BUSH, CONGRESS SAY YES
People say NO war
Protesters encircle White House, flood streets of S.F.
By Deirdre Griswold
Washington, D.C.
What a difference a day makes.
After the massive Oct. 26 anti-war march, in which the broad
avenues surrounding the White House were packed solid with
demonstrators, there can no longer be a shred of doubt about
it: grassroots sentiment in the U.S. is opposed to the Bush
administrationplans for a "pre-emptive" war on Iraq.
On the same day, a huge demonstration in San Francisco
showed that anti-war sentiment is just as strong on the West
Coast. There were also demonstrations in major cities around
the world. (See accompanying articles.)
People came to D.C., the heart of the federal government,
from every state in the U.S. The International ANSWER
coalition, which initiated the call for the protest, reported
150 organizing centers around the country. Hundreds of
chartered buses caused gridlock in the White House area. Tens
of thousands also streamed into the city by car, van, plane and
train.
Two weeks of media focus on the sniper killings in the
Washington suburbs and heavy rain that ended the morning of the
demonstration may have cut down the numbers somewhat, but
nobody noticed; it was one of the largest protests against war
since the Vietnam era. It was remarkable in that today there is
no draft, as there was then, and the all-out war Bush is
promising has not yet started.
Pacifica Radio and organizers put the numbers at 200,000.
The Washington Post reported over 100,000. It based that figure
on the Washington police, who said the crowd was significantly
larger than the April 20 demonstration in support of Palestine.
Police had estimated that earlier event at 75,000.
The march followed a two-mile rectangular route around the
White House. On its return to the rally site at the Vietnam
Veterans' Memorial, the head of the march had to stop at
Constitution Avenue and 17th Street where the tail was still
marching out. All the broad streets and avenues around the
presidential residence were packed with protesters.
The crowd was generally very young, but included thousands
of veterans of earlier wars and anti-war movements. The largest
component was students, who came in buses from all over the
East, Midwest, South and as far away as Texas. However,
unionists with their banners were present in larger numbers
than during the Vietnam protests.
The drill team of the International Longshore Workers Union
flew in from the West Coast to lead the march. These dock
workers are in a struggle with both the bosses and the Bush
administration, which has invoked the Taft-Hartley law and
"national security"to force them to work under unsafe
conditions without a contract.
Rally hits war, poverty, repression
Speakers representing a broad spectrum of progressive social
and political forces attacked the policies of the Bush
administration at a three-hour rally before the march. The
rally was televised live by C-SPAN and also broadcast by
Pacifica Radio.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the ANSWER steering committee
opened the rally and introduced her three co-chairs: Mahdi
Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom
Foundation; Michel Shehadeh of the Free Palestine Alliance, and
Larry Holmes of the International Action Center. Shehadeh and
Holmes are also ANSWER steering committee members.
A major theme of the speakers and of the many placards and
banners carried by demonstrators was "No blood for oil."
Hand-made signs caricatured President George W. Bush, Vice
President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
as prime architects of a war for oil profits.
The economic impact of the war on jobs and social services
at home was another main concern, as was the wave of repression
that has accompanied war preparations.
Veterans of the Gulf War, the Vietnam War, the Korean War
and World War II all rejected Bush's plans for a new assault in
the Middle East, pointing to the nearby memorial that lists the
names of the more than 50,000 GIs killed in Vietnam.
Demonstrators had also erected a memorial to the Iraqi children
killed by sanctions over the last decade.
A high point of the rally was an impassioned talk by Ramsey
Clark, founder of the International Action Center and a former
head of the Justice Department, who has increasingly become an
opponent of U.S. government actions and policies around the
globe. Pointing to the nearby memorial site, he said that the
"only decent respect for the Vietnam dead is to stop all U.S.
wars. No more war memorials!"
Clark didn't let the civilian authorities of the U.S. off
the hook for their sanctions on Iraq, either. "Some 1.5 million
have been killed by the genocidal sanctions," he said. "These
are criminal offenses, indictable and impeachable offenses."
Clark at one time occupied the Cabinet position of U.S.
attorney general, held today by John Ashcroft, and speaks with
authority on legal matters.
Ramsey Clark: 'This is a plutocracy'
He called on this growing movement to "liberate this country
from militarism and from corporate rule. This is not a
democracy; this is a plutocracy. Let's liberate the USA. Let's
work productively and reach out in friendship to everyone in
the world."
Clark's broad-ranging critique of U.S. society evoked loud
cheers and applause from the huge crowd.
The war that Bush plans to launch has already had grave
consequences for Muslims and Arab people in the U.S., and many
organizations representing these communities participated in
the march and rally. They used the platform to acquaint the
public with cases involving illegal detentions, attacks on
mosques, deportations and other egregious assaults on civil
liberties that followed the passage of the "Patriot Act."
Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society said the real
"regime change" needed was in Washington. Minel Omar, a student
and respected activist in the Arab American community, told how
Iraq had used its oil money to provide free education up to the
university level.
City University of New York students were represented by
Zahra Khan, president of the undergraduate student body at
Hunter College. The Student Liberation Action Movement there
organized several buses to the march.
Elias Rashmawi, a Palestinian, rejected the demonization of
Arab people, saying that "Arab people are not a fifth column,
we are part of this community."
What began as police raids on people of Middle East descent
have now extended even to their attorneys. Lynne Stewart, a New
York lawyer now facing charges because of her legal defense of
Arabs, said that was what had happened in Chile after the
Pinochet coup of 1973: "They pick up the lawyers and think they
can defeat the movement."
Stephanie Schaudel, who has visited Iraq with the group
Voices in the Wilderness, ridiculed the idea that Iraq has
weapons that threaten the United States. "The U.S. has the most
weapons of mass destruction," she pointed out.
The African American community is affected by the war drive
in many ways. Civil rights leader Al Sharpton described what
the war budget is taking away from the people and summed up,
"The president puts the interests of big business over human
life."
Congress member Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, who has been
very outspoken about U.S. commercial motives in Africa, warned
that "dangerous changes are taking place daily" in this country
because of the Patriot Act. She decried the huge amounts of
"money spent on the military while poverty affects millions,"
pointing out that one quarter of the homeless in this country
are veterans and many suffer from Gulf War Syndrome.
Jesse Jackson had the crowd with him when he called for
unity of the movement and rejected bigotry of all kinds,
including "homophobia and anti-Semitism." He warned the
audience about "tricks for diversion. Saddam is not coming but
the economy is falling. We must not be diverted" into a war.
But many in the audience visibly disagreed with his
characterization of the 1991 Gulf War as a "necessary war."
The manipulation of the terrorism issue by the government
was addressed by labor speakers, including Michael Letwin of
New York City Labor Against War, a coalition of unionists that
has been organizing ever since the war threats began after the
disaster at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 last year.
Clarence Thomas of the ILWU, fresh from the dock wars on the
West Coast, reflected his militant union when he urged, "No
colonial occupation of Iraq! No war against our civil
liberties! The Maritime Security Act treats port workers like
potential terrorists. Hands off the dock, stay out of
Iraq!"
For a People's Anti-War Congress
The capitulation by the U.S. Congress to Bush's demand for
authorization to launch a war at any time was lambasted by many
speakers and slogans. Some signs praised Sen. Paul Wellstone of
Minnesota, a populist who had voted against the war resolution
and had just been killed in a plane crash, along with his wife
and daughter.
Speakers for the ANSWER coalition urged the crowd to "Vote
no war" in a people's referendum that would expose the
undemocratic character of the Congress. Brian Becker of the
ANSWER steering committee explained how people could go online
at the votenowar.org Web site to register their opposition.
ANSWER expects many millions will take advantage of the Web
site and of paper ballots being circulated so they can make
their opinions felt--opinions that a majority of Congress
completely ignored when they voted for Bush's resolution
despite mail and phone calls running more than 100 to 1 against
it.
Besides this referendum, the coalition plans to build upon
the success of the Oct. 26 demonstrations with a Grassroots
Peace Congress in Washington on the Martin Luther King weekend,
Jan. 18-19. Sara Flounders of the International Action Center
emphasized that this people's congress would represent the
millions who are furious at being disregarded by the
politicians in Washington.
This demonstration gave voice to every movement standing up
to the Bush administration's war drive and repression at home.
U.S. military expansion was challenged by speakers from South
Korea, Vieques in Puerto Rico, and Chuck Kaufman of the
Nicaragua Solidarity Movement and ANSWER steering committee.
Atty. Leonard Weinglass called for solidarity with the Cuban 5,
who are serving life sentences in U.S. prisons because they
monitored the activities of anti-Cuban terrorist groups in
Florida. Academy Award-winning actor Susan Sarandon added
another dimension when she called on people to "resist this war
and our impending oil war in Colombia."
The lesbian, gay, bi and trans movement was represented by
author and editor Leslie Feinberg. Support was voiced for
political prisoners Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and Imam
Jamil Al-Amin. Touching people's hearts as well as their minds
were singer Patti Smith and the Chicago hip-hop group
Primeridian, which opened the rally.
For many at the rally, it may have been their first exposure
to many of these issues. The Bush administration's relentless
march toward war is awakening layers of the population who have
not belonged to any movement. They went back home with the
pledge that they will organize, organize, organize to keep this
movement growing and push back the war machine.
Reprinted from the Nov. 7, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
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