Fw: [ANSWER]: Black Commentator: An Anti-Racist Peace Movement

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "A.N.S.W.E.R." <answer.general at action-mail.org>
To: <answer.general at action-mail.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 10:20 PM
Subject: [ANSWER]: Black Commentator: An Anti-Racist Peace Movement


> AN ANTI-RACIST PEACE MOVEMENT
> 
>  From The Black Commentator
> http://www.blackcommentator.com/26/26_issues.html
> 
> The A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition is serious about creating a 
> genuinely multi-racial movement against the pirates who 
> control the U.S. government. Of the 30 or so speakers that 
> addressed hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters in 
> Washington, January 18, at least 17 were African 
> Americans. Native-born whites were a distinct minority on 
> the microphone, also sharing the historic moment with an 
> international cast of activists from Latin America, Asia, 
> the Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.
> 
> A.N.S.W.E.R. is the acronym for Act Now to Stop War and 
> End Racism 
> (http://www.internationalanswer.org/news/update/011903j18rpt.html). 
> Folks with experience in coalition building understand 
> that nothing, nothing is more politically sensitive than 
> compiling a speakers list for a tightly scheduled event. 
> It is the public face of the movement - or the movement 
> that is envisioned - an irreducible statement. 
> A.N.S.W.E.R. stated plainly, for all the world to see, 
> that anti-racism is a core principle of the movement they 
> seek to build.
> 
> The crowd, which organizers numbered at 200,000 by noon, 
> before many contingents had even arrived, was 
> predominantly white, although otherwise quite varied by 
> age, region and lifestyle. We at The Black Commentator 
> have no problem with the preponderance of white marchers. 
> After all, there are a lot more of them. Blacks ushered in 
> the modern era of Washington mega-demonstrations in 1963 
> and held the nation's capitol as if we owned it in the 
> 1995 Million Man March. African Americans are the most 
> consistently anti-war demographic, by far. African 
> American representatives comprise the core of the Peace 
> Party in the U.S. Congress. Ten thousand Colin Powells 
> could not alter the anti-war character of Black America.
> 
> What is most important - and what the anti-war movement of 
> a previous generation failed to fully understand - is that 
> white people who seek to build a movement must be prepared 
> to accept leadership from the ranks of those who have 
> always been in motion. There can be no hint of privilege 
> in the struggle against Power.
> 
> The Black contingent - a majority on the speakers platform 
> - was, itself, a coalition, comprised of politicians, 
> religious leaders, union activists, students, scholars - 
> veterans of a thousand marches against a multitude of 
> grievances, a non-sectarian reflection of Black America as 
> a whole.
> 
> George Bush was elsewhere, shielded from the bitter cold, 
> but his ears must have burned red. "You can't rob us of 
> health care, by spending billions of dollars on this dumb 
> war in Iraq," declared Mahdi Bray, of the Muslim American 
> Society Freedom Foundation.
> 
> "We must fight the terrorism of lack of economic 
> development in our communities," said Brooklyn City 
> Councilman John Barron.
> 
> Everywhere, placards like "Money for Jobs, Not War" 
> proclaimed the class issue. So did 18 year old 
> A.N.S.W.E.R. Youth and Student Coordinator and Howard 
> University freshman Peta Lindsay: "We are not the 
> executives of Exxon and Mobile, and this war is not in our 
> interests."
> 
> Black labor grapples with issues of race and class, daily. 
> "Workers and working people want jobs, but we want jobs in 
> an economy that is built on peace, not war," said Fred 
> Mason, AFL-CIO statewide president for Maryland and 
> Washington, DC.
> 
> New York City Labor Against War co-convener Brenda Stokely 
> sees the connections, clearly. "Our fight for justice in 
> the workplace has to be part of our fight for justice in 
> the world."
> 
> Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, displaced 
> from her seat by a Hard Right cash juggernaut last summer, 
> denounced the Bush family war on domestic democracy. "We 
> won't forget that your brother trampled on the voting 
> rights of the poor and people of color" in Florida, said 
> McKinney. "Dr. King warned us that we have guided missiles 
> and misguided men."
> 
> King was omnipresent, universally invoked. Rev. Jesse 
> Jackson recalled a meeting on the civil rights leader's 
> last birthday, January 15, 1968. At the top of the day's 
> agenda were two items: civil rights enforcement and an end 
> to the war in Vietnam. "Today we have come full circle," 
> said Rev. Jackson. "We're not fighting about security. 
> We're fighting about hegemony and oil and defense 
> contracts."
> 
> Bill Fletcher, the scholarly president of TransAfrica 
> Forum, senses madness in the air. "We stand on the edge of 
> a precipice of catastrophe, and if it were not so serious 
> it could be a skit on Saturday Night Live," said Fletcher, 
> also co-chair of United for Peace. Bush is enflaming the 
> world. "What will he do when the hordes of the 
> dispossessed are at the gates of the United States?"
> 
> Presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton scoped the game in 
> Bush's plan. "Are we talking about weapons of mass 
> destruction, or a political game of mass distraction?" 
> Deficits rising, child care disappearing. "You can't fight 
> in our name. We will stand up, we will not back down, we 
> will fight the fight."
> 
> Detroit's John Conyers, dean of the Congressional Black 
> Caucus, was the sole U.S. representative on-site. "You are 
> the truest patriots in this country, here today," Conyers 
> told the crowd, by now at least half as large as the 
> population of a congressional district. "Only American 
> citizens can stop this war, now. There is still time, 
> brothers and sisters, but not much."
> 
> Pam Parker and Lucy Murphy, introduced as "cultural 
> workers," sang their own composition, "Mothers Day," with 
> the moving refrain
> 
> You take our money
> You think I don't see
> You use it to fire
> On women like me
> 
> Other African American speakers included: Larry Holmes, 
> International Action Center; Rev. Graylan Hagler, Plymouth 
> Congregational Church, United for Peace; Rev. Herbert 
> Daughtry, House of the Lord, Brooklyn; Viola Plummer, 
> December 12 Movement; Damu Smith, Black Voices for Peace; 
> Imam Mousa, Masjid Al-Islam; and the Reverend Lucius 
> Walker, who read an anti-war statement from Rep. Charles 
> Rangel (D-NY).
> 
> Organizers put the crowd at half a million. DC police say 
> they no longer do estimates.
> 
> Barbara, Barbara!
> 
> San Francisco A.N.S.W.E.R. headcounters claim 200,000 took 
> to the streets on Saturday - most of whom seemed to know 
> the local Black Congresswoman by name. "Barbara, Barbara," 
> chanted the crowd as Rep. Barbara Lee took the microphone. 
> "The silent minority has become the vocal majority because 
> of you," said Lee, the only member of the House to vote 
> against giving Bush sweeping anti-terrorism powers in the 
> immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001. "It's not too 
> late for the administration to heed our call. It takes 
> leadership to resolve conflicts peacefully. It does not 
> take leadership to drop bombs."
> 
> For more from The Black Commentator, go to 
> http://www.blackcommentator.com
> 
> --------------------
> 
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> Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
> 
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