ANSWER's scenario for Jan. 18 DC protest
Movement grows to stop U.S. war on Iraq
By Heather Cottin
The International ANSWER Coalition announced on Dec. 12 its
latest scenario for the national demonstration against war on
Iraq to take place in Washington, D.C., set for Jan. 18.
On that day, people from across the United States will
converge at the West side of the Capitol Building and then
stage a mass march to the large Washington Navy Yard on the
Anacostia River. ANSWER will demand the immediate elimination
of U.S. weapons of mass destruction. A people's inspection team
will call for unfettered access and a full declaration of U.S.
non-conventional weapons systems.
The participants in this action, like those going to San
Francisco on the West Coast, will be young and old, Black,
Latino, Asian, Muslim and white. Calls and emails to the ANSWER
offices show they are militantly against the expenditure of
trillions for war and angry that the Bush administration is
cutting social programs while threatening small countries with
nuclear weapons and germ warfare. Their numbers are growing
rapidly in rural areas and in the urban regions of the United
States.
Jay is 18 years old and has founded Sachem Student ANSWER in
a New York suburb known for its racist repression of migrant
workers. He is organizing working class youth to go to
Washington on a bus leaving from a park-and-ride on the Long
Island Expressway. He carries VOTENOWAR.org petitions
everywhere, and is selling tickets like hotcakes.
A Howard University student working in the Washington, D.C.,
office of ANSWER is going home for intersession to North
Carolina. She will help organize in her state, which already
has five organizing centers preparing to send buses to the No
War on Iraq march.
In northern Michigan, a group of over 150 key organizers
convened to work statewide to go to the Jan. 18 march; their
keynote speaker was from ANSWER.
A first-year college student in Austin, Tex., has organized
a bus for the march on Washington. An Ohio junior high school
teacher is filling a bus with youth against the war.
Savannah, Ga., hasn't had an antiwar movement before.
Organizers are preparing to send a bus to the ANSWER march in
Washington to commemorate Martin Luther King. In central
Colorado an organizer has convinced 75 people to fly to
Washington on Jan. 18 to march against Bush's war on Iraq.
A Long Island ANSWER organizer visiting his daughter in
Hollywood, Calif., turned a corner on Dec. 14 and found 3,000
people gathering to march against the war. Seeing the ANSWER
placards "was like coming home," he said. Carrying signs,
candles and huge banners calling for "Jobs, not war," the
militant gathering demanded the elimination of "U.S. weapons of
mass destruction." It received a tumultuous response from
passers-by, who honked and waved in solidarity. The protest was
covered on many local television channels, all-news radio and
CNN.
The demonstration was a building action for a mass march and
rally in Los Angeles on Jan. 11 and for the national marches
the following week. The Coalition for World Peace, the
Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, and the
Not In Our Name Project cosponsored the march with ANSWER.
In Jeffersonville, N.Y., activists from Delaware and
Sullivan Counties and Pennsylvania's Wayne County are
organizing a bus to Washington, and invited ANSWER organizers
to come and participate in their activities. They are planning
teach-ins on Civil Liberties and the War, using Peoples Video
Network videos to help with their outreach.
Groups in rural counties along the Hudson River in New York
held 38 peace vigils this month.
In New York City, on Dec. 14, Uptown Youth for Peace and
Justice gathered members of the community, antiwar and youth
groups and marched in force through the streets of Washington
Heights and Harlem. Upwards of 1,000 people turned out to
demonstrate despite cold, wet weather.
Their message was clear: "We demand an end to the Poverty
Draft. We demand an end to the looting of our schools and
communities to fund an unjust war. We demand an end to
continued murder of innocents around the world. We see this as
an important moment in our efforts to bring thousands of
talented, powerful young people from a state of inactive anger
and frustration into collective, focused action."
The first Bedford-Stuyvesant Peace March on Dec. 8 attracted
several hundred Brooklyn residents. Many New York area anti-war
organizers came to a meeting at Brooklyn's House of the Lord
Church on Dec. 15 to organize their neighborhoods to get on
buses from Brooklyn and the New York metropolitan area for the
march on Washington Jan. 18, during the Martin Luther King
birthday weekend.
Marches and vigils are proliferating all over the country.
Students are holding teach-ins at colleges and neighbors are
gathering to protest Bush's war agenda in churches and mosques,
in living rooms and libraries. And everywhere people are buying
tickets to get to Washington or San Francisco to protest the
war.
The InternationalANSWER.org website has recorded hundreds of
thousands of hits as organizers across the country download
fact sheets, organizing tactics and leaflets to build this
massive antiwar movement.
ANSWER has postponed until the spring a proposed People's
Peace Congress after its Steering Committee, weighing feedback
from around the country, decided there would be more effective
organizing and participation if it takes place after the Jan.
18-19 weekend.
However, a youth meeting will convene in D.C. on the day
after the march. For more information, contact the D.C. office
at (202) 332-5757.
Reprinted from the Dec. 26, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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