DISCLAIMER: I wrote this a few months ago and have many conversations since then. I want to keep this essay in cirulation because it captures a certain frustration with paralyzed groups, some of which have since initiated a period of strategic change, hopefully.  -R

The self-appointed leaders of the anti-war movement have again cowered in the shadow of Democrat politicians. United for Peace and Justice's last march in DC drew a large crowd (though nothing compared to the earlier rallies of 2002-2003). The messaging of the day was a polite proclamation to congress: End the war now. Nice, police, respectful... these people were afraid to put their foot down. Iraq Veterans Against the War, who now claim over 400 members, we're denied the right to march in the front, UFPJ preferred the movie stars they'd flown in be in the front. "It's gets media attention" it was said. So there is the movement: movie stars hung in front of the cameras of General Electric and Time Warner to win the attention of a bunch of politicians, some of whom voted to start this war. What a joke. A few months later on the anniversary of "Shock and Awe", IVAW managed to make it to the front of the ANSWER-sponsored march in DC, with a lot of argument.

Iraq Veterans, the families of troops, students and Iraqis and Iraqi-Americans should be the foundation of this movement. No one should have more of a voice right now in the anti-war dialogue then Iraqis who have been on the receiving end of the slaughter and the soldiers who fired the bullets. These groups have seen the war and understand the urgency that exists. While anti-war activists in the U.S. and Europe brainstorm clever sign slogans, theatrical displays of humor and watered-down "messaging" for the media, bodies fill the streets of Baghdad, soldiers lose limbs and lives in Anbar Province, and the oil fields of Basra are sucked dry by U.S./British oil conglomerates.

Our protests are not nearly enough to even shake the people responsible for this horror, but they are enough to burn needed organizing energy into thin air. Instead of "Congress: End the War", we should be saying, "Congress, you have failed to end the war and you will now face intensified resistance from our movement. We will organize to throw you all out". That carries a little more power with it.

For a war that has now gone on longer than World War Two, with an anti-war movement that started a year before the war even started, we have learned little. While some groups subscribe to a message of anti-imperialism and use words like "resistance" and "direct action" in their slogans and speeches, their rhetoric is empty and their follow-through non-existent. Resistance does not mean Saturday afternoon marches to empty government buildings, nor is it the speeches of movie starts or famous musicians. These people are appreciated for their assistance, and the participation of everyone is ideal to build popular movements, but these are not the voices that will create radical change in our society! These are not the voices that will empower a new generation to question the old and work to take on the problems they failed to tackle. The elders should provide the young with ideas, stories, advice, insight and warnings, and should add their participation to all aspects of this movement, but they must let the young put their ideas into practice and support them in this experience.

Iraq Veterans, many in their 20s, are a new generation that has emerged from the depths of depression, war and economic strains to stick their necks out against their former employers. They have taken a step many would never dare take and have given a new spark to anti-war activists and organizers. Anti-war "leaders", who control so much of this flimsy movement’s resources and funding, should take the call and turn their heads, and more-so their ears, to the IVAW and the radial youth, who are connecting over new concepts of strategy and movement building.

A Lack of Movement

An anti-war movement is made of two components; the first is the basic concept of being against war and putting forward ideas based on that. This could mean public displays of anti-war sentiment, posters, flyers, music, public speaking events, writings, movies, etc. Then there is the "movement" part, where society advances forward towards new ends by achieving small and large victories that keep it in motion. Movement means moving, advancing, pushing, growing and creating. While some may disagree, our anti-war movement in the U.S. is composed of far more of the former and little to none of the latter. We're full of slogans, books, famous personalities, rallies, art and music. We lack all of the little components we need to hold up our skeleton. We lack a threatening force, the kind that is needed to bring about any social change. We lack local ways of going about building against the war, local strategies that have realistic goals leading towards the end of war. We lack the strategy we need to identify achievable goals and the energy we need to keep our hopes up to achieve those goals.

A recent example of this lack of movement is the deployment of 20,000 (recently said to be 29,000) additional troops to Iraq, accompanied by the raiding of the Iranian Consulate in the Iraqi city Arbil and the deployment of an additional strike force to the Persian Gulf as a threat to Iran. Then Congress passed a "non-binding resolution" against the war. This was a "message to the President". What kind of crap is this? A non-binding resolution? I can issue a non-binding resolution. In fact, I issue one now: "I call for an immediate withdraw of all military, mercenary, corporate and economic forces from Iraq, an immediate cut-off of all military-related funding for the war, full reparations to Iraqis to be taken directly from the profits of KBR, Bechtel, Blackwater, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobile and other oil companies, and the immediate dismissal of all high-ranking officials in every corner of government who have been complicit in this "war on terror", including those responsible and complicit in the funding, arming and training of Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other war criminals." There's my non-binding resolution. You're telling me the Congress can't make a BINDING resolution when 75 percent of this country opposes this war? This is the Congress that anti-war "leaders" are calling on as their saviors?

What was our response to this intensification? Press releases. While the press release of Iraq Veterans Against the War provides a needed expression from a silenced group and a relief to those looking towards the veterans and active duty movement as a hopeful rising force in the movement, the words of Leslie Cagan, head of United for Peace and Justice, were upsetting: "...we think it is critical at this moment to put the pressure -- obviously, to keep the pressure on the Bush administration, but to expand pressure on the Congress. It is great that some of these members of Congress are now speaking out against the war, but they have a power that none of the rest of us has. And that is, they control the money, they control the budget." She goes on that: "So on Saturday, January 27th, people will be getting on buses and trains and carpools and every other manner of transportation and gathering here in Washington on the Mall between 3rd Street and 7th Street at 11:00 a.m. in the morning and delivering this message. And on top of that, we’re asking people to stay here in Washington for a few more days to do a massive lobby day on Monday, the 29th of January." More lobbying. This is the same "strategy" that was used in countless previous demonstrations. The line is always the same; "This is a more urgent time than the last to pressure congress".

It is true that there is a bit of a political strategy in these ideas, but this has become the party line for UFPJ. It's always "urgent" and it always fails. These marches are one-day events, usually just media-spectacles created by relatively small groups of people whose interests seem to lie in politely convincing politicians that it is in their interests to change their policies and bow to public opinion in order to protect their piece of the power! Of course congress should vote to stop funding the war, of course politicians should order a pull-out of Iraq, but we had better not bow down before the same people and institutions that started this war, providing open arms for their false compassion.

Perhaps the UFPJ definition of "pressure" is lobbying and polite suggestion. The real pressure these groups need to be preaching should involve massive sit-ins in the halls of congress, tens of thousands of limp bodies refusing to be moved out of the streets of Washington D.C. On top of that, these massive organizations should be preaching the actual organizing of people, the building of campus and high-school based anti-war organizations, the organization of active-duty soldiers, the creation of spaces where these forces and collide, build relationships and strategize.

If At First You Don't Succeed, Keep Organizing Marches

It's been almost four years of this cycle of mass marches, lobbying "efforts", hollow rallies and famous personalities emerging into the limelight for flashes of what we have come to call activism. All these things are good to see, I don't mean to trash these ideas. But these things alone mean nothing against 150,000 soldiers in Iraq and a government spending billions of dollars a day on war.

People like me are not shining stars in this realm either. My own anti-war activities have been dormant recently, as have the activities of many people I know and work with. There are two main reasons for this; First a general feeling of hopelessness, exhaustion, lack of ideas and alienation against the horrors coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan; And second a general feeling of powerlessness inside the shadow of groups like UFPJ and ANSWER. These huge groups were given tons of power in the early days of the wars to shape our anti-war movement and plot its course. While I applaud their initial efforts in organizing mass rallies when we needed mass rallies, they have run away with this power and do not seem to be open to dialogue about it, or to changing their "course". Not to mention that these groups have hundreds of thousands of dollars that they throw around paying for these rallies and for plane tickets for celebrities and posters.

While mass marches were important in 2002-2003 to show what existed, a public opposed to war, and to help destroy the post-9/11 dissent-fear that hung over us, they have expectedly failed in building anything beyond that. I say expected because the main purpose of a mass march is to expose a movement. When the Civil Rights movement came to Washington in 1963, it was after a decade of hard struggle in the streets of the south, sit-ins, strikes, boycotts, sacrificed bodies, the organization of students from all over the U.S. and countless local campaigns. Our first marches were similar in idea: We were a united people with a certain message, but 4 years later here we are, still trying the same things over and over, expecting different results, waiting for the congress to play nice with us. Organizers within UFPJ and ANSWER are good at getting big crowds to rallies, creating the images of a movement. But what lies beneath, or rather what doesn't lie beneath, is what really matters.

What we have is a skeleton of a movement with no muscle, no blood, no flesh, and no energy. The UFPJ/ANSWER method is to show the skeleton to the media, hoping they will show it back to the public or to politicians, and then hope that those people will react to it. What ends up happening is the politicians know it's just a skeleton and the media doesn't show it to the public! How come Bush's approval rating and public support for the war are at an all-time low yet these "mass" marches get smaller and smaller? Maybe because people have lost faith in this display of false power!

If At Second You Don't Succeed, Pick New Politicians

After the last elections we are supposed to have faith in the government that started this war, the congress that allowed it to begin with no questions, the congress that passed the countless allocations for trillions of dollars in additional funding for it. "In November, on Election Day in November, there was a nationwide mandate, really, on the war", says Leslie Cagan. But I saw a nationwide mandate on February 15th, 2003 against the war as well as on March 20th, 2003, not to mention any of the other dates before and after that. When do we stop issuing mandates and start taking action?

A famous phrase during election time is "If you don't vote than you cannot complain!" I respond with this: What good is complaining? Do we want to build a movement of complainers, always upset that their politicians didn't do what they thought they would do, again, again, again and again. Do we want a system that allows for us to wage our complaints in a way that sell-out politicians can really here them, or do we want a system where we actually get what we want and have control over those decisions in the first place? Why not say "If you vote, you can and most likely will complain, but whether you vote or not, you can participate in creating social change in your community and in the world." That's a better story and a better model for building a real movement.

Conclusions and Hopes

For me, hope lies in Iraq Veterans Against the War and the growing movement of active-duty soldiers speaking out and taking action against the war. It is this segment of the anti-war movement that connects with people, that has the experience to share and the advice to bring us about how to go about making the changes we need. When the soldiers start resisting, things start changing, and I'm excited to see it. If the anti-war "movement" wants to ends its stagnation it needs to provide the IVAW and associated groups of veterans and soldiers, as well as youth working in counter-recruitment efforts in their schools and communities, with the power and funding they need to grow. When these groups receive an equal share of the resources and exposure that UFPJ and ANSWER were granted in 2002 by our movement, we may once again have an anti-war movement.

Liam Madden, an IVAW member, ex-Marine and co-founder of the Appeal for Redress, spoke March 17th in the shadow of the Pentagon:

"I don't want to wake up in the year 2015 to a war in Iraq because we were too timid in 2007. It is our actions now that will determine if we create our future, or if our future is created for us by war criminals. Congress has done nothing meaningful to stop this war, and our calls for logic, our pleas for sanity, and our demands for humanity have fallen on deaf ears! Therefore: It is on us to end this four year war crime, and I will be brutally honest: It is insane to believe that more of the same will end it. Our clever signs, our passionate speeches, and our large crowds alone... if that could end the war we would not be here today. The truth is, our protests will not end this war, only our resistance will end this war! Symbolism carries great power, but symbolic protest will never catalyze the masses sitting on the fence and it will never send a necessary message to the powers that be. Only our tangible resistance, our determined risk-taking, and our bold civil disobedience will send a message capable of reaching our paralyzed nation. Our mouths can still speak passionately, and our signs can still be stinging, but our bodies must be obstructions to business as usual! Our minds must grasp the urgency our endeavors and our souls must be committed with a sincere love for our purpose of peace. So let's step it up. Let's make a transition from symbolic protest to tangible resistance. Let's put our bodies in the streets."

As Liam spoke, waves of applause broke out at comfortable keywords like "civil disobedience" and "resistance", but there was an eerie silence when he started criticizing our stagnant movement and suggesting we take actual, physical steps towards more effective and meaningful action. Are people going to listen to these words with open-ears and open-hearts, or will we shed them off as the fumes of a pissed-off young veteran? Will power stay in the hands of congress… or will it grow in our movement? Congress has passed cheap resolutions calling for withdrawal in over a year, with 100 billion dollars in continued funding for that year. That's one year of war. In the last one year alone, the lives of 822 U.S. soldiers came to a horrifying end in Iraq and the bodies of thousands more were torn open by gunfire and bombs. Upwards of 100,000 Iraqi lives were taken in this same period, their bodies strewn in marketplaces, piled in ditches, littering streets plastered with U.S. machine gun fire, stiffened in the hallways of crowded, unequipped, bullet-ridden hospitals. This is the cost of one year of the Occupation of Iraq. This is the price paid. Congress should announce these invisible statistics that will accompany their "spending package".

Olympia, WA residents disrupt Iraq shipments in 2006

-R