anti-war demo in Washington, DC
(both sponsored by Ramsey Clark's International Action Center [IAC]), the SF
demo (preceded by a two-mile march up Market St.) was decidedly more focused
on anti-imperialism. Both demos, by the way, received no coverage in The
Sacramento Bee, Northern California's leading daily newspaper.
Speakers in SF included: Gloria La Riva of the IAC, just back from a visit
with Ramsey Clark to Yugoslavia in which she produced a video, "NATO
Targets,"; Michael Parenti, who criticized "liberal" and "progressive"
support for the US/NATO attack that's successfully destroying Yugoslavia's
industry in response to global excess capacity; anti-imperialist polemics
from American men and women of Serbian, African, Anglo, Puerto Rican, Romani
and Greek backgrounds who, in part, connected the US/NATO aggression against
the people of Yugoslavia to the US government attack on the American people
(specifically those of color bearing the brunt of the prison-industrial
complex, police brutality and welfare reform).
A few more observations about the SF demo. Organized labor, historically
pro-imperialist, was noticeably absent from the SF demo.
Also regrettable is the IAC's description as "pro-Serb" by some in the
mainstream peace organizations. Last and all to the good, there were many
young people selling the IAC's book, "NATO in the Balkans." I highly
recommended it to all on Pen-l.
Meanwhile, protests are continuing in Sacramento. An anti-war demo is
planned on Friday, June 11 in front of the Memorial Auditorium on 16th and J
St. from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Seth Sandronsky
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkan
Crisis
Washington march protests NATO
bombing of Yugoslavia
By Martin McLaughlin
9 June 1999
Use this version to print
Several thousand people
marched to the Pentagon last
Saturday to protest the continued
US bombing of Yugoslavia. The
demonstrators assembled near
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
on the Mall in Washington, DC
and marched across Memorial
Bridge to the headquarters of the
US Department of Defense.
The demonstration was called by a number of peace,
anti-war and Serbian-American groups several weeks
ago, but took place one day after the announcement
of the agreement by Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic to bow to NATO's terms for calling off the
bombing. This announcement undoubtedly cut attendance
at the protest, and many of the announced speakers,
including three US congressmen, failed to
show up.
By far the largest attendance was from the
Serbian-American community.
Hundreds wore buttons proclaiming “Proud to be a
Serb,” carried Serbian flags or hand-lettered
placards with slogans in Serbo-Croatian.
Several men wore T-shirts identifying themselves
as Serbian-American veterans of the US military,
and members of a Serbian-American branch of the
American Legion. At least four Serbian-Americans were
among the dozens of speakers who addressed the crowd
either before or after the march.
Mila Lazarevich-Nolan, representing United Serbs
of America, branded the US-NATO military action a
“war of deception, like Vietnam.” She said that
the Clinton administration was seeking to
“dismember a sovereign country in order to
establish an American hegemony in the Balkans.” Its goal
was not peace, but capitulation. Ultimately, she
warned, what remains of Serbia and Yugoslavia would face
“dissolution backed by the full force of military
occupation.”
Another Serbian speaker, playwright Nadia Tasic,
denounced the “US criminal government” and said
its goal was the colonization of the former
Yugoslavia. “Our children will remember America as
invisible monsters who tried to kill them from the
sky,” she said. “We are not an instant culture
like the US. We remember things for centuries. We will
hate America for decades.” She said that the US bombing
had destroyed more of the country's infrastructure in
two months than the Nazis had
destroyed in four years.
The various political groups which co-sponsored
and organized the demonstration, led by Workers
World Party, a pro-Stalinist organization
which supports the Milosevic government and
portrays it as "socialist," made no effort to
present an alternative to the Serb nationalist
perspective of many of those in attendance. Only
one or two speakers referred to the plight of the
Albanian refugees and only one criticized the
policies of Milosevic.
The political confusion which prevailed at the
march was expressed symbolically at the rally
which began it, where one group of Serb veterans
milled about a large Vietnam War-era POW-MIA flag, while
a few steps away a group of radicals set fire to an
American flag. Ten feet from this scene a middle-aged
woman carried a placard for the
presidential campaign of extreme-right-wing
Republican Patrick Buchanan.
The march organizers had agreed to have two
liberal black Democratic congresswomen, Cynthia
McKinney of Georgia and Barbara Lee of California,
and one of the most right-wing Republicans, Ron
Paul of Texas, address the rally. None of them
actually attended or spoke. But one religious pacifist
speaker, Thomas Fleming, hailed the prospect of
uniting left and right against the bombing of
Yugoslavia, which he described as “NATO killing
Christians.”
Taken as a whole, the speeches of the various
radicals who came to the platform demonstrated the
continuing political decay of the organized
middle class “left” in the United States. Not a
single speaker of the half dozen or so from
Workers World and its associated groups sought to
address the audience seriously, examine political
issues carefully, or educate anyone. Not one
identified himself as a socialist, and only one
was introduced as a member of Workers World.
Instead, they posed as representatives of various
identity groups—blacks, women, gays,
Asian-Americans, etc.—and shouted a few demagogic
phrases.
Only one speaker actually examined the historical
issues underlying the war in the Balkans, former
Attorney General Ramsey Clark. He said that
Yugoslavia had been founded on the idea that all
people of southern Slav descent could live
together in peace, and he said that in the period
1945-1989 the region had enjoyed the greatest
peace and prosperity in its history.
He denounced US support for ethnic cleansing
against the Serbs in the Krajina region of
Croatia, citing the recent book by US diplomat
Richard Holbrooke which boasts of the expulsion of the
Krajina Serbs. He said that US and European support for
the breakaway of the constituent
republics of Yugoslavia, combined with the
policies of the International Monetary Fund, had
produced a disaster in the region.
Clark was particularly critical of the 1995 Dayton
Accords in Bosnia, which he said imposed an ethnic
segregation worse than Jim Crow or apartheid,
dividing the country into Serb, Croat and Muslim
enclaves that were completely separated. While the
United States seemed to be determined that the peoples
of the region should not live together, Clark said,
there was no alternative but the establishment of a
new type of federation in the Balkans.
A delegation of members and supporters of the
Socialist Equality Party attended the
demonstration, campaigning with socialist
literature, including a leaflet on the agreement
announced last week in Belgrade. SEP supporters sold
more than 100 copies of a pamphlet version of the
statement on the war issued by the World Socialist
Web Site, “Why is NATO at war with Yugoslavia? World
power, oil & gold."
See Also:
“The American government picks and chooses which
situation to
intervene in for its own economic interest”
Demonstrator at Washington march
[9 June 1999]
Why is NATO at war with Yugoslavia? World power,
oil and gold
Statement of the Editorial Board of the World
Socialist Web Site
[24 May 1999]
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