------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Oct. 17, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
LOCAL GROUPS LINK UP FOR OCT. 26 NATIONAL ACTION By Heather Cottin New York What's going on in the mobilization for a giant anti-war march in Washington on Oct. 26? Volunteer to help do national outreach in the ANSWER coalition's New York office and you find out. A charter member of the Auto Workers union in Youngstown, Ohio, is devoting full time to organizing there against the Bush administration's threats to launch a full-scale war on the Iraqi people. "I don't know anyone who favors this war," she says. " It's for the corporations and military businesses." Thanks to communication between the New York and Washington, D.C., ANSWER offices, the Youngstown anti-war movement is now linked to Akron, Ohio, where an experienced organizer who worked on the Million Man and Million Woman marches is getting people from her city on the bus to go to Washington for the Oct. 26 action. Ohioans in Yellow Springs are connecting with anti-war protesters in Marietta, as the state mobilizes to stop the war before it starts. DOING IT FOR THE FIRST TIME Over half the people who have begun to mobilize for the great Oct. 26 march have never protested before. National Outreach Coordinator Sarah Friedman in the D.C. office reports that a Mount Pleasant, Ga., woman called to say, "I am just a housewife, but I want to organize a bus to go to Washington, D.C., to show Bush that people here are opposed to this war." The very next day she decided that her town needed more than just a bus to the march, it needed a demonstration. When the municipal bureaucracy turned down her request to assemble in a public place, she turned to the civil liberties union and the National Lawyers Guild for help. Her story appeared in the New York Times and USA Today, and MSNBC interviewed her for national television. There is the Northport High School ninth-grader who organized 10 students from his school to go on the Long Island ANSWER bus. And the students from Humanities High School in New York who organized a meeting on the war. After hearing Brian Becker of the International ANSWER coalition, they ordered bus tickets and are enthusiastically volunteering at the ANSWER office. In Rockford, Ill., the Urban Ministry is sending its entire youth group to Washington. The leader of that church said: "We want our young people to go on a bus ride that will change their lives. They need to be part of the new peace movement. We want to shake up this town." The college campuses are in motion. A student from the University of Minnesota in Morris called the D.C. ANSWER office asking how to organize a bus. A young woman interning for an environmental group was in the office volunteering for national outreach. She happened to be from the University of Minnesota. She immediately called up her friends there to link them up with the Morris campus. Their bus will leave on Oct. 25, filled with young Minnesotans opposed to the war. At an Oct. 6 rally in New York's Central Park, Borough of Manhattan Community College students told an interviewer from the People's Video Network that professors and students on their campus were warned not to use the school's facilities to oppose the Bush war policies. The interviewer told the youths that dozens of people were donating money so those who could not afford to go on the bus could go for free. These students will be on the buses to Washington on Oct. 26. As their contingent stood with their homemade banner, one student shouted: "This is an imperialist war! U.S. out of Vieques, Puerto Rico!" STUDENTS WON'T BE INTIMIDATED On the Stony Brook campus of the State University of New York, the administration tried to prevent students from organizing a meeting against the war. The organizer on that campus called the New York ANSWER office. She is now in touch with several campus groups, demanding a rally on campus Oct. 16 against the war. This teach-in will help to organize the Stony Brook students, who will leave for Washington before dawn on the day of the big demonstration. At a community college in Seminole, Okla., a teacher is organizing buses to take all of her students and colleagues to Washington on the 26th. In Yellow Springs, Ohio, a student at the local high school is doing his senior project on the march. He is getting his entire senior class on a bus, and will make a documentary about the trip and the rally. A woman from Florida called up International ANSWER to ask, "Is your group protesting that a----, Bush?" Assured that it was, she volunteered to be one of several angry Floridians who are organizing buses to Washington. Florida has an unusually large number of activists who say they have never organized before. One new activist explained why so many Floridians are galvanized to resist George W. Bush. "Well, Jeb Bush's dirty scheming gave this country George Bush. We're angry and we want to go to Washington to oppose this war." A 22-year-old woman in Miami Beach is now the main organizer for the state. A woman in Gainesville organized her children to pass out leaflets for the protest at their local high school. Another woman has organized a group of Angry Grandmothers for Peace. People are downloading ANSWER leaf lets from the internationalanswer.org web site, and a woman in Daytona Beach is handing them out at her local bowling alley. A woman in northern Michigan felt all alone, heard a reference to the ANSWER march and the phone number on CSPAN, and called in. Outreach organizers linked her up with the Detroit bus, and also directed her to an anti-war teach-in in Flint. A Brandeis College student listened to George W. Bush's Oct. 7 speech and three minutes later convinced five students in her dorm to go to Washington. She dashed off an e-mail to an ANSWER organizer, "I am SO organizing a bus to the October protests!" The people are fired up. They are uniting. ANSWER organizers and new activists are pushed to act boldly by the declining economy and the virulent attack on civil liberties. These new activists can see the connections. They are reading the political analysis on the ANSWER web site. They give and take courage to and from the International ANSWER organizers. They contribute to the energy, warmth and commitment of the International ANSWER activists, creating a vital, bold and rapidly growing national movement against war and racism. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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