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Here we summarize some smaller leaflets we received at the rally opposing the war on Iraq April 29th in New York City.
A watered down socialist group with Trotskyist roots called "Solidarity" handed out a cartoon on Palestine and I$rael. It's not a bad flyer. We would not have said "Native Americans," because we consider the indigenous people of North America "First Nations." The leaflet explains that the united $tates provides I$rael $5 billion in aid each year while I$rael occupies the Palestinian people.
Another flyer from a new organization called StopWaronIran notes the similarities between the Iraq War and the moves Bush is making on Iran now. Signers include Workers World Party, "Communist Party USA" members and English Labour Party members among others. The flyer is a request for money and petition support.
Another flyer appeals for support for the City University of New York to boycott Coca Cola products for polluting water in India, Mexico and Ghana, using child labor in El Salvador and selling to poor Third World people who need better nutrition. Of course, if the Coke boycott worked, in the capitalist system, another Coca-Cola corporation would arise with a different name to fill in the vacuum. The sole legitimate purpose of a boycott is to create news and education, so that people become interested in studying multinational corporations.
Another Trotskyist group called Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) distributed a leaflet to "stop the criminalization of immigrants." It asked the crowd to "Join the May Day demonstrations and walkouts for immigrant rights!" Obviously the FSP failed in that demand as did other organizations handing out flyers for the time and place of the New York City rally. We agree with FSP on the need for unconditional amnesty and open borders while we prefer to use the more neutral word "migrant" than "immigrant." "No human being is illegal!" is another correct line.
Code Pink gave out a small flyers for its coming up events, including a Mother's Day vigil for 24 hours at the White House May 13th and 14th. They seek to reclaim Mother's Day for peace. Another upcoming event is to visit with Palestinian refugees.
New York City Labor Against the War put out a good internationalist flyer against the wars. There were no compromises of internationalism in the leaflet despite being union-related. Credit where credit is due. We only wish people to understand that NYCLAW is peripheral as union-related activism goes.
There was a 911 truth mobilization meeting flyer for an event at a Judson Memorial Church, a church that is also seeking members from the free-thinkers in New York's anti-war movement. "No other issue has the potential to derail the neocon agenda," says the flyer seeking to "reclaim the country" and "democracy."
There was also a flyer for Mumia Abu-Jamal still on death row. The flyer points out that there is a confessed and named killer of the cop in question, but Arnold Beverly has received no legal attention.
We give credit to the "Peace Times" for delivering a certain kind of agitation in a timely way. "Peace Times" dedicated its tabloid to a thorough coverage of the Iran issue. With articles from various sources, "Peace Times" single- handedly made sure no one could claim to be short on Iran information. "Peace Times" was actually the longest paper we received.
"Peace Times" is especially important because most people in the united $tates and many other countries are too pre-scientific to read anything from a communist organization. So having thorough and energetic bourgeois anti- militarists is important till people are motivated enough to study politics from all sources.
While "Peace Times" figured out that "the probability of a military intervention against Iran has been steadily rising since the invasion of Iraq," the most backward demonstrators of the day were protesting for abortion "choice."
"World Can't Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime!" (WCW) organization led by the phony "Revolutionary Communist Party USA," launched an attack on the National Organization for Women (NOW), in a four-page leaflet, for what? For waffling on Democrats? No, WCW admitted its own members may seek reform of the Democratic Party.
WCW attacked NOW for not fighting to include the abortion "choice" demand in the rally. This was an obvious retaliation against NOW for not joining in WCW- RCP=U$A's warmongering against Iran on International Wimmin's Day. On that day, WCW and RCP=u$A singled out Iran for attack, with zombie demonstrations in New York, Berkeley and elsewhere. NOW quite correctly dedicated the day to peace and made the RCP=U$A zombies look like the fools they are. Though it is a huge organization with a big budget, NOW is not as apolitical as RCP=U$a zombies are.
WCW should have been making public self-criticism for joining the warmongering furor against Iran in State Department sponsored demonstrations March 8th. We saw their placards in the demonstration photos of March 8th. Instead, WCW spoke at length on abortion this day dedicated to rallying against the war on Iraq:
Despite the fact that one of the rally's main organizers is the National Organization for Women, the call for April 29th fails to even mention the attacks on a woman's right to choose.
This is so typical of all that is wrong with the zombies fooled by the phony communists. The only card RCP=U$A has to play in over 20 years on feminism is abortion. We call it breeder politics. RCP=U$A has no record in feminist issues, period. "Choice" is not exactly so unpopular that it constitutes any kind of revolutionary edge. It cannot even add much edge to an anti-war rally. "Choice" by itself with the usual Amerikan context is just Liberal individualist politics the same way shopping is Liberal choice.
They're saying NOW left out abortion because it was "too controversial," as if RCP=U$A had not avoided every other issue on the feminist agenda since its inception, because they were too "controversial"--except to discriminate against gays and lesbians for over 20 years right in their program. We cannot even say RCP=U$A zombies as opposed to the agents of the state running RCP=U$A really have a line on wimmin at all except for abortion. That's not to say they don't run articles, but those articles are always designed to be completely vague so that a Bob Dole could support them.
The rest of the flyer is just an incredible outrage of deception. Its discussion of the fine points of Democratic Party politics is disgusting. WCW is taking up the discipline work of the Democratic Party and NION has yet to answer what money it received from Larry Flynt.
But even worse is how ahistorical this leaflet is. It talks about ANSWER as if WCW did not lift all its rhetoric about driving out Bush right from an ANSWER rally speech before there was a WCW. The WCW is counting on its followers' being such stupid zombies that they do not know the history of who said what when. The WCW scum want to make it look like ANSWER and others are afraid of opposing lame-duck Bush, when in fact, anti-war demonstrators just find it nearly impossible not to be to WCW's left.
RCP=U$A demonstrated in March along the lines of Phyllis Chesler--for abortion and against Iran. Then after pulling a David Horowitz endorsed stunt like that, RCP=U$A wants to claim that it is calling for a struggle against the Bush onslaught that others are too timid to undertake? What a joke.
NOW figured out these issues long before RCP=U$A followed State Department orders on Iran. NOW split into a majority faction for peace and a minority like Phyllis Chesler that wants the Marines in Iran and uses justifications precisely echoed by the RCP=U$A. While Chesler and her echo at the RCP=U$A were working with the Marines for the right to wear a bikini in Afghanistan, NOW and MIM were working for peace with Iran.
So if NOW does not put abortion slogans in an anti-war rally, it is "supporting candidates who oppose their demands" according to WCW. This is doubly twisted. Is supporting imperialist candidates helpful to begin with? Then if it is, why is it that RCP=U$A suddenly feels compelled to attack NOW's strategy for bringing out the most progressive votes? The answer is consistent from WCW: opportunism on the first question and opportunism on the second question.
The fact is that WCW and RCP=U$A have been caught putting forward retrograde demands. What is more, there is more than one way to introduce controversy and offensive direction into a movement: "choice" is not all that controversial among the anti-war demonstrators in New York City. Iran on the other hand still has a majority of public opinion in favor of an attack. The people who caved in on that question are all in the RCP=u$A zombie camp.
Make no mistake: the WCW and RCP=U$A were the most backward presence in the whole day April 29th. Their whole purpose is to create a bourgeois and zombie- like image of communism while sowing discord, the more haphazard and ahistorical, the better from the viewpoint of the State Department and CIA.
From the very beginning, the people at these Democratic organizing committees and NOW acted to oppose the "oil wars." That is more than RCP=U$A did in March. The expanded list of demands includes "no military action against Iran" and it did so more aggressively than anything WCW did to date (yes, we notice WCW put such a demand in one sentence on a colorful poster). The RCP=U$A is picking at NOW to such an extent for the wrong reasons, that it says "defend women's right to control their bodies" right in the main official leaflet is not about abortion! Ridiculous, desperate--and it's not going to work with the advanced. Nothing about the RCP=u$a is going to work with the truly advanced.
NOW did a good job this International Wimmin's Day. In the past, MIM has criticized NOW for colonialism and war-mongering when WCW, NION and RCP=U$A were afraid to. But as of this spring, WCW and RCP=U$A are even more backward still.