I saw the entire police attack from the time the first bike cop ran after the flag-burner to the full-scale riot gear deal and was one of the people shoved aside by the police.

ANSWER should not have unilaterally decided for the crowd to disperse. And the group of (understandably) angry people who witnessed this whole thing should not have attacked ANSWER reflexively. As a democratic people we must try to reach consensus... representatives of both groups should create an impromptu council and figure this out. This is totally do-able... the masses did this hundreds of times a day on the streets of Seattle. Those who wish to stay and risk arrest should DECIDE to stay and those who are at-risk immigrants or have no intention of being arrested should DECIDE to leave. The unequal thing yesterday was that the ANSWER organizers had the microphone and the loud speakers and they got to decide everything. Is this what democracy looks like?

ANSWER and the restless crowd: we're in it for the long haul and we'll be seeing a lot of each other... Let us not compete on the subject of which of us is more sensible or bad-ass. That's ego and dogma eating away at our souls. The Management of this country is COUNTING on the Labor to fight amongst ourselves - remember the steel baron who said a hundred years ago about how they're going to run America: "Let the poor kill each other." Let us NOT build ANOTHER OLD WORLD on the ashes of the old world!!

ANSWER in conjunction with the Lawyers Guild stiffles dissent at every protest event. They keep this up and people will question the organization's true motives.

yes, they do stiffle, i saw this first hand during the protests during desert storm 2. Theyre were many opportunities for major civil disobedience if answer and the guild would have stepped back.

Read the history on this Workers World Party front group here:

http://www.authoritarianopportunistswhocozyuptogenocidaldictators-forpeace.org/

ANSWER despises these criticisms because they can't defend them. The deeper you dig on their history, it becomes clear that their primary objective in organizing large anti-war protests is to build their political parties.

Please don't feed the authoritarian party builders at the next big demo. They strategically locate their donation TRASH CANS and BLOWHORNS at corners where the crowds are funneled into slow moving herds where they then scream at you to donate money. Ever wonder where that cash goes given the stated objectives of the Workers World Party?

Please research this yourself and don't take my word for it.

From the Workers World Party website, they quote Saddam without a word of criticism for his own atrocities:

http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/iraq0125.html

"...Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein put rumors he was ill to rest by delivering a 20-minute address on Iraqi television Jan. 17. He said the war was a confrontation between good and evil, which was continuing till this day.

'Iraq has triumphed over the enemies of the [Arab] nation and over its enemies. ... The missiles and bombs of aggression hit everything material and suitable as target for their weapons. ... But did you know what happened in that continuous encounter then, and in this one which is going on even now? Did you know what the injustice and the embargo did to the people of Iraq?'

Hussein identified the criminals as the Western powers in the U.S.-led coalition that inflicted devastation on Iraq..."

I support the original post, practical live on the streets consensus is something we should get better at.

The ANSWER bashing this has devolved to bugs me, let me resort to a Yohananism: if you don't like ANSWER's demo's organize your own, I've left my contact info and promise to attend if I'm within 300 miles. The crticism of ANSWER's politics is just and correct, the "kick 'em outta the movement" tone is wacky.

In my expierence the NLG has never said "don't do that" they just advise on what's legal and not (that's their role).

On CD, I honor it, I provide legal and jail support, I don't practice it, I've always thought inanimate objects (planters, dumpsters, newspaper racks) make better inanimate objects than people, I'm also allergic to cops, cells and courtrooms.

I think that legitimate self-criticism or legitimate criticism (without a secret, or even conservative, agenda) of various groups is always good, so that we both intellectually and politically always advance the Struggle.

However: This is the reason you form *COALITIONS* in the first place -- for what each organization/group can bring to the table/demo in terms of organizing resources and attendance. It's *NOT* to creat mainstream tv/radio pundit-catalyzed (as with armchair 'activist' NYU's Todd Gitlin) ideological, doctrinaire INFIGHTING. (I remember the days that Gitlin used to *condemn* the 'fact' that the left was "too doctrinaire" and "couldn't work together".)

In fact, as a grassroots activist, I don't care *WHO* puts on a rally (outside of the KKK, Aryan Nation, the John Birch Society, etc.) -- well, any liberal or leftist group at least within a broad philosophical range of global justice -- all long as they are logistically good organizers: they'll organize logistical groups; they'll work long hours and stay up late into the night as necessary; they'll do the inter-coalition communications; they'll contact and line up the speakers (big name national and local); they'll do the flyers, postings, and other publicity; they'll make the 100's/1000's of posters for marchers without posters to carry; they'll get the $20,000 (or whatever) sound system with the huge crane-suspended column speakers; they'll get the march/rally permits; they'll help organize the buses and get the turnout commitments from other leftist/progressive/liberal/ethnic/etc groups, churches, labor unions, environmental groups; they'll contact the media and get the march/rally broadcast on radio/tv, ...

Now, if--*hypothetically*--ANSWER--OR ANYBODY ELSE--is underhanded in how they deal with other groups/people, or if ANSWER tries to hog the roster/message/doctrine from other leftist/progressive participants (or has a history of actually, literally, disrupting other groups, like the student group BAMN), if the have a history of being loose canons or unpredictable, or if they go back on their word with other groups/people in agreements that they make, or don't follow through on their word/commitments, or engages in unreasonable or unpredictable violence/vandalism that puts the main marchers in direct danger of police barbarism, then that is another issue.

But I don't have to agree with the entire doctrine (Marxist, Maoist, Democrat, religious or otherwise) of ANY organizational member of the coalition, or speaker at the rallies, in order to attend any well-put-together mass march/rally they might organize. I don't know ANSWER's--a coalition in itself anyway--entire ideology and, as a *practical* matter, I don't care--unless I were to actually become a member of the IAC or one of ANSWER's constituent organizations/groups--as long as they are interested in political and economic global justice.


As for all this talk against IAC: I wish that Ramsey Clark et al wouldn't *seem* to go on about Saddam like he was a saint, or never mention (that I've heard from them) his prior U.S.-supported brutalities. But the West--Israel--is the *first* to introduce nuclear weapons (and probably chemical/biological weapons) to the Arab Mideast, and the U.S. was the *first* to introduce at least *hundreds* (if not *thousands*) of, especially so-called tactical nuclear weapons (and probably chemical/biological weapons), as well as strategic nuclear weapons, to the Korean peninsula.

I certainly think that Kim Jong-Il has a *right* to develop nuclear weapons, given the bellicosity of the U.S. hanging over his head and past U.S. attempts to economically starve out North Korea. In fact, when North Korea does acquire unquestionably and numerously deliverable nuclear weapons, the acceleration of normalization and reconciliation--and reunification (as between West and East Germany)--between North and South Korea will advance, and *7 million* divided Korean families can be reunited too, without the U.S. contantly trying to interfere with or destroy those efforts. South Koreans repeatedly say that they are more afraid of what the *U.S.* might do on the Korean peninsula, than what North Korea might do.

I also think that if Iran developed/acquired nuclear weapons, then it would probably feel militarily secure enough from its conservatives and from the U.S. for its society to go ahead and *continue* to develop with more politically and socially democratic institutions.

We can clearly see what happens in a world without a military counterbalance to the U.S., or when certain countries don't have the ultimate deterence against U.S. militarism.

I totally agree (if it's true) that: "ANSWER should not have unilaterally decided for the crowd to disperse. ...As a democratic people we must try to reach consensus. ...representatives of both[/all] groups should [have] create[d] an impromptu council and figure[d] this out. ...Those who wish[ed] to stay and risk arrest should DECIDE to stay and those who are at-risk immigrants [and other at-risk people] or have no intention of being arrested should [be given a wide, informed opportunity to and] DECIDE to leave." Let's not, indeed, replace the New World Order with another New/Old World Order!