(when I say anti-war without saying anything more, I mean opposed to what Bush was planning and not necessarily against war in general)
In early March 2003 there was a national Day of Action to protest moves towards war with Iraq. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, I organized the rally component, something which was quite controversial among anti-war activists on campus and in Boulder. For whatever it’s worth, let me say that the main anti-war group on campus, the Coalition to Wage Peace could have handled it much worse than the way they did. I don’t know exactly what conversations took place at the meetings they had after they learned I had reserved the main rally space, but they were fairly positive about it.
I think I will start with a description of my activism in the 9 years before the rally. Between Fall of 1994 and Fall of 2002 I had done a lot of political activity at CU-Boulder (and some stuff off-campus and outside Boulder that I will sort of ignore in this explanation). About 1/8 was with (what would later be renamed) the Young Democratic Socialists in the mid-90s. That was largely about immigration and affirmative action and was slightly effective. Most of the next 1/8 was with a group I started called Students for Justice in N. Ireland and was 1997-1999 (or early 2000). For better or worse, that might have had NO effect on what progressive activists thought of me in 2003, but over all it WAS done in a very anti-racist and sort of anti-homophobic way, and was slightly progressive in some other ways (half of my NI activism is described in a post here between the paragraph “The second big thing…” and ending with the paragraph “In the late 1990s…”; Right below that section of the post is a description of my anti-racist activism). In 2000 and 2001 I swung back to mostly multi-issue progressive stuff with YDS. The biggest thing I/we did in those years was gay rights stuff. The semester before the rally, I started organizing SJNI again and A) we did one event before that rally that was anti-racist and progressive, and that attracted about 25 people, and B) we issued a statement that was anti-homophobic (for that statement and some relevant discussion, see the second half of this, starting with the paragraph “Now that that's over....”) and C) we endorsed the Coalition for Justice in Palestine. The SJNI meetings before the rally had an average attendance of about 8 people. Between 1994 and 2001, the average attendance at my N. Ireland events was 30 (it would have been higher, see the middle third of this (between the paragraphs “Going back to how much was done…” and “according to the Pew Research…”) and for everything else it was 75 (YDS-CU events in 2002 had an average of about 40 people at them, including one partly anti-war event (not the rally around Sept. 1st 2002) that attracted about 75 people).
At the 2001 National Conference of YDS in August I suffered three defeats and since that was in the context of continuing grief about my mom’s death 14 months earlier, the next semester I spent about 20 hours a day in my bedroom. Other things went wrong and it slowly became more and more of a “perfect storm” of things that were mostly personal tragedy and mostly not my fault. I had/have Tourrette’s Syndrome, OCD, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Depression, and these are all made worse by anxiety, stress, and sadness. The next semester I sort of organized the YDS chapter some although it didn’t go very well.
During the summer of 2002 there was a lot of talk about the US invading Iraq in the near future. I, and a very small YDS-CU chapter organized a rally on campus that took place around Sept. 1st in the UMC FountaIn area. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the kind of rally you might be thinking of. Even if there WAS a large crowd, we didn’t have more than a few signs for people to hold. We had about five speakers and when they all had spoken we still had about 10-15 minutes left, so we invited people from the small crowd (about 25-50 people) to speak at the mic. The speakers were great. One benefit of doing a rally there is that you might get an audience with a fair number of people eating their lunch- including people who might not normally go to a political event, but end up listening to the speakers anyway.
Although YDS-CU had a pretty successful (and student union funded) event in Nov. (at which the speaker talked about Iraq about 1/3 of the time), it was a very small chapter that I believe barely existed in the second semester of the 2002-2003 school year.
At some point in late Oct. or very early Nov. someone put up flyers and/or sent emails about a rally in the UMC Fountain area. It’s not clear who called for it. For a lot of reasons I wish it was clearer, but to a limited degree I am almost okay with that- if they didn’t want credit for it that’s okay with me (but I think there’s also an issue of taking responsibility for your actions). It involved about 30-50 people gathered relatively close together and instead of the PA system usually used, there was a megaphone (or whatever it’s called, it amplified people’s voices so everyone could easily be heard) that got passed around democratically. I only remember a small number of the comments made. The one I remember the most is where, after a woman made an anti-war statement that involved referring to herself as an American, someone told her not to identify as an American. There was another rally just like that one about 1-2 weeks later that I attended. Although considering how I ended up in some small degree of conflict with CWP I wish I was more familiar with it’s creation (some time shortly after the 2nd rally I just mentioned) and the next 1-3 rallies it organized (I went to 1-2 of their rallies). I was probably on their email list at some point towards the beginning. I must have also picked up a faIr amount of information about them when they were tabling in the student center. Lastly, I must have also gotten some info from the unofficial campus newspaper. I wish I could be more certain of these things and offer more specific examples but 18 years have passed. There’s also the fact that at various times between the Fall of 2002 and now, I have heard miscellaneous supportive things from other activists in Boulder and I don’t remember hearing practically anything critical of what I did, so I believe that what I say here about CWP doesn’t clash with what veteran activists (some of whom acted as referees between me and CWP) observed in CWP at the time.
Sometime just before and/or just after winter break I formed a LOOSE and very small alliance with a very politically visible Democratic Party progressive activist at CU-Boulder. I don’t believe he was considered a.member of the group I tried to launch but he played a role in the College Dems adopting an anti-war position. I’ll describe the name of the new anti-war group I launched shortly, but here’s what we did. An event that took place in late January or early February was a panel discussion sponsored by YDS-CU and possibly the new group. The senior College Democrat read the anti-war statement of the CU-Boulder College Dems at the beginning of the event. The speakers were either (then) current or former members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Although there was a misunderstanding as the result of the word liberal being defined one way by some progressives and another way by other progressives, 3/4 of the brief talks were pretty good.
The name of the new group is something I cringe at when I think of mentioning it to people now, as it could give people the wrong idea about my political beliefs at that time. It was Liberals Against War. The first thing I need to do is offer a definition of a liberal. My definition is very far from philosophical. A liberal is someone to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Elizabeth Warren. Some will say that Clinton is a liberal, but if you look at his time in the White House, he was not very liberal on social issues, he certainly wasn’t good economically and in general he was the candidate (in the 1992 primaries) of the moderate/centrist wing of the Democratic Party. His running mate in both 1992 and 1996 was married to one of the main people behind the “Parental Warning- Explicit Lyrics” stickers on certain music albums. I AM a socialist but I’m also fairly friendly to the Democratic Party and believe that sometimes, depending on various factors a fair percentage of liberals are allies of progressives. For more of my thoughts on liberals, see this.
LAW barely existed but was one of the sponsors of the March 2003 rally. I launched LAW because I felt like CWP was trying to win people over to the anti-war position by winning them over to the progressive movement. In a misguided attempt at being good white allies (I’m certain 95% of them were white) they adopted Mumia Abu-Jamal as an issue (although I did some stuff supporting him around 1998, a better expression of solidarity would have been supporting Affirmative Action, which I guarantee you is more popular with Black people than Abu-Jamal was at the time (the gap is even greater when you poll people of color in general (see the addendum at the bottom))). At the CWP rally I attended A) one of the speakers said that the only good war was the Civil War and B) someone (probably not a neo-Confederate) yelled “BOO!” (I couldn’t find a survey about Jewish-American opinions of the Allies, probably because no one is going to waste time on that since I’m sure that around 99% of Jewish-Americans are glad that Nazi Germany was defeated (I’m sure that 99% of Blacks are glad that the confederacy was defeated)). The guy who criticized someone for identifying as American became an active member of CWP. They were taking that approach (creating progressives) instead of convincing people that an invasion of Iraq (specifically and not war in general) would be wrong. They were not responding to the arguments being made by the Bush administration and its allies. Crucially, they were not challenging the idea that there was a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Shortly after the war began, a poll found that around 75% of Americans believed Iraq was responsible for 9/11. Although I’m embarrassed that I supported the first two years of the invasion of AFGHANISTAN, the fact is that response to 9/11 was a much more legitimate and helpful one than invading Iraq, and ignoring the desire of the American people to go after those responsible for 9/11 was just politically naive. 9/11 was overwhelmingly aimed at killing as many civilians as possible (if you think I have a racist double standard, A) go fuck yourself, B) see this and C) see the first third of this). Al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, and I can’t imagine a successful progressive response to 9/11 that wouldn’t have included either successfully convincing the Taliban to give up Al-Aqaeda, or an invasion. The invasion of Iraq was completely unjustified and unhelpful and was predictably a disaster for the Iraqi people and the region. Refuting the allegation that Iraq was connected to Al-Qaeda was necessary and doable- it was so ridiculous that Tony Blair didn’t use it in his pro-war argument. Some would say that pointing out the lack of a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda as a reason to oppose the Iraq invasion would have implied that the invasion of Afghanistan was okay. But anti-war activists could have said “invading Afghanistan was bad enough, invading Iraq is an even worse idea.” (UPDATE Feb. 2021 my recent thoughts about the US and Afghanistan are here)
So, I organized the March rally. I had organized 2-3 anti-war events in the previous 6 months and I got the main rally space reserved before (perhaps minutes before) CWP tried to do that. Almost immediately, I was asked to hand it over to CWP. I refused. I refused to let CWP co-sponsor the rally, although there was some dialogue and cooperation that I’ll describe shortly. Why did I refuse?
1. At the last or second-to-last CWP rally, a small, brief “riot” took place. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if the cops were responsible for the confrontation turning violent, I am CERTAIN that A) the confrontation was the fault of some people in CWP and B) the confrontation was completely unjustified. Rallies in the UMC Fountain area with amplified sound are only allowed between noon and 1 PM because there are a lot of classrooms nearby. Some people in CWP decided that they would not end the rally and give up the PA system at 1 PM. UMC staff did something to end it that resulted in a CWP member, joined by others, trying to get the PA back on that involved walking towards the UMC building, and some cops. Like I said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the violence was started by the cops, but the confrontation was completely unjustified- partly because it wasn’t at any point described as a student strike, they just felt that in general rallies should have no time limit. Also, in general at the time, student groups at CU-Boulder at least 1994-2004 (probably before and after) had it better than student groups at other campuses (you didn’t need a faculty advisor, you could chalk, student government gave out lots of money with few strings attached, but they had some reasonable rules for student activism (the UMC is part of student government)) I thought a lot of people would be reluctant to attend a rally organized by the CWP and as I’ll explain, there is evidence I was right.
2. After the “riot” the UMC started to enforce a rule about scheduling rallies where you had to attend a formal meeting and promise to follow the rules. I was afraid that if I remained the lead organizer but CWP was a co-sponsor and some faction in CWP pulled the same thing with the PA system, I would be in a lot of trouble.
3. As I said, they were not trying to reach out beyond the progressive community.
4. I’ll go into why this was a good move on my part, but from the very beginning I intended to get the College Democrats to co-sponsor, and I did. IF and it’s huge if, anyone in CWP had suggested the group cooperate with the (anti-war) College Dems, he or she would have been laughed at. Even if I was the bridge between the two as the lead organizer, CWP may have refused to join the Dems in co-sponsoring the rally, and the Dems probably would have refused to work with CWP because of the riot.
Not long after I refused to involve CWP or just stand aside for them, a couple of professors invited me and a rep from CWP to sit down with them and they would assist us in working some things out. I was happy to participate. We agreed that CWP would sponsor the march after the rally and the “student strike” aspect. It was my idea to set aside two out of 10-12 speaker slots for anyone CWP chose to fill them with. The CWP rep. at one point said that they were going to refuse to cooperate with the UMC staff about the PA system (the UMC agreed to make the rally 90 minutes instead of 60). I just put my foot down and said “no you’re not,” and probably because of the presence of the two Profs. that was apparently enough.
I also agreed to attend a CWP meeting the night before the rally. As I sort of explained to them when someone asked why I didn’t just get involved with them, I felt neurologically, and intellectually and politically (slightly) impotent and knew I would get into arguments left and right with people in CWP and didn’t want to get into those fights on a weekly or daily basis. But it was just one meeting and if I hadn’t attended A) they and a lot of people would have thought I was a jerk, and B) it’s POSSIBLE that some CWP members would have skipped the rally and maybe even encouraged others to skip it as well (about 2 weeks earlier there was talk about them organizing their own rally elsewhere). So I did an okay job of briefly explaining why I hadn’t gotten involved in CWP. Also, the official but unpopular campus paper had been tipped off about how awesome I am and about 5 weeks before the rally they did a story about me. A big part of it was me criticizing CWP and probably not doing the best job of it either. Someone asked about that and I may have explained things half as well as I have in this post.
Before I describe the rally, I should say something about my brilliant move getting the College Dems to co-sponsor. First, I’ll be honest, it didn’t take any intellectual or political effort on my part. The progressive Dem leader I mentioned above had already laid the groundwork by getting the chapter to oppose the invasion. Some progressives would say it was a waste of time or actually counter-productive since it would allow the liberal (not progressive or Clintonite) Dems to mend their tattered record on war and militarism, and these progressives want to use that record against the Dems. But here’s the thing. A LOT of people who were against the war or who were very open-minded about opposing it were registered as Democrats. Having the College Dems co-sponsor the rally might have boosted attendance a little, and I’m sorry but if you combine the progressives and liberals in the DP, they vastly outnumber those progressives who just hate the Dems. Also, if we had any chance of stopping the war at that point (and we didn’t but it was the right thing to act like we did, and anti-war organizing at that point laid the basis for opposing the Occupation) we would have needed a MASSIVE majority of the DP. Having the College Dems co-sponsor raised the profile of the anti-war part of the DP within the DP.
The rally was petty good. 1,500 people were there, probably at least 95% were anti-war. I was busy with other stuff and heard practically none of the speeches. Twice there was a progressive song played. I screwed up and didn’t plan what I was going to say and probably about 1/3 of what I said was kind of stupid, but only kind of, and I’m sure the rest was good. After the rally, 200 people went on a march. At one point a CWP member suggested the low number was because of the riot. I’m sure some of the 1,225 anti-war protestors at the rally who didn’t join us for the march just couldn’t go on the march, but I’m sure around 800 of them didn’t go on the march because they didn’t want to be in a riot.
At the rally, a leader of CWP had encouraged people to go to the Engineering College (which has a lot of Defense-related stuff) and “take action.” As we were marching to that building, I told someone I knew with a hat saying he was a peace-keeper of sorts with the well-respected Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (they may have added the word “Justice” after that date but I think they added it before, and today that’s what they’re called) about this and he said we should keep the marchers from getting in the building. I was later told it was stupid to do that, but I was concerned that A) it could lead to police attacking us, and B) it could damage the reputation of the anti-war movement. So, when he said we should stop them, I helped him. For better or worse, after making fools of ourselves for a few minutes, the marchers got in and nothing was done (no “action” was taken, we got a brief tour of part of a research/development/whatever area).
One miscellaneous thing is that a few days before or a few days after the rally, a leading member of CWP gave me a flyer. It was NOT a CWP flyer, I assure you. But it said something like “when war breaks out, people should go to the 16th St. Mall in Denver and destroy stuff.”
There is one thing that I need to address. I screwed up at one point and forgot that the rally was only 1/3 or 1/4 of that days' events. There was also the march, the Student Strike, and a series of teach-ins by Faculty And Staff Against War. There was a web-site for the national coalition of anti-war youth groups that called for the day of action and I said that YDS-CU, LAW and the College Dems were sponsoring that day’s events (I may have mentioned FASAW but I think I didn’t and I almost hope I didn’t because that would mean I was trying to deny CWP credit). That was later replaced by something saying FASAW, CWP and a High School chapter of Amnesty International.
In conclusion, I feel very good about roughly 90% of what I did. Especially getting the College Dems to co-sponsor. Also, I think I might write some poems about the Iraq War and the Occupation. UPDATE 10/11/20 Those are here and here.
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People of color and Mumia Abu-Jamal
Among Black people, support for Mumia was not as high as white progressives like to think. According to an article in Salon, Angela Davis and the Rev. Al Shaprton were unhappy that Black clergy in PA were not supporting Mumia. A lot of other stuff in there backs me up. The writer of the article did another piece for Salon opposing the execution of Mumia and called for a new trial.
According to a poll here, in 2002 70% of blacks supported AA and 64% of “Hispanics” supported it (that might include white Hispanics, so it might be higher for Chicana/os and Latina/os). According to an Aug. 2015 (which may be when the first poll mentioned below was conducted) report by the National Commission on Asian-American and Pacific Islander Research in Education:
Support for or against affirmative action is as difficult to discern for Asian Americans as it is for all Americans. For Asian Americans, specifically, there is the issue of omission from most national opinion polls on affirmative action. One source for gauging the level of support for or against affirmative action is a multicity, multiethnic, and multilingual survey of political attitudes and behavior of Asian Americans administered by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The results show that 63.1% of Asian Americans indicated that affirmative action “is a good thing” as opposed to 5.7% who reported that it is a “bad thing” and 18.6% who reported that it “doesn’t affect Asian Americans.” These findings are consistent with a 2004 survey of 701 Asian American college studentsattending 169 colleges and universities. This study found that 62.6% of Asian American college students disagreed with the notion that affirmative action should be eliminated. Both of these survey results are consistent with exit polls during votes on state referendums to end affirmative action. In 1996, 61% of Asian American voters rejected Proposition 209 in California, and in 2006, 75% of Asian American voters rejected Proposal 2 in Michigan.
(I think the frequent exclusion of A-As from polls about Affirmative Action might be because of the Model Minority Myth (and to enhance that myth) and because people like implying that A-As don’t support Affirmative Action and because they want to give as many A-As as possible the idea that their community doesn’t support it and create a wedge between A-As and other people of color)
I wouldn’t be surprised if a massive majority of American Indians support Affirmative Action, but they’re probably less likely to be included in these polls than Asian-Americans are, and when taking 7 college courses partly or totally about American Indians I didn’t hear anything about them being different than other non-white racial groups in terms of their opinion of AA.
As far as my statement implying that support for Mumia is lower among non-Black people of color than it is among Black people:
Chicanos. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, at some point in the last 25 years, some of them were driving Black people out of certain parts of LA. Ice-T rapped “And we gotta realize, the boys on the east side/You call em S-A's, I call em allies/Because the day that we all unite/Watch the pigs get real polite.” That’s a reference to Chicana/o East LA and directly and indirectly indicates tension between Chicana/os and Blacks. A lot of Blacks are anti-immigrant and I think that narrowly popular hostility is reflected among Chicana/os.
Asian-Americans. Around 1990 there was a lot of tension between the poor black community and the community of Korean immigrants (and probably their children) and that may have been found among the larger Korean-American community. Although I’ve been told there was a very small yellow-power movement around 1970 inspired by the Panthers, in general I don’t hear a lot about A-As being enthusiastic about what the Panthers were about.
American Indians. I wouldn’t be surprised if, as the most racially fucked over population in this country, a majority of them back Mumia.
In general, the idea that ALL people of color are in solidarity with each other is just, unfortunately, ridiculous. I got my degree in Ethnic Studies.
UPDATE 4/16/20 I did a post about Affirmative Action and the working-class here.
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