'How we beat Operation Rescue'

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The following interview with WACDTF leader Diana Cerkanowicz, was conducted by Julia Steinberg on Nov. 19.

Socialist Action: What is your assessment of this weekend?

D.C.: I feel it was a very successful weekend for abortion rights activists. We were able to really throw a wrench in their game plan, and they were not able to pull off their 100 people in jail for 45 days.

They were not able to shut down any clinics. They repeatedly violated the civil injunction, and I think we have more than enough information to prove that in court.

S.A.: You obviously learned a lot from D.C. Project I, last year. How did WACDTF prepare for D.C. Project II?

D.C.: We did a lot more training, a lot more intelligence gathering. We had followers. We had shadowers. We had people at every Metro station monitoring their movements. We had infiltrators. We knew the clinic providers a lot better and we had a year's worth of experience under our belt. All this combined made us much more effective.

S.A.: How did the providers [of birthcontrol services] respond to word of D.C. Project II?

D.C.: I'm not the best person to talk to since I don't work directly with them. But from talking to our provider-relations committee, I got the impression they took the threat much more seriously this year. They worked much more closely with us this year.

Over the year, whenever there has been a hit, we've sent them letters; we've held meetings. They've come to realize over the last year that we're not there to engage in fisticuffs with the "antis," that we're there to non-violently ensure that the clinics remain open and patients are seen. is regularly closed on Saturdays. After realizing that they had been sitting at a closed clinic for over two hours, Terry and the others moved to the Capitol Women's Center, which had already been hit that morning.

By the time the blockaders arrived at the Capitol Women's Center, all the patients had gotten in. Alerted by a phone call from escorts who had remained on the site, abortion-rights activists meeting for a debriefing following the morning's events immediately jumped back into cars to return to the clinic to reinforce the defense lines.

The events of the weekend showed abortion rights activists that we cannot depend on the police or politicians to defend the clinics for us. OR members were released quickly from detention, enabling them to rejoin the blockades.

Despite a permanent injunction that prohibits OR from impeding access to abortion clinics and that imposes fines upwards of $1500 for individual leaders and $50,000 for In a statement to the press, NOW President Molly Yard said, "Our government has ordered American servicewomen to submit to Saudi Arabia's misogynist traditions. No American servicewoman or man should be asked to shed blood in defense of countries with such appalling records in human rights."

the organization for each violation, blockaders were only charged with incommoding traffic and fined $50 each.

Although clinic defenders were outnumbered, OR was unsuccessful in its goal of denying women in Washington, D.C., access to abortion and other health services.

As a WACDTF statement explained, "Because of our firm commitment, we proved once again to OR and to the Washington metropolitan area that women will not be bullied and that we will band together to ensure women's rights to the healthcare facilities that they deserve."

ON DECEMBER