I would estimate the crowd at 3,000

Are of clowns.....nobody will take them serious. I think Bush should step down to however, It hurts the movement with the publishing of some of those images.

Yeah but, they take a bunch of sign wavers seriously. Maybe we can put together a seriously serious petition and seriously have a bunch of serious people sign it. I bet George would seriously consider it then seriously step down. seriously.

haha! yeah my favorite one is the "uber punk" suicide girl giving the finger.......how rediculous. its more of a fashion than an informed decision to show up to these things (especially for the punks). stop getting your politics from conflict songs and do a little learning on your own. for instance the world cant wait is a front group for the Revolutionary Communist Party who supported Mao and the killing of some 70 mill. of his own countrymen. most of these kids were there only to be seen and pose....."research and read about the group im representing and carrying a sign for? nah.....i'd rather just have my picture taken to show everyone how "revolutionary" i am."

Yeah, I went to tell people just that. I was not suprized that a lot of the punks didn't know that. Damn the RCP for draining all the energy in anti war/ anti bush movement ( if it can be said that there is one.) Too bad people aren't into dissent anymore.


Going to the RCP's events makes me want to become a Republican just to spite them. SCAF really ought to do a large demo.

Getting politics from a Conflict song is at least as legitimate as getting it from 12 years of being forced into saying the flag salute in school.

It depends on which Conflict your talking about.

Conflict or Conflict UK.

Myself, I always preferred to get my political beliefs from CRASS....when I was 17.

I'm a supporter of the RCP and Bob Avakian. I was at the protest J31 and counted 3000 - 3500 people. (Some joined the rally after the march.)

Bush lies. The people posting comments here who are critical of the protest are also lying, or repeating lies. This is not just name-calling.

Example: "Oh God" says that the photos are of clowns. This covers up the fact that the protest was one of the most diverse, in age, race, nationality, etc, that I've ever seen, even in LA. This does not "hurt the movement." It *is* the movement.

All these people not only came out to protest, they got into the whole "Bring the Noise" thing in beautiful creative ways, with pots and pans, saxophones, penny whistles, an entire metal band in a pickup, rattles and party horns.

"Capt. exaggeration" goes even further. Maybe you should see "Good Night and Good Luck" before repeating slogans from Joe McCarthy, like "front group."

It is no secret that the RCP helped initiate World Can't Wait. It is a movement with the single audacious purpose of driving out Bush and his whole crew and whole program.

This movment has united Hollywood stars, ministers, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, scientists, artists, intellectuals and activists. Howard Zinn, Sean Penn, Maxine Waters, Cindy Sheehan, Blase Bonpane, Daniel Ellsberg, Cornell West, Eve Ensler, and many, many others have endorsed and contributed statements, poetry and other writings. Gore Vidal wrote "President Jonah" (posted on this newswire) in support of World Can't Wait.

How can this be a bad thing if you want to drive out Bush and his whole government, and reverse the direction he's taking the country in.

As for Mao killing 70 million people, don't you need a footnote for that? Actually, I recognize that number. It's from a new book, Mao: The Unknown Story, where it is also presented with no source, no documentation. President Bush recently (Jan. 22 edition of the International Herald Tribune) endorsed the book. The authors said they were "thrilled" that this butcher and theocrat liked their book.

As the RCP says, socialism is much better than capitalism, and communism will be a far better world. If you want to debate that, let's debate it. But don't repeat some hack writers' lies.

"Anon" I don't get your objection. I personally support anything that's part of the reality-based community, anything that goes up against the evil direction being taken by this government. If SCAF wants to do a huge demo, do it.

And one last question for all the critics. WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU DOING WHILE BUSH WAS DELIVERING HIS LIES AND THREATS???

We need to drive out the Bush regime. As WCW says, if not now, when? If not us, who? And part of that movement is and should be people with a vision of emancipating all of humanity from the chains of profit, and of all theideas that spring from that system, including traditional morality -- in other words, communists.

It must be said that the diversity of the pictures acurately capture the make-up of who was there and supported the event; young, old, and people of all ethnicities(however still not enough). In retort to the earlier post.... The question must be asked what other organization was holding such a large scale event on that night? True, the need for alternative organizations to step forward is needed but as of the moment none have.
The only thing that hurts the movement are negative attitudes..remember we went for the same reason, we don't fight amongst ourselves.

RCP has done a pretty good job with their "front groups" like Not In Our Name and The World Can't Wait. ANSWER does a good job too with getting the numbers in the streets.

What they've done a good job of is getting a lot of people photographed, and their photos fed through FRS into PROMIS.

What they have not done a good job of is changing the social order, altering one iota of government policy, and building anything even resembling a mass base.

Our struggle cannot be won in the streets. Neither can it be won in the polling booth. Our struggle can only be won in the kitchens and living rooms of our friends, our neighbors and our coworkers. What is wrong with this society does not live in the street. Neither does it live in the White House, at the Pentagon, on Wall Street or any where Langley, VA. It lives between the ears of the people of whom this society is composed.

We need to stop wasting time on useless, feel good, pep rallies, and start organizing face to face. Form affinity groups. Start block committees. Network. It's our only hope. If carrying signs and chanting slogans was going to work, it would have happened by now. That was the lesson of March '03. Depending on whose version of the story you believe, we put somewhere between thirteen and twenty million sign carrying slogan chanters on the streets on a single day, on four continents, five if you count those scientists in Antarctica, though technically they weren't on a street. But anyway you count it, it was the single biggest event of its kind in all of human history. It accomplished nothing, repeat nothing, zilch, zero, zip, nada, not a damn thing. Neither did the months and months and months of slogan chanting and sign carrying that built up to it. It was all a spectacular waste of time and energy. We made a mistake. It cost hundreds of thousands of human lives. We could have stopped this war over a decade ago, but we didn't. We chanted slogans and carried signs instead. It didn't work. Then it didn't work again. Then it didn't work again. Then it didn't work again. And so on, ad nauseum.

If we don't learn from this, we're too stupid to save the world. Oh, well.

Yes, these protests will not by themselves drive out the Bushies. But they do serve the purpose of letting people know that they are not alone in opposing this administration and its war and other homicidal and suicidal policies. And that is a very important purpose that we should not disparage.

One person commented that if these protests were going to work, the administration would be gone by now. Well, I would counter that if people had a better approach than these protests, they would have done it by now.

It's fine to propose new organizing approaches, and they are definitely needed, but we don't have to put down the public displays of opposition, which have always been a part of every important movement that ever was in this country or any other. If we are going to form a community, seeing and finding each other is a necessary first step.

As for the RCP, I don't like their fanatical fixation on Bob Avakian, their fearless leader, but let's give credit where it is due. They are tearing up the streets and getting the anti-Bush message and presence out in the face of the public where it belongs. By doing so, they are creating political space for every other kind of new, creative organizing that anyone else might come up with.

So get going with those bright new ideas, whatever they are, and thank the RCP for keeping up the public presence that helps make them possible, and dialogue with them about their somewhat top-down internal structure if you think you have something better to propose.

(1.) Bush is not the problem. Getting the message out that he is, is counter productive. It misleads people because it is not true.

We're in the wrong car. It's pulling to the right, it's rusted out, i's burning oil, the brakes are faulty and it's stolen. Changing the hood ornament wont help.

(2.) The message these demos are getting out with their slogan chanting and sign carrying is two fold:

-- (a.) Slogan chanting and sign waving is accomplishing nothing.

-- (b.) If you do it in these particular circumstances you are a dupe and a pawn who is being cynically manipulated through front organizations run by Bolsheviks for their own benefit, not ours. If, in the highly unlikely event that they ever came to power, we'd be worse off than we are now because these people are Maoists. If you don't what that means, read up on the death toll of the "Great Leap Forward," the unspeakable brutality of the "Cultural Revolution," and, more recently, the brutal and cold blooded atrocities committed by the Maoist insurgents in Peru or Nepal. And let's not forget Cambodia. These people are ruthless, amoral, treacherous, power mad, bloodthirsty monsters. No wonder they hide who they are behind fronts.



>if people had a better approach than these protests, they would have done it by now.

Some of us already are.



>if you think you have something better to propose.

I just did, right here in this very thread. Scroll back up are read it again. You apparently didn't get it the first time.


>they are creating political space for every other kind of new, creative organizing that anyone else might come up with.

That's a bald faced lie:

(1.) The space already exists. They didn't create it. They are merely taking the credit for creating it. This is a common Bolshivek trick, dating back to the Russian revolution, which Bolsheviks *hijacked* after it was in full motion, and then claimed to have started.

(2.) They are not "creating" at all. They are destroying the potential of their dupes and pawns to effect real change, by leading them down a dead end road. There is nothing down there but dictatorship, famine and slavery. They don't want to cast down the ruling class. They want to take its place. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Wont get fooled again.

Hi there,

Just looking at the images from the last anti war protest in Hollywood and came across some Samba looking stuff ??

Can anyone tell me if there is any Rhyhtms of Resistance /activist Samba going on in L.A/So. Cal ?

Anyone intrested in making links/networking with political Sambistas over here in the U.k ??

Me ??? L.A native in UK since 1985.
Old-old L.A hardcore punk/ Anarcho punk. Was hanging out with `Iconoclast ` & L.A Anarcho punks before I escaped to England.

Now looking to make links with political Sambistas in L.A !! Interested ?? email me ! I want to come back to L.A /home.

lusciousanarchy@hotmail.com

A lot of the above criticisms - and counter arguments - are valid. Still, it was nice to see even the fairly small crowd turn out. Not bad, for LA.
What really bugged me tho- apart from the fact that Gore Vidal couldn't make it - was the knuckleheaded speech from .... oh, my brain doesn't function when it comes to names... some reverend so-and-so from the church of the holy whozeewhatzis. Anyway, he started off his big emotional speech by saying he was going to quote from the United States Constitution...then proceeded to read the Declaration of Independence. Sheeze....