Ben's piece makes a lot of points I totally agree with: I think in general a lot of protest movements are too convoluted and too co-opted by specific groups that demean the true point of the protest.

But at the same time I understand why they're there- yeah, it's silly to see the "Free Mumia" signs in the middle of an anti-war rally, but then again Budweiser tends to pay for ads during sports, doesn't it? People who think there will be people to listen to them will congregate there.

The last major rally I attended was in New York City in February 2003 prior to the start of the war- over 400,000 people showed up, and despite media perceptions it was mostly regular people among the sporadic over-zealous street performers and weekend anarchists. Regardless of the silly stuff the big story was the very presence of 400,000 people choking the streets of the Upper East Side. Sometimes rallying everyone is important, because the most important message of all is simply letting the administration know you exist.

...I think Ben's not hard enough on ANSWER. But that's just me. :) I appreciate, at least, that we're having a critical discussion about it in the CAP community.

Can I just point out, for people who don't do their research and might be misled, that International ANSWER is a small, if vocal, subset of a much larger antiwar/peace and justice movement.

Specifically, International ANSWER is a semi-fascist organization that supported such luminaries as Slobodan Milosevic because he was supposedly "socialist."

The writer positions ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice as if they are two groups with equal weight in the movement. Nothing could be further from the truth. ANSWER has a few wealthy backers and a committed cadre of people that make it seem much larger than it actually is. The vast, overwhelming majority of people in the peace and justice movement who are members of a national organization are part of UfPJ, not ANSWER. In fact, UfPJ originally had organized a separate march this weekend, because of their discomfort with ANSWER's rhetoric and authoritarian style. Only after ANSWER flooded progressive mailing lists with rants about "a united peace movement at any cost" and personally and repeatedly harassed UfPJ members did the coalition relent and agree to organize a joint event.

Unfortunately, ANSWER has done a much better job organizing in communities of color and low-income areas of the country. In Philadelphia, where I live, it's really the only game in town other than Quaker organizations, who aren't as frequent with their rallies and demonstrations. There are plenty of non-fascist, non-authoritarian progressive organizations (like UfPJ and the Quakers) here but the fact is that ANSWER puts more of its resources into specifically recruiting people who aren't rich, suburban and white, and they more frequently promote issues important to these people.

And so that gets me back to this weekend's march. I do find it less than effective that ANSWER conflates conflicts in Haiti and Palestine with the war on Iraq. Although I do agree with them that these conflicts flow from a particular form of oppression and global political control, I think they often sacrifice accuracy for shock value, and that's unfortunate. But while UfPJ and related organizations (MoveOn, TrueMajority, etc.) have been adept at mobilizing the suburban white center-left (Cindy Sheehan et al.) ANSWER unquestionably puts more effort into mobilizing those communities who are actually disproportionately affected by this war both directly, in terms of recruitment, and indirectly, in terms of the economic consequences. And I have to give them credit for that, even if I wholeheartedly disagree with their authoritarian structure that fails to empower anyone, even while it mobilizes them.

But the main point is that ANSWER is not the peace and justice movement, and they weren't the only — or even the primary — organizers of this march.

Then there is always the Jewish Question. Even as a non-hawkish member of the tribe, I feel uncomfortable with the overheated anti-Israel rhetoric that is par for the course at every anti-war rally since September 11th. The inevitable signs will show Ariel Sharon as Adolf Hitler, an Israeli flag as a swastika. These comparisons are more than just outlandish. They are deeply hurtful to Jews who lost family in the Holocaust – so much so that even an anti-occupation Jew such as myself feels uncomfortable lending his implicit support to such a rally.

From one member of the tribe to another, when have you ever been in a crowd of over 100,000 people that DIDN'T include some antisemitic idiots? I've come to terms with the overblown anti-Israel rhetoric because it really only comes from the few posers who don't understand the actual nature of the situation but want to look like the Socialist protesters they met while in a youth hostel in Oslo. Screw them--I'm an Eagle Scout, football playing, Chess team, former PFC Jew against the war, and I don't care about the idiots on our side any more than I care about Fred Phelps and the Freepers who'll be out on Saturday. Each side gets its freaks, and neither side should let itself be typed by the fringe nuts.

I think ANSWER is also facing a problem of guilt by association (see also: politics & bedfellows)--nobody within ANSWER that I personally know is a Stalinist, though the Stalinist nuts certainly do make up a part of the group. But let's not paint them as the only group in the hierarchy of the Sept. 24th National Mobilization: we've also got the more moderate United for Peace and Justice, Troops Out Now, Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Cindy herself.... Again, this is just a matter of who got the permits and who sent out the call.

You can't keep individuals from showing up with their own signage and agendas, but you can organize any action around a focused message. If you don't, you will dilute its impact.

At the same time, I believe it is far more important to show up for this event than to insist upon message purity. Too much has been invested for anyone antiwar to stay home.

Mr. Adler's piece conveys some very important points...the rhetoric and pure ridiculousness (a word?) of many activist groups certainly have contributed to me being turned off to activism. Ideally, activism SHOULD be about specific goals and lobbying should be done to a specific authority capable of achieving them. Moreover, Mr. Adler's writing is fluid, incisive, and deeply thoughtful. I applaud him for work well done!