------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 26, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
ANSWER's scenario for Jan. 18 DC protest MOVEMENT GROWS TO STOP U.S. WAR ON IRAQ By Heather Cottin The International ANSWER Coalition announced on Dec. 12 its latest scenario for the national demonstration against war on Iraq to take place in Washington, D.C., set for Jan. 18. On that day, people from across the United States will converge at the West side of the Capitol Building and then stage a mass march to the large Washington Navy Yard on the Anacostia River. ANSWER will demand the immediate elimination of U.S. weapons of mass destruction. A people's inspection team will call for unfettered access and a full declaration of U.S. non-conventional weapons systems. The participants in this action, like those going to San Francisco on the West Coast, will be young and old, Black, Latino, Asian, Muslim and white. Calls and emails to the ANSWER offices show they are militantly against the expenditure of trillions for war and angry that the Bush administration is cutting social programs while threatening small countries with nuclear weapons and germ warfare. Their numbers are growing rapidly in rural areas and in the urban regions of the United States. Jay is 18 years old and has founded Sachem Student ANSWER in a New York suburb known for its racist repression of migrant workers. He is organizing working class youth to go to Washington on a bus leaving from a park-and-ride on the Long Island Expressway. He carries VOTENOWAR.org petitions everywhere, and is selling tickets like hotcakes. A Howard University student working in the Washington, D.C., office of ANSWER is going home for intersession to North Carolina. She will help organize in her state, which already has five organizing centers preparing to send buses to the No War on Iraq march. In northern Michigan, a group of over 150 key organizers convened to work statewide to go to the Jan. 18 march; their keynote speaker was from ANSWER. A first-year college student in Austin, Tex., has organized a bus for the march on Washington. An Ohio junior high school teacher is filling a bus with youth against the war. Savannah, Ga., hasn't had an antiwar movement before. Organizers are preparing to send a bus to the ANSWER march in Washington to commemorate Martin Luther King. In central Colorado an organizer has convinced 75 people to fly to Washington on Jan. 18 to march against Bush's war on Iraq. A Long Island ANSWER organizer visiting his daughter in Hollywood, Calif., turned a corner on Dec. 14 and found 3,000 people gathering to march against the war. Seeing the ANSWER placards "was like coming home," he said. Carrying signs, candles and huge banners calling for "Jobs, not war," the militant gathering demanded the elimination of "U.S. weapons of mass destruction." It received a tumultuous response from passers-by, who honked and waved in solidarity. The protest was covered on many local television channels, all-news radio and CNN. The demonstration was a building action for a mass march and rally in Los Angeles on Jan. 11 and for the national marches the following week. The Coalition for World Peace, the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, and the Not In Our Name Project cosponsored the march with ANSWER. In Jeffersonville, N.Y., activists from Delaware and Sullivan Counties and Pennsylvania's Wayne County are organizing a bus to Washington, and invited ANSWER organizers to come and participate in their activities. They are planning teach-ins on Civil Liberties and the War, using Peoples Video Network videos to help with their outreach. Groups in rural counties along the Hudson River in New York held 38 peace vigils this month. In New York City, on Dec. 14, Uptown Youth for Peace and Justice gathered members of the community, antiwar and youth groups and marched in force through the streets of Washington Heights and Harlem. Upwards of 1,000 people turned out to demonstrate despite cold, wet weather. Their message was clear: "We demand an end to the Poverty Draft. We demand an end to the looting of our schools and communities to fund an unjust war. We demand an end to continued murder of innocents around the world. We see this as an important moment in our efforts to bring thousands of talented, powerful young people from a state of inactive anger and frustration into collective, focused action." The first Bedford-Stuyvesant Peace March on Dec. 8 attracted several hundred Brooklyn residents. Many New York area anti-war organizers came to a meeting at Brooklyn's House of the Lord Church on Dec. 15 to organize their neighborhoods to get on buses from Brooklyn and the New York metropolitan area for the march on Washington Jan. 18, during the Martin Luther King birthday weekend. Marches and vigils are proliferating all over the country. Students are holding teach-ins at colleges and neighbors are gathering to protest Bush's war agenda in churches and mosques, in living rooms and libraries. And everywhere people are buying tickets to get to Washington or San Francisco to protest the war. The InternationalANSWER.org website has recorded hundreds of thousands of hits as organizers across the country download fact sheets, organizing tactics and leaflets to build this massive antiwar movement. ANSWER has postponed until the spring a proposed People's Peace Congress after its Steering Committee, weighing feedback from around the country, decided there would be more effective organizing and participation if it takes place after the Jan. 18-19 weekend. However, a youth meeting will convene in D.C. on the day after the march. For more information, contact the D.C. office at (202) 332-5757. n - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. 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