As usual there were a lot of bullshit arrests at the demonstration, but compared with the previous New York demonstration, this one went much more smoothly with much less police cost. Perhaps New York City found itself embarrassed how Washington DC managed to run a rally with thousands fewer cops than New York did.
One police source estimated over 200,000 demonstrators,(1) and that is evident from the ground level; however, without a helicopter, it would have been impossible to see the whole demonstration, so MIM offers no official estimate. Estimates ran from over 100,000 to one million. Even on some of the same television stations, headlines varied based on who they quoted.
Illusions about Democrats continue
According to CNN, the vast majority of Democrats in Congress voted yet again to support the war on March 21st: "The House resolution, approved on a 392-11 vote, 'expresses the unequivocal support and appreciation of the nation' to the members of the U.S. armed forces and their families. And it also commends the president for 'his firm leadership and decisive action in the conduct of military operations in Iraq as part of the ongoing global war on terrorism,' a line that generated anger among some Democrats."(2) 11 voted against, but there are 205 Democrats and 229 Republicans in the House.
Despite the vote the day before, people at the rally were carrying signs that continued purely anti-Bush sentiments. In fact, in sections of the march, the demonstrators were chanting slogans from the 2000 presidential campaign about "staying out of the Bushes" etc.
The present reporter has to admit that the funniest sign of the day was: "Yee-hah is not a foreign policy." Yet if this war is just a stupid Texas cowboy thing, then we have no explanation why for example Massachusetts Senator Kerry voted for it. The fact is that Democrats are more on-board than not and even the best of them tolerate war-mongering that should not be tolerated for the species to survive.
People who see this war for what it is do not tolerate it: they leave the Democratic Party. There is no other way to show intolerance for pre-emptive strikes and predatory wars. People who stay in the Democratic Party, because they believe it is important to implement gun control or nominate pro-choice judges show a complete lack of proportion and a lack of understanding how fascism across-the-board comes about through war. Staying in the Democratic Party says that the lives of Iraqis, U.$. troops, Palestinians and other Arabs involved are less valuable than Amerikkkan lives, and that is the recipe for eventual global nuclear catastrophe. There is no people on Earth that is going to put up with that treatment, so the first step for any political party has to be internationalism.
We will have to learn to fight outside the Democratic Party for reproductive rights and against crime including the crimes of how criminals are punished. It's not enough to fight for the select few Amerikans and their welfare, education and abortion rights. Without an answer providing security for all people in the world, more war and terrorism are inevitable and that will lead to a steady march down the fascist road, with the likes of the Patriot Act (which Democrats voted for) and Patriot Act II.
Let's be clear that we support the signs that say: "Bush: War Criminal" and "Bush: International Terrorist," but this war needs to be defeated with more than rehashed campaign slogans from 2000. As MIM circulated in the crowd, we said, "we have to improve this movement, gotta get tougher" and variations on that theme.
We spoke with one demonstrator who said, "I don't need this [MIM Notes]. I've got it all up here [pointing to his head]" for why he opposes the war. MIM pointed out that the movement failed to stop the war, so we have to improve. Improving requires more study of more material and learning more about power struggle. Having the majority in England did not stop Tony Blair and having over 80% of the people against the war did not stop Spain and Bulgaria from making a major endorsement of it. With the "Labor Party" in England in power in favor of the war, Democrats are kidding themselves if they think Democrats would have stopped the war. The "Labor Party" is more "left" in that tepid bourgeois spectrum than the Democratic Party.
In "democratic" Australia, the people opposed the war in over 80% of the population, but the government still sent 2000 troops into battle. This is a lesson that the people themselves must learn the art of power struggle, and not leave it to their elected representatives. We followers of Marx, Lenin and Mao say we know something about power struggle outside of parliament and recommend the experience of Lenin in getting Russia out of World War I. Mao also defeated financially better off, technically better equipped enemies during World War II despite the fact that the conventional political parties of his day were much bigger than the communists to start with. With our numbers globally and in the imperialist countries, the anti-war movement should have succeeded, but we have a problem with the desire and knowledge of power struggle in our movement.
The leaflets
MIM received a leaflet saying that Islam does not condone "terrorism." According to the leaflet there is a difference between "Holy War" and "jihad." Jihad could be just an internal struggle in the mind for self-improvement. From MIM's point of view, www.WhyIslam.org showed that Islam has a lot in common with Christianity and Judaism. Muslims just added one last prophet, Muhammad. One thing for sure, if Amerikkka is going to claim to be a "free" country, it has to figure out how to integrate Muslims and not profile them. Currently the united $tates is failing along these lines, which is why we say that the causes of war have to be addressed for real freedom to exist. Since the U.$. soldier in Kuwait fragged his officers (killed some), there have been talk show calls for more profiling of Muslims, because the attacker Sgt. Asan Akbar may have been Muslim.(3)
We received another leaflet titled "The U.S. and Iraq in Historical Perspective" from the International A.N.S.W.E.R. and International Action Center organizer Richard Becker. Although the leaflet contains illusions about "socialism" even under Gorbachev, it points out the history of Iraq's being a colony, with Britain, France, Holland and the united $tates evenly splitting the oil there with none of the oil being owned by Iraqis. It was not until a 1958 revolution in Iraq that pressure for Amerikkkans to pay for oil actually succeeded.
The Revolutionary Worker handed out of a leaflet pointing out that the new 20,000 pound bomb of Uncle $cam is named MOAB on purpose, because "the judgment of Moab" in the Bible refers to destruction of cities and soldiers east of the Jordan river.(4)
Another leaflet connected the attack on civil liberties by the federal government to the war. We could hardly disagree with the material from the www.nyclu.org on civil liberties. It also referred to "Citizens for Peace."
A popular item at the rally and in some towns today is the 911 money that looks like one dollar bills. USA stands for "United States of Aggression." Instead of George Washington we have George Bush titled Big Brother and a host of links to websites about the events of 911 and propaganda since then.
Another leaflet from the Batay-Ouvriye Solidarity Network mentioned the struggle in Haiti against U.$. domination and linked it to the situation in Iraq. Here is how it correctly reasoned: "The United States supported the Iraqi Government in its war against Iran by supplying it with money, intelligence and military supplies, including biological and chemical weapons. So long as this government was doing what the United States wanted, they closed their eyes even when they knew the Saddam government was using these weapons."
One last item we will mention was a flier by the Kings County Green Party pointing out that New York State's two senators, both in the Democratic Party voted for the war. They organized a demonstration for March 27th at 9 Prospect Park West, 5:30-7pm where Senator Charles Schumer lives.
MIM handed out 2550 copies of MIM Notes before running out in New York City. If you think you could send MIM money for papers, take them to rallies in your area, hand them out, take notes and write a story for MIM Notes about the rally like this story, please do it. See our web page at: http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/pirao/mndistrocampaign.html for information on the approximate costs. Just doing this would be a great support to the party and the movement.
Notes:
1. http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/22/sprj.irq.protests/index.html
2. http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/20/sprj.irq.congress.reax/index.html
3. http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/24/101.attack.ap/index.html
4. See also this explanation for why the imperialists announced the bomb in advance
for psychological warfare purposes:
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/03/23/wpsy23.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/03/23/ixhome.html ;
http://www.sbsun.com/Stories/0,1413,208~27080~1242460,00.html