Now a New Yorker, David McReynolds
was a UCLA student and local activist in the late 50s and
one of the first draft card burners.
When I got home at midnight Saturday from Washington I
was dead tired – as were tens of thousands of others
across they country. To catch the 6 a.m. bus from the
War Resisters League office in lower Manhattan I had
skipped sleep Friday night. But I had enough energy
left when I got home that I almost typed this up last
night. Almost . . .but not quite. I fell asleep with
good intentions. So let me get this off this Sunday
afternoon.
By now you know what we didn’t know in DC, since it
was almost impossible to make a crowd estimate “on the
ground” – except that the demonstration was very
large, much larger than we had expected or dared to
hope for. (Some of the organizers privately feared we
wouldn’t get as many as 10,000 – the Washington Post
has estimated 75,000).
We were lucky in the weather. I’d brought an umbrella,
thunderstorms having been promised. But all that
materialized, late in the march, was a smattering of
rain, which ended long before the march did.
First – hello to the many people I met whom I knew
personally over decades of marching to DC. It felt
like old home week. (Or old peoples’ home week. A long
time ago a kid named Seth Foldy from Ohio had first
made contact with the War Resisters League and gotten
active. Seth’s mother was there yesterday, along with
Seth’s son, older than Seth had been when I first met
him. Seth has gone on to work for the city of
Milwaukee). Venerables present included George Houser,
Ralph DiGia and a host of others too numerous to name
(or remember), reminding us that the current youth
movement of protest and affirmation had “healthy
parents” of men who served prison terms in World War
II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, fought
McCarthyism in the 1950’s, and worked against Jim Crow
and racism before most of the Saturday marchers were
born.
But what was important was not the gathering of the
old clan, but the gathering of a new clan. Youth. In
their thousands. War Resisters League had gotten two
busloads down from New York (on one of which was Jason
Schulman of DSA and a young woman friend of his from
Boston – good to see some of DSA active). The
Socialist Party folks were scattered through the crowd
but tried to gather under the SP banner – gathering
anyone was very hard!! I saw SP members from New York,
New Jersey, Michigan, Texas, Kansas, North Carolina,
Massachusetts, and thanks to Greg Pason, the SP
National Secretary, they did, from time to time rally
around the red banner.
Other groups with which we work – Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism,
Solidarity, etc. – were also present and had put in
hard work on building the rally. However the largest
political contingent was the Green Party – several
hundred folks with their banners. In their numbers
they dwarfed all the little sectlets with the usual
leaflets trying to simplify the problems of the world
in a few weary slogans.
This afternoon I saw a press release from ANSWER,
largely run by Workers World (a key giveway was that
the statement’s main quote was from Larry Holmes, a
long time activist and leader in WW, as “co-director
of the International Action Center”). I mention the
ANSWER release because it failed to begin to do
justice to the demonstration. Under the headline
“100,000 March For Palestine”, it went on to speak of
the demonstration as being primarily a pro-Palestine,
anti-Israel demonstration.
This misrepresents what this demonstration meant. And
if I discuss this bluntly, it was because Workers
World, for all their enormously hard work, continues
to be a problem for the broader movement because they
are so determined to control or dominate a mass
movement. When the April 20th rally was first called
– months ago – the Middle East had not exploded. The
original organizers were students, their demands were
rather vague. Later, Workers World set their own date
for April 27th (focused then mainly on Afghanistan,
not Palestine) but when they saw their support weak
and most people opposed to two rallies a week apart,
they changed their date for the 20th – so in some ways
there were two rallies on the same day.
By April 20th the Middle East had indeed take over as
the most immediate problem. It wasn’t that Afghanistan
was forgotten, the danger of war with Iraq ignored,
the danger of a police state (The Patriot Act)
avoided. Given the horrors of Jenin, Palestine leaped
to the head of the list of demands.
Yes, the Muslim community was there in a way I had
never seen before. Thousands and thousands and
thousands of Muslims, most young, (but some very old,
helped through the long march by younger people).
Mothers with their babies in carriages. The PLO flag
was everywhere. On the way back, when our buses
stopped for food, the Muslim men took time for their
prayers to Mecca.
No one should for an instant underrate the importance
of the Muslim participation. But for Workers World to
term the rally only, or primarily a pro-Palestinian
event, is to discredit the power of so massive a rally
in protest against Bush and his backers.
This was the first loud, clear voice from a nation
which had been told by the media that there was no
protest. In the words of Cokie Roberts, one of those
air-headed talking heads, if there were any protests
against the war in Afghanistan they were not
important, not from “anyone one who counted”. But
yesterday even she could have counted. And we DO
count.
For the supporters of Israel it was a warning shot
that they have lost the American Left, lock, stock and
barrel. And that includes losing a great many American
Jews who were there at the protest and had helped
organize it. The issue of Jenin isn’t one of Jews
against Muslims. It is one of Sharon against the
world, against the United Nations, against a very
large number of American Jews and against a great many
Israelis.
There were moments surreal, as when early in the march
a small group of orthodox rabbis, with their fur hats
and long coats, were led through our march by escorts.
No problem, no shouts. and no idea where the rabbis
had come from or where they were going, except that,
being the Sabbath, they had to go there on foot. And
there were moments of utter frustration, as when I
found I had not brought down any extra rolls of film
as I had thought and had to hunt down a supply from a
street vender.
Some of those from the more traditional peace movement
talked to me of their disappointment that some issues
seem to have vanished – Afghanistan was barely
mentioned. But this misses the point – and one can be
sure that Congress and the White House will not miss
it. I doubt if one person in that whole vast mass of
people supported Bush’s illegal actions against
Afghanistan, or bought into the rhetoric of his “war
on terror”, a war which has become a terror in itself,
reminding us that war and terrorism are intimately
linked and often, as in the Middle East, become one
and the same thing.
What was important, in my view as an old veteran at
these events, was that where the media had assumed
silence, the world now saw public dissent – in far
greater numbers than even we had hoped for. (It got
excellent coverage on the BBC). For the “internal
movement” it was noteworthy that Workers World had
their bluff called, was forced to cancel their
original demonstration date, and MAY (though I am
skeptical) be prepared to work more honestly with the
broad range of peace and justice groups. The loose
coalition of peace and justice groups, from the Black
Radical Congress to the War Resisters League, from the
American Friends Service Committee to Peace Action,
from the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy
and Socialism to the Greens, have shown that they can
pull off a national demonstration and provide
leadership.
The problems of such a coalition are enormous – it is
vastly easier for a group such as Workers World, a
very small Marxist/Leninist formation with strong
central leadership, to set up fronts, and through
those fronts to give the impression of a mass
movement. (They have been greatly helped by the
willingness of Ramsey Clark to give his name to their
formations). The broader movement lived through such
splits before, during the Vietnam War and during the
Gulf War. What is important for us, internally, is to
have faith in our ability to work together through the
slower process of compromise, dialogue, and coalition.
What is essential for older radicals to see is that a
new generation took part in the largest single
peaceful protest of this century. This does NOT
discount the importance of all the anti-Globalization
actions, which helped build to where we are. Nor does
it mean that mass peaceful civil disobedience will not
be needed. But it does mean that just as Workers World
is more marginal than it has seemed, the “Black Bloc”
does not command the support of all the youth.
Whatever is to be built will need democratic
involvement of many, not the vanguard tactics or the
“smash and run” tactics of the smaller groups.
June 20th was a major victory for the forces of
democracy, of dissent, of the peace and justice
movement, and of the possibility of broad coalitons
involving black and white – and Muslim and Jew. At a
very difficult time in our history, this is an
enormous victory indeed.
No, I didn’t hear the speakers. I don’t think many
did. Rarely are the speakers important. (An exception
would be the great march in August of 1963 – I can
always be glad that I was able to heard Martin Luther
King Jr. give his great “I Have A Dream” speech).
After all the usual long debates about who was to
speak, in the end what mattered were the sheer numbers
that turned out. I was happy War Resisters League was
there with our “End War” tags – one way I got a chance
to meet to so many old friends was in handing these
out. The WRL tags have become so much a part of these
demonstrations that almost everyone wants them and by
the end of the day almost everyone seemed to be
wearing one. The first ones were handed out in the
harsh days of the Vietnam protest period, when some
sought to provoke the police, and our tags said
“Practice Nonviolence”, with a now classic design by
Markley Morris. We may have some tags left over – if
you want one check the WRL web page, which I’ll give
in a moment.
Something else new, free, and important was War Times,
put together by a coaliton of radicals on the West
Coast, with almost half the text in Spanish.
If you want informaiton about War Times, go to:
www.war-times.org
If you want one of the WRL “End War” tags (or if you
are interested in an analysis of my own titled “War
Without End”) go to: https://warresisters.org
And if you want to know that there are many in Israel
who deeply oppose Sharon, subscribe to Gush-Shalom by
sending a post to: Gush-Shalom-subscribe@t…
To the many others of you who demonstrated on the West
Coast, or in your own towns – we all did well. April
20th is a day which may stiffen the spine of the weak
left within the Democratic Party – and give us all the
strength to stop Bush’s next move – his long-promised
attack on Iraq.
Peace, justice, and solidarity,
David McReynolds staff emeritus, War Resisters League
member, National Committee, Socialist Party USA