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38 weeks 6 days ago
Massive D.C. Protest Against U.S. War / Occupation in Iraq
Submitted by LS on Sun, 01/28/2007 - 5:20pm.
Jan. 27 Anti-War March in D.C. - photo from resistancemedia.orgOn Saturday, January 27, over 100,000 people marched against the U.S. war / occupation of Iraq. The march was called by United for Peace and Justice, the more liberal (i.e. not radical) of the national anti-war groupings. The largest national grouping to UFPJ's left, the ANSWER Coalition, has called for the next major national mobilization on March 17th, for which they're calling a March on the Pentagon. The March 17 protest is meant to mark the 40th anniversary of the historic 1967 march on the Pentagon, which signaled the general move from protest to resistance against the Vietnam war. This march also will march the 4th anniversary of the start of the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq.
I wasn't able to go to the D.C. anti-war march yesterday (I did attend the local rally of a few hundred people in below zero wind chill weather though), so I've been eagerly looking for reports about the D.C. march on the web.
The capitalist media of course systematically belittles the scope of the march, with most reports citing "tens of thousands" of protesters, with most of their focus on the celebrity speakers who were there - Jane Fonda (speaking at her first anti-war march in 34 years - welcome back!), Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, etc. I think it is great that celebrities are willing to speak openly at an anti-war rally for an end to the war, and I read that Penn and Sarandon were essentially joining the call for Bush and/or Cheney's impeachment. This is excellent. There were also a few of the more progressive Democratic Party politicians speaking - John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Jesse Jackson. 
Perhaps most notable in this regard is the absence of any of the "serious" Democratic presidential contenders. While Kucinich is running again and he was there, most readers here are probably unsurprised that Hillary and Obama were nowhere to be found. That's simply because they aren't against the war and don't support U.S. withdrawl. This needs to and will become clearer if the anti-war movement continues to demand that Congress move beyond this non-binding resolution crap and actually cut the funding for the war and begin impeachment proceedings for Bush and Cheney. (sidenote: this disappointing story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune says that the newest real progressive member of Congress, Keith Ellison, 'is not in a hurry' to start impeachment proceedings, even though he got a seat on the House Judiciary Committee, and even though as recently as October 5, 2006 he supported the call for Bush's impeachment in his speech at a pro-impeachment / anti-war rally in Minneapolis. Looks like he might need some reminders about what he was campaigning on just a month before the election...)
Anyway, here are a few reports from people who participated in the march that share their insights. Feel free to post other commentaries (or links to other commentaries) in the comments.
Red Flags Blog: Antiwar and looking ahead: What's it going to take?
Brooklyngoil: D.C. report
Resistance Media: photos from Jan. 27 in D.C.
Bronx Bolshevik: Good video footage of the D.C. protest
DC Indymedia: Report on one of the student contingents (the apparently much smaller one, billed as the 'Radical Youth Contingent', that gathered at Dupont Circle)
DC Indymedia has shockingly little coverage (no 'front page' coverage at all as of Jan. 28 - whassup with that?!?) but some folks have posted their photos there...
Lefter, Warmer blog: Who's Listening to the Sounds of the American Street? DC March Coverage Round Up
Pre-march commentary: Dan Berger and Andy Cornell: Winning the (Anti) War and Rebuilding Political Imagination
I've heard that World Can't Wait probably had the most impressive presence and contingent in terms of size, signs, flyers, etc. I heard that the student contingent that included Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Campus AntiWar Network (CAN) was large and had the most explicit anti-imperialist and anti-occupation chants and slogans. I'll post more reports here as I see 'em.
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WashPost article on Student Contingent
The Washington Post published an article, Student Protesters, Fighting Image of Apathy, Call for a Cohesive Movement (subscription may be req'd to view article), that reports on the student contingent at the January 27 anti-war protest in D.C.
Wrong on facts, wrong on analysis.
Mark Rudd says:
"There's been a 35-year break where there hasn't been a mass movement, so students haven't had a natural model for how to do it," Rudd said, laying some of the blame on the Weathermen for breaking apart the larger student movement in the push to be more radical. "I hope they'll learn from our shameful history and learn how not to screw things up like we did."
The bourgeois press loves to quote Rudd because he says things like the above. Student activism has its ups and its downs, but to say "there hasn't been a mass movement" is wrong. Just factually wrong. Rudd should study the student movement of the 1980's and 1990's. Anti-Apartheid (more than 10,000 arrests on campuses), the struggle for Black and other oppressed nationalities cultural centers, CIA Off Campus campaigns, Central America solidarity, Women's reproductive rights, the massive student movement against the 1991 Gulf War....
On analysis and meaning: it is wrong to say that the Weather Underground's history is shameful. That only arms the enemy--the imperialists. It is a Catholic summation. I would argue Weatherunderground was ultra-Left and risky, but not entirely wrong. Bill Ayers describes the rights and wrongs pretty well. This history is well worth debating, but Rudd's "screw things up" comment is just self-centered sadness.
in struggle, Liu
On Rudd and reversals of verdicts on the 60s
Yeah, didn't Lenin say something to the effect that adventurist armed struggle and social democracy are two sides of the same coin...
It's unfortunate that a new generation of student activists may be influenced by Rudd's revisionist history of the 1960s student movement and his erasure of the student movement since then.
It's frustrating when people who play such an important leadership role at one point in history (in Rudd's case, the Columbia U takeovers in 1968 that made SDS a household name in the U.S.), who then became ultraleft in the 1970s and advocated armed struggle irrespective of conditions (Weather) can become so politically off later on and throw the baby (revolutionary politics) out with the bathwater (their erroneous strategic line). Rudd is warning young people against militancy at precisely the historical moment when militancy and escalation of the antiwar movement is most called for.
Because of Rudd's fame at a key historical moment, he is now being quoted about the resurgent student movement and he gets to put out his counterproductive analysis. Todd Gitlin has made a career out of being the critic of the left who has left "credentials" (from 40 years ago...). Bobby Seale has done something similar with the Black Panthers history, running the rap that the Panthers were basically just a group working for electoral and community reforms and hadn't really even read Marx or the Red Book but just sold that stuff to dopey white students. In the case of the Panthers it's most unfortunate that Huey Newton degenerated and then passed away, leaving Seale to rewrite Panther history, writing the revolutionary socialist politics that were at its core out of it entirely.
For Rudd to say there has been no student movement since the 1960s is just ridiculous. Rudd is either being dishonest or he is losing his memory, since if I remember correctly he personally debated with leaders of the student movement from the Progressive Student Network in the 1980s in a series of letters to the (now defunct) Guardian newspaper about the appropriateness of advanced tactics in the context of the direct action in 1988 to blockade the Pentagon in protest of U.S. military intervention in Central America. So for him to say there has been no student movement since the 60s, and then to criticize the radicalization of the 1960s student movement as a warning to today's students to not 'make the same mistakes', is unfortunate to say the least.
For a better history of the 1960s from an SDS participant I recommend the beginning section of Max Elbaum's book 'Revolution in the Air', which takes on this whole "good 60s/bad 60s" historiography which argues that everything was peachy in the early 60s but then the movement supposedly went off track when anti-imperialism and Marxism gained widespread influence in the movement in the late 60s. Elbaum demolishes that version of history in a thorough way that upholds the revolutionary turn of the later 1960s.
Indybay.org coverage of SF & DC
Coverage of SF and DC anti-war marches on Indybay.org, the SF / Bay Area Indymedia site. Now DC Indymedia finally has a collection of articles and media up, but it's still pretty weak.
Two articles on impeachment aspect of DC march
This is an interesting article about the Jan. 27 anti-war march focusing on the prominence of the impeachment message among protesters: The Historic, First Ever DC Massive Impeachment March No-one Reported On
And The Missing Word at the Anti-War Demo by Dave Lindorff on Counterpunch focuses on the lack of the impeachment message from the speakers on-stage at the protest.
Photos of the march from Daily Kos diaries
Here's a list of many of the photo diaries from the Jan. 27 anti-war march that have been posted on Daily Kos, a progressive Democrats site.
hi, I live in california but
hi,
I live in california but I’ll be visiting DC over the veteran’s day weekend. Do you know if there will be an anti-war protest or a pro-palestine/anti-occupation rally during that time?
Thanks
Mitch