[Below is the address given to the United…]

Scan page 5

Below is the address given to the United National Antiwar Conference in Albany, N.Y., by Christine Gauvreau, speaking on behalf of the National Assembly. T in U.S. history. In Iraq the pain and suffering just he war in Afghanistan is already the longest war go on and on and on. Equally morally repugnant is the vicious propaganda campaign and illegal blockade against Iran. The U.S. flaunts all world opinion and continues to support the brutal Israeli regime: its apartheid walls, dark prisons, criminal blockades, and its nuclear arsenal bristling with weapons aimed at the other nations of the Middle East and South Asia.

From Korea to Costa Rica, the U.S. military machine is in deadly motion.

There is only one force on earth that can put this monster back in its cage. That is the force that we saw in motion in 2006 when millions of immigrant workers took to the streets. That is the force we sensed when the Oakland longshoremen let that Israeli ship sit idly in their port. That force is the political mobilization of working people in their millions abroad and here at home. We can’t do that today, but everything we can do should be designed to lead us to that place.

So the strategy advocated by the National Assembly can be summed up easily: We privilege united-front mass actions independent of the Democratic and Republican parties.

What does that mean? Let ‘s take the call for unity. Almost every single one of us is here in this room because we sense we need unity to get the job done.

It is obvious that the 10 U.S. warmakers are united.

They do not let tactical differences—about surges or no surges, negotiations or not, warlord A or warlord B—they do not let these tactical differences prevent them from blocking together to keep the war machine humming. Wasn’t this totally clear at early this month when, despite the face-saving gesture provided by the Rule, Congress continued to fund the war?

We too must embrace those actions that can unite us.

When I look at this room I know that I am looking at the leaders of hundreds of Saturday vigils, hundreds of brown-bag lunches at Congressional offices, hundreds of potlucks and tours, pickets and phone campaigns, hundreds of election campaigns, dozens of courageous acts of individual witness. Every single one of these activities knits the fabric of our movement. Every single one of these activities binds and forges us into an organizing force. But they are not enough!

This year let us use every one of our many campaigns to build toward a giant united action on April 9. Let us use every press conference on “Bringing the War Dol... Antiwar (continued from page 4: “Extending unemployment compensation has to be just the first step”) just days after conference attendees returned home, it was announced that the Iraqi government had raided and closed all offices of the electrical workers’ union, underlining the importance of heightened solidarity.

The program urged support to actions aimed at dismantling the Cold War nuclear, biological, radiological, and chemical weapons and delivery systems. It called for solidarity with GIs, veterans, and military families and support for their campaigns and calls for action. And it called for actions against war profiteers, including oil and energy companies, weapons manufacturers, and engineering firms whose contractors are working to insure U.S. economic control of Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s resources.

The Action Program noted the necessity to link the antiwar movement with mass actions demanding urgent social needs such as jobs, health care, housing, education, and immigrant rights.

A Continuations Committee was approved, consisting of one representative of each of the 31 co-sponsoring conference organizations. This committee was empowered to expand its membership with additional forces in agreement with the conference’s adopted program. It is expected that the expansion will result in the broadest unified antiwar effort in decades.

Workshop discussions draw crowds Two-dozen conference workshops provided critical spaces for movement activists to discuss and debate many of the movement’s most hotly contested subjects. This was the case with a workshop that attracted 120 participants entitled, “The Rise of Right Wing Populism and the Tea Party: Do We Need a Right-Left Coalition?” Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin and Kevin Zeese of Voters for Peace argued that the idea had merit in attracting some of the forces who have been inadvertently attracted to right-wing solutions. Chris Gauvreau and Glen Ford rejected such an alliance, arguing that it would only serve to drive away the very forces that are a prerequisite to the antiwar movement’s success.

A workshop entitled “Israel and the Palestinian Struggle: Is a Two-State Solution Possible or Desirable?” drew some 80 participants, most of whom rejected a “two-state solution,” a far cry from previous conferences where mere mention of a Democratic Secular Palestine was considered anathema to any serious discussion. The panelists detailed the historic conditions that led to the formation of the Zionist Israeli state and its constant expansion as well as the dramatic impact of the murderous blockade and siege of Gaza and the Israeli army killings aboard the flotilla boats carrying humanitarian relief to Gaza.

There was also a workshop featuring Palestinian activists speaking on boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel and other strategies. It was more than evident from the workshop discussions and the overall UNAC deliberations that this conference marked the sea change in politics that has deeply permeated the consciousness of the broad antiwar movement.

The July 23-25 UNAC conference opened lars Home” to begin to build momentum toward a united mass action on April 9.

Let us use every city council vote on budget cuts to garner an endorsement for April 9.

Let us use every student demonstration for education not war, every fight against teacher cuts, every tour of Gaza Flotilla survivors, every Honduras solidarity action, every protest of U.S. crimes in Haiti to publicize a mobilization that builds and builds and builds.

We can each continue our dearest projects but bring it all together in a common action whose size and diversity will make the antiwar movement visible to those who increasingly need to find it.

Some of you are asking: Does it make sense to talk of mass actions? The call for a march [in Washington, D.C.] for jobs, not war on Oct. 2 is a signal that the time when we can put sizeable numbers of antiwar people into the streets is near. The rally of hundreds of thousands in Arizona to beat back the racist anti-immigrant law about to take effect tells us this is possible.

Did you experience the power of the rally of 200,000 Latino workers in Washington, D.C., last March? The Equality march of 200,000 last spring? The stirring mobilizations of thousands of Arab Americans during the invasion of Gaza? And let us not forget that growing outcry against the preemptive prosecutions of innocent Muslim Americans is challenging the ideology of the War on Terror at its very root. The antiwar movement has been at a low level of mobilization but things are changing. We must have things in place.

This conference, organized on the basis of broad sponsorship and one person/one vote, is the tried and true mechanism for getting demonstrations that the whole movement can buy into. If we can make democratic functioning in large open conferences the norm, we can move away from divisiveness and toward cooperation on regular mass actions. We can begin that process here.

Finally, I want to address the third component of our strategy—political independence. The National Assembly firmly believes that to build a movement strong enough to push back the warmakers, the demonstrations that we call together must be visibly independent of both political parties. We all know that Congress thinks they have us in their pocket. We have to let them know that we are going to fight for what we want—what working people at home and abroad need—no matter what they do. They have to know in their bones that the consequences of their inaction on the war will be the complete alienation of the vast majority from their political system. They have to truly and deeply fear the growth of a movement that canthe door wide to a return to the streets of a reinvigorated antiwar movement. Nine months of coordinated actions have been placed on the movement’s agenda. The fulfillment of the conference’s promise depends now on the capacity of the hitherto divided movement to come together to reach and exceed its immediate potential.

Unity in the antiwar movement, not to mention in the radical and socialist left, has never come easy. Divisions remain deep and profound. But mass-action united-front politics and practice have always proved decisive in bringing together the broadest layers on the basis of widely held principles.

Today these principles boil down to the key slogans, “Bring the troops home now!” “Money for jobs and all associated human needs, not war,” and “End to all U.S. aid to Israel!”—chief agency of U.S. and world imperialism in the Middle East. The stakes are high. The future of humanity could well depend on the outcome.

The conference ended with Jerry Gordon, national secretary of both the National Assembly and UNAC, reviewing the accomplishments of the conference and noting the importance of forging a lasting unity in the movement.

Gordon humorously awarded Marilyn Levin of New England United and Joe Lombardo, representing the Albany area peace and justice community, the title of “the conference’s Most Valuable Players (MVPs).” Marilyn headed a team that solicited and organized some 128 speakers into various workshops and panel presentations, the effect of which was to provide participants with a well-rounded and broadly representative spectrum Rodrigo Abd / AP (Above) U.S. soldiers near Kandahar, July 28. Bring them home now from Afghanistan!

not be comforted with a meeting with a Congressional aide.

But there is a much more immediate and pressing reason why our united actions must be organized around demands that reflect what we really want. We are organizing in the Great Recession, and that means that politics are extreme and polarized.

The vast majority of the people who are victimized by this war hate all politicians, and especially those in power. They hate whatever regime is in power because their life is in shambles and there is no end to the misery in sight. The jobs are not coming back. Their homes are not coming back. The deportations are not going to end.

If we tie our demonstrations to the defense of the indefensible things going on in Congress, we risk losing the people we need to the other political force that is willing to stand up and just say no to politics as usual. We risk driving at least some of the Anglo victims of this war to the extreme right, to the Tea Party or to whatever radicalized rightist force is willing to stand up say no to parliamentary games.

In that sense, the decision about what next in U.S. politics is really and truly up to us. The stakes are extremely high. But I think that we here in this room can rise to the challenge and be part of the process of real fundamental change. We can and must shape actions that truly speak to all those who have thrown away by their employers and the banks and the politicians. We can and must help them experience their own agency and innate political power in the streets.

So I say, let us forge an agreement on political independence and unity in action right here and right now. Out Now! Money for Jobs Not War! On to April 9! n of the movement’s political views. Lombardo headed an on-site logistics team of some 40 activists who for several months had meticulously planned and organized almost every aspect of the conference’s functioning.

Gordon noted the important role of the conference’s four co-chairs—Jim Lafferty, executive director, Los Angeles National Lawyers Guild; Michael McPhearson, cochair United for Peace and Justice and past executive director of Veterans for Peace; Kathy Black, national co-convener, US Labor Against the War and leader of the Philadelphia-area Coalition of Labor Union Women; and this writer, national co-coordinator of the National Assembly.

Special mention was also given to the conference’s broadly representative presiding committee—Kathy Kelly, Center for Creative Nonviolence; Michael Eisenscher, national coordinator, USLAW; Blanca Misse, UC Berkeley student leader and central organizer of the March 4 statewide anti-budget-cuts strike; Mary Nichols-Rhodes, Ohio state coordinator of Progressive Democrats of America; and Marilyn Levin, co-national coordinator, National Assembly.

Gordon concluded with a statement of his personal appreciation for the collaboration, advice, and meticulous attention to detail of USLAW’s Michael Eisenscher in a wide range of endeavors critical to the conference’s functioning.

Following Gordon’s remarks, conference participant Adam Shils from Chicago rose for a special point to unanimously affirm the key role of Jerry Gordon in the conference’s success. The meeting ended with a standing ovation for Gordon’s leadership and tireless efforts and for the unity he had so effectively fostered. n Socialist Action august 2010 5