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sector of the broad antiwar movement, and brought forces from the AFSC to ANSWER together with grassroots organizers from the unions, community groups, and solidarity initiatives with struggles the world over.
The subordination of antiwar organizing to the election of Barak Obama was repeatedly and scathingly critiqued by presenters and attendees alike, suggesting that the persistent illusions in the president are beginning to weaken.
At the March 20 antiwar events, organizers for the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations will be working to take advantage of this shift by working with others to publicize the United National Antiwar Conference, to be held July 23-25 in Albany, New York. (See adjacent announcement.)
The co-sponsorship of a major antiwar conference by a united force including veterans groups, Code Pink, Progressive Democrats of America, U.S. Labor Against the War, and the Arab American Union Members Council may create the kind of synergy necessary to expand the authority and size of mass action against Obama’s wars in the coming period.
The selection of Albany as a location for the conference is especially meaningful, given that this area is the political home of the leaders of the Troy Area Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, which on Oct. 21, 2009, unanimously passed a resolution calling on the AFL-CIO to organize a national march on Washington for peace, jobs, and health-care justice. Organized labor in this region has been especially active on all these fronts and helped to sustain a stable regional antiwar movement comprised of many longstanding town organizations.
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students and teachers protested. They mobilized in front of the governor’s office and marched to a Municipal Transit Authority (MTA) hearing at the Fashion Institute of Technology. At that location, Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 held a rally, also of several hundred. Both protests were overwhelmingly Black and Latin@.
At Hunter College in New York City, over 300 students participated in the protest, demanding “stop the budget and childcare cuts, halt tuition hikes, and revive CUNY’s mission to provide access to public education for all.”
The spark for the March 4 mobilizations was a rally of 5000 students, workers, and faculty at UC Berkeley on Sept. 24, 2009, with dozens of similar, yet smaller rallies at UC, State, and City College campuses throughout California. Organizers used the momentum from that day of action to build an unprecedented one-person-one-vote open general assembly at UC Berkeley on Oct. 24, where education activists from across the state joined in to lay plans for future united actions.
The meeting, officially named the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education, drew nearly 1000 students, workers, and teachers from as many as 100 different schools, unions, and organizations across California and from all sectors of public education.
A conference with a sizeable labor attendance would serve as a strong antidote to a growing number of misguided calls for the antiwar movement to unite with rightist forces from the Ron Paul and Patrick Buchanan isolationist camps.
The call for the conference stresses the immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces, mercenaries, and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq and represents a united effort around this demand by the 16 co-sponsoring organizations. The cosponsors have also agreed that the conference will entertain additional demands and resolutions for discussion and vote on key issues such as Palestine, Haitian and Honduran sovereignty, and war and the global climate crisis.
The conference will be organized to maximize the democratic discussion about the kind of plan capable of moving the largest layer of the U.S. population into action to oppose Obama’s wars. Resolutions will be solicited from endorsing groups and posted on-line in advance of the conference. Much of the conference time will be devoted to plenary sessions, where these resolutions will be debated and voted upon. n • A socialist perspective on the fight against imperialist war.
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The breadth of this movement is owed largely to Sacramento’s aggressive, broadsided campaign to solve California’s $21 billion budget shortfall on the backs of working people and students. The cuts have become generalized, and few among the working-class and student population have been unaffected by the $17 billion slashed from California schools and colleges and another $16 billion chopped from health and welfare programs.
These inspiring mobilizations took place at an important juncture at which antiwar activists throughout the country are organizing for the March 20 national day of action against the U.S.led wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. With the U.S. government spending trillions of dollars to fund three wars and the occupation of two countries, in addition to nearly $13 trillion that has been either given or pledged to U.S. banks and corporations, little or no money is left for maintaining social programs. Central demands for the March 20 mass mobilizations include: “Funds for jobs, education, housing, health care and human needs—not wars and occupations! Bring the troops home now!”
A challenge remains for the movements against budget cuts and wars to unite into a powerful national force to demand not only an end to state and local government cutbacks, but to demand an end to the federal government’s multi-trilliondollar wars and “welfare for the rich” programs at the expense of working-class jobs, education, and health care. n July 23-25, 2010, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Albany, N.Y The purpose of this conference is to bring together antiwar and social justice activists from across the country to discuss and decide what we can do together to end the wars, occupations, bombing attacks, threats and interventions that are taking place in the Middle East and beyond, which the U.S. government is conducting and promoting. Attend and voice your opinion on where the antiwar movement is today and where we go from here. I and occupations rage on, resulting in an ever increas- n these deeply troubled times, Washington’s two wars ing number of dead and wounded; more and more civilians killed in drone bombing attacks; misery, deprivation, dislocation and shattered lives for millions; and a suicide rate for U.S. service members soaring to unprecedented heights. At the same time, trillions are spent on these seemingly endless Pentagon conflicts waged in pursuit of profits and global domination while trillions more are lost by working people in the value of their homes, in the loss of their jobs, pensions and health care, and in cuts for public services and vitally needed social programs.
We are witness to the massive bailout of banks and corporations while union contracts are shredded, work is outsourced, jobs are shipped off-shore, workers are evicted from their homes and our youth and students face a bleak future of rising tuition costs, an ever-declining quality of education, and diminishing employment opportunities. They are offered instead the opportunity to become cannon fodder as the military serves as the employer of last resort while prison awaits many others.
The poor and working people in the U.S. suffer the horrors of unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness, untreated illnesses and unavailable health insurance, crumbling infrastructure, and temporary and part time work at starvation wages. These multiple crises impact communities of color with disproportionate severity. Meanwhile people in a growing number of countries around the world are subjected to death and destruction by the world’s most powerful military machine.
There is another dimension to this tragedy. The U.S. is at war to control and plunder the very fossil fuel resources whose continued use threatens the future of the human race.
We demand the immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces, mercenaries and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, we recognize that the Middle East cauldron today also encompasses Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine and Israel, while Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba and other countries in Latin America are targeted for intervention, subversion, occupation and control as a consequence of a militarized U.S. foreign policy. Our challenge is not only to end wars and occupations, but to fundamentally change the aggressive policies that inevitably lead our country to militarism and war.
The fight for better times, for a world of peace, justice and freedom, requires that we join together to make it happen, that we fight for the broad unity within the antiwar movement and across all the movements for social justice that has to date escaped us and that we collaborate to engage the American people in massive and united mobilizations against the warmakers and for the justice we deserve.
We have not forgotten the lessons of the civil rights movement, the struggle against the Vietnam War, the feminist and gay rights movements, and the monumental struggles that paved the way to the organization of American trade unions. History has demonstrated time and again that all critical social change is a product of the direct and massive intervention of the people.
We seek an inclusive conference where antiwar individuals and organizations come together to democratically discuss, debate and approve a plan of action aimed at winning the support and allegiance of the majority who have the power to compel a fundamental re-ordering of priorities.
We announce in advance that our goal is to develop strategies that unite us in action—for mass mobilizations and a variety of other tactics that suit the agendas of the constituent groups and individuals who participate in the conference proceedings. Our method is democracy. One person one vote! Our goal is unity in action while respecting our diversity and differences in political program and orientation. Join us in Albany, N.Y., July 23-25 Issued by the United National Antiwar Conference (UNAC) Planning Committee For more information: [email protected]; write UNAC at P.O. Box 21675, Cleveland, OH 44121. Or visit our website at www.nationalpeaceconference.org Socialist Action march 2010 5
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‘Stop the Occupation of Iraq!’