------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 19, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
ANTI-WAR FORCES MOBILIZ, GEAR UP FOR JAN. 18 By John Catalinotto As a full-scale Pentagon military aggression against Iraq looms, heightened awareness is leading to protests across the United States. New endorsers have joined community organizers in mobilizing for a national protest on Jan. 18 in Washington, D.C. The anti-war demonstration has been called by the International ANSWER coalition--Act Now to Stop War & End Racism--which organized the huge protests on Oct. 26. The protesters from all over the U.S. will gather at 11 a.m. on the west side of the Capitol building for a brief opening rally. They will then march to the Washington Navy Yard to carry out a people's inspection and call for the elimination of U.S. weapons of mass destruction. Plans are also being formulated for a national gathering of youth and students in Washington that weekend. By the second week of December there were already approximately 150 ANSWER organizing centers across the country. Quite a few are student- led. Meanwhile, neighborhood, church, college and regional meetings and protests have been taking place as public opinion turns more sharply against the war. A colorful protest greeted war architect Paul Wolfowitz in San Francisco on Dec. 6. Demonstrations took place throughout the country on Dec. 10, Human Rights Day. An important initiative took place in a predominately African American and Caribbean community in the heart of Brooklyn when local residents formed the Bedford-Stuyvesant Coalition for Peace and held their first march and rally on Dec. 7. Anti-war marchers carried signs that read "Money for reparations, not for war on Iraq" and "No war on Iraq, U.S. hands off Zimbabwe." ANSWER co-Director Larry Holmes fired up the crowd at the rally in the First AME Zion Baptist Church. "It is communities here that will suffer if there is war. What's important is that people from the community are starting to move and to struggle to stop it. "I was at an international meeting in Baghdad in September, and let me tell that people all over the world are looking to the United States and asking, 'Who will stop the Bush government from making war?' There is no substitute for getting out in the street and calling your neighbors out to action, and that's what you are doing." Other speakers included community activist Ulysses Kilgore III and Aisha al-Adawiya from Women of Islam. Veronica Nunn of Buddhists for Peace chaired the meeting, which opened with drummers and dancers from Africa's Ivory Coast. Other upcoming activities in New York's Black community are a youth march in Harlem on Dec. 14 and a meeting at Rev. Herbert Daughtry's House of the Lord Church in downtown Brooklyn on Dec. 15. The prestigious Riverside Church, a progressive institution on the West Side of Harlem, was the site of a meeting of 400 people Dec. 8 to mobilize against the war on Iraq. This meeting, organized by religious figures, also gave strong support to the Jan. 18 mobilization in Washington. Some 400 people gathered in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in front of the United Nations on Dec. 10 to call on Bush to use money to help the poor, not to wage war on Iraq. It was one of many protests called by United for Peace. More than 100 were arrested in civil disobedience actions at Dec. 10 protests across the country, including more than 80 at the UN demonstration. MICHIGAN ANTI-WAR FORCES SHOW STRENGTH More than 150 people from around Michigan gathered on Dec. 7 at Wayne State University in Detroit for a statewide anti-war organizing conference. Co-sponsored by the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War on Iraq and the Detroit chapter of ANSWER, the event drew participants from Detroit, Traverse City, Saginaw, Flint, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Adrian, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and other cities and suburbs. Speakers included Abayomi Azikiwe of the Pan African News Service, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, and Baheejah Shakoor, a registered nurse and former reservist who refused orders to go to the first Gulf War. Keynote speaker Brian Becker of ANSWER outlined the role of U.S. imperialism and its neocolonialist designs on Iraq and all the developing countries. There were reports from around the state on anti-war efforts. Many had attended the Oct. 26 national march on Washington and organized buses from Michigan. Becker urged everyone to go to Washington on Jan.18: "All of us need to think very strategically about how to combat racism, and how to expand the movement to include 'the war at home,' to fight all the devastating cutbacks and threats on civil rights. There is no better way to honor the real legacy of Dr. King than to continue to build a strong anti-war and anti-racist movement." Two days earlier, about 300 people had attended a "This Means War" symposium sponsored by the student government at rural Monroe Community College, about an hour's drive south of Detroit. There were three panelists for and three against the war. David Sole from Detroit ANSWER denounced U.S. foreign policy as fueled by the drive for profits and global dominance. This drew the ire of pro-war panelist Raymond Tanter, a former member of the National Security Council and the Council on Foreign Relations. "I want a piece of him!" Tanter yelled at Sole. "Are you going to send the death squads out for me?" Sole shouted back. "He's a CIA operative," he explained to the audience. About half the audience was anti-war and punctuated Sole's anti-imperialist perspective with applause. UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Holmes also spoke at a University of Massachusetts forum on Dec. 5 sponsored by Western Massachusetts IAC/ANSWER. Entitled "How the people's movement can stop a new war on Iraq and end racism and repression at home," it was endorsed by more than a dozen community, labor, lesbian/gay/bisexual/trans, student and women's organizations. Organized labor representatives at the forum refuted the equal sign that the Bush administration wants to place between unions and "terrorism." "Bush is opposing labor unions by trying to threaten workers not to strike or risk their jobs. The real axis of evil is Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft," said Stevan Kirschbaum of Steel Workers Local 8751. Marta Rodriguez and friends sang revolutionary songs rich with histories of working class and oppressed people's struggles. [Kris Hamel and Bryan Pfeiffer contributed to this article.] - 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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