ON BOTH COASTS
Anti-war coalition mobilizes for June 5
By Greg
Butterfield
Which side are you on?
That question, posed in a famous labor union song, asks
workers to take a side. Are you with your sisters and brothers
on the picket line? Or are you a scab giving backhanded support
to the boss who exploits everyone?
Now take that question and apply it to the U.S./NATO war
against little Yugoslavia.
Which side are you on? That's the urgent issue facing the
progressive and working-class movement today.
On June 5, thousands of people will march from the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial in Washington to the Pentagon to demand
"Money for jobs and education, not for war in Yugoslavia."
Thousands will also march in San Francisco to put a stop to the
criminal U.S./NATO war.
After two months of relentless bombing, thousands of people
have been killed--Serbs, Albanians and other nationalities
alike. NATO bombs have driven tens of thousands from their
homes in the Kosovo region of Serbia and deepened ethnic
antagonisms. Many workers have lost their jobs as factories and
offices are blown to smithereens. Even the Chinese Embassy in
Belgrade was attacked.
The Pentagon is targeting civilians to maximize suffering
and fear.
The imperialists thought their brutal air war would bring a
quick victory. But the Yugoslav people and government continue
to resist with all their might.
And today powerful forces in the U.S. military
establishment--which dominates NATO--want President Bill
Clinton to give the go-ahead for a full-scale invasion.
Every worker, student and progressive person needs to answer
the question "Which side are you on?" by taking a stand with
the heroic Yugoslav people against the imperialist war makers
in Washington.
"The timing of the June 5 national mass march could not be
more urgent," says a call to action from former U.S. Attorney
General Ramsey Clark, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, the Rev. Lucius
Walker and other leaders of the Emergency Mobilization to Stop
the War, the coalition sponsoring the protests.
"Hundreds of thousands of troops may be dispatched in a
bloody rerun of Vietnam," they warned.
Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action
Center, said: "Not only is the U.S./NATO bombing causing the
deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people
throughout Yugoslavia.
"The money spent on missiles, aircraft, bombs--all of it
could have been spent on jobs, education, health care and other
urgent social needs.."
Bus and car caravans to Washington are planned in dozens of
cities and towns. "We have 61 organizing centers in 28 states,"
reported youth organizer Sarah Sloan, "and the list is still
growing."
Sloan told Workers World that more than 1,000 organizations
and individuals representing many communities and political
views have endorsed June 5.
They include death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal; historian
Howard Zinn; Edith Villastrigo, legislative director of Women's
Strike for Peace; author Barbara Smith; the Rev. Djokan
Majstorovic, Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava in New
York; former political prisoner Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt); the
Rev. John Dear, executive director of Fellowship of
Reconciliation; transgender author and activist Leslie
Feinberg; United Serbs of America; MADRE; Johann Chris toph
Arnold, Bruder hof Community; author Michael Parenti; and
Workers World editor Deirdre Griswold.
A complete list of June 5 organizing centers and other
resources can be found on the Internet at www.iacenter.org.
Call (212) 633-6646 for bus information to Washington. For San
Francisco, call (415) 821-6545.
A critical time
"The anti-war movement finds itself in a pivotal position,"
wrote the IAC's Brian Becker in a May 18 message to the
anti-war movement.
Becker explained: "The ruling classes in various imperialist
NATO countries are divided about the war effort. Of course,
they are all equally culpable for the criminal bombing. But
some are fearful that the war drive will backfire.
"Moreover, the imperialist allies in NATO are also rivals.
Each wants to dominate its own sphere. Germany and the U.S.,
the two most powerful imperialists in NATO, have deeper
antagonisms over the domination of Europe generally.
"The same inter-imperialist rivalries that led earlier to
World War I and World War II are re-emerging in the wake of the
collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc in Eastern
Europe.
"Classically, it is in this environment of deep divisions
within the ruling class that a popular movement can achieve a
decisive influence," Becker said. "The broad mobilization of a
conscious and angry anti-war movement can become a major factor
in the outcome of this struggle."
The June 5 protests will be an important opportunity to
gauge the depth of opposition to the war. They will also show
the world that the movement in the United States to end the
bombing is growing.
Most significantly, the Emergency Mobilization to Stop the
War is putting forward clear anti-imperialist demands to the
movement at a moment when many progressive people are confused
and some groups are making a political accommodation with
Washington.
`Get U.S. and NATO out'
Not only is NATO divided over how to proceed. So is the
anti-war movement.
That's not unusual. It's happened in every war crisis from
World War I through the Gulf War. The social roots of this
phenomenon must be understood in order to fight for the
broadest possible unity of those who genuinely oppose NATO's
war.
At this time, the Emergency Mobilization to Stop the War
represents those forces that are thoroughly committed to
stopping the war and getting the U.S. and NATO out of the
Balkans. The coalition has put forward two demands that have
united a broad spectrum of groups: "Stop bombing Yugoslavia"
and "Money for jobs and education, not war."
The Emergency Mobilization lays the blame where it
belongs--on the doorstep of the U.S. and other NATO powers that
are scrambling to carve up what's left of Yugoslavia.
This anti-imperialist perspective is not shared by the whole
movement.
Some well-established peace groups, for example, have jumped
half-way onto Washington's bandwagon. They've joined in the
demonization campaign against Yugoslavia's leaders. They demand
big concessions from Belgrade and push proposals for a
"negotiated settlement" that would compromise Yugoslavia's
independence.
In a similar vein, some groups that call themselves Marxists
or socialists have fallen into the trap of championing the
so-called Kosovo Liberation Army--a mercenary group that serves
as NATO's fifth column in the Yugoslav republic of Serbia.
These are the reformists--half-way opponents of the war.
And there are some who consider themselves on the left but
who have abandoned the anti-war movement altogether and taken
up the imperialists' war cry against Belgrade.
These are the "social-imperialists"--progressive in words,
imperialist in deeds.
It comes down to unwillingness to break with the imperialist
bourgeoisie and its rapacious system of exploitation, which
relies on racism at home and intervention abroad in its
insatiable drive for super-profits.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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