[Peace-discuss] Whom do you endorse demonstrating with in order to help stop nuclear war?

Wed Feb 22 06:29:38 UTC 2023

I think this gives an unfair impression of Medea Benjamin's stance. 
During the Feb 20th Democracy Now interview, she is clearly supportive 
of a broader antiwar coalition, including people she wouldn't agree with 
on other questions, and makes it plain that not speaking at the weekend 
rally had not been her own choice:

> The issue of yesterday’s march, a rally and then a march to the White 
> House, it was fascinating, Amy. I’ve never been at an antiwar rally 
> like that. My organization, CodePink, didn’t want me to speak there, 
> because they didn’t like a number of the speakers and their positions 
> on other issues. But when have we ever had an antiwar march that 
> brought together Ron Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, Jill Stein, Dennis Kucinich, 
> people from very different political perspectives? And there is 
> another march coming up on March 18th, which a different set of groups 
> is putting together. I think we have to be at every antiwar march. And 
> I’m also excited that on Tuesday we’re having a lobby day in Congress, 
> inviting people of all political persuasions to come meet us in the 
> Rayburn Building and go to the offices of every member of the Armed 
> Services Committee in Congress to say, “Enough weapons. Stop sending 
> weapons. Start negotiating. Stop escalating. Start negotiating.” This 
> is the message I think now that more and more American people want us 
> to take to Congress, which has done nothing but supply billions and 
> billions of weapons to keep this war going, when there is no winning 
> on the battlefield.

On 2/21/23 22:36, J.B. Nicholson via Peace-discuss wrote:
> * Kim Iversen interviewed Chris Hedges in 
> https://rumble.com/v29uevs-anti-war-activist-infighting-reaches-boiling-point-evidence-us-assassinated.html 
> and around 21m43s she said:
>
>> Kim Iversen: That really needs to be where that line is -- people 
>> need to just
>> say, "Look, I'm gonna look through the platform of what this 
>> particular rally is
>> for [moving her hands as if reviewing a checklist of points] I agree, 
>> I agree, I
>> agree, I agree, okay then why not show up? You know, just because you 
>> maybe don't
>> like some of the people who are going to be there. If they include, 
>> because it's
>> some different group that's organizing, if it includes something you 
>> don't agree
>> with then you can say "I cannot support this rally because it has 
>> this particular
>> platform piece on it that I don't agree with". That's fair enough, 
>> right? I think
>> that's fair, just like you say in the piece
>> [https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/12/chris-hedges-there-are-no-permanent-allies-only-permanent-power/] 
>>
>> there are red lines. You don't have to [attend a rally] just because 
>> you don't
>> agree with 90%, if there's 10% you don't agree with, if it's bad 
>> enough then you
>> don't have to go.
>
>
> * Jimmy Dore in 
> https://rumble.com/v2ab03g-jimmy-dore-rages-against-war-machine-at-dc-peace-rally.html 
> starting around 11m12s in, here's an excerpt:
>
>> Jimmy Dore: I know there are some people who wouldn't show up to this 
>> peace
>> rally, this anti-war rally, because of some of the speakers they 
>> didn't like on
>> this stage [crowd audibly boos] and I get what they're saying. 
>> They're saying,
>> "hey, I wanna help stop nuclear war but not with those people" [crowd 
>> laughs and applauds]. I get it, I'm the same way -- my house caught 
>> on fire a couple of months ago. When the firemen showed up I was like 
>> "woah, woah woah. What's your views on Social Security and 
>> Medicare?". [crowd laughs] "I mean I get that this
>> is a scary situation -- my house is on fire -- but first I need to 
>> get your stance
>> on LGBTQ and gender-affirming surgery. I know my house is burning 
>> down, but are
>> you vaxxed?! I need to see proof of at least one booster. I need to 
>> know what
>> your position is on gender-affirming surgery: what age should it 
>> start, and what's
>> your cutoff? And they're standing there lookin' at me like I'm 
>> fuckin' crazy! I
>> guess you don't get to put out my fire then, and my house is gonna 
>> burn down. I
>> hope you're happy. [...] You have to work with people you disagree 
>> with big time,
>> even sometimes people you hate, because we need each other to 
>> survive. I'm
>> reminded of the words of Frederick Douglass who said "I will join 
>> with anyone to
>> do good but with no one to do bad.". If Black Panthers can march 
>> hand-in-hand with
>> the KKK down Las Vegas Boulevard to get welfare payments reinstated, 
>> we can join
>> hands with the right-wing, the Libertarians, the Left, the 
>> Socialists, the
>> Communists, everybody to stop a nuclear war! And what's happening 
>> right here, at
>> this rally, is what scares the hell out of the establishment: 
>> everybody from the
>> Left, everybody from the Right, everybody from the middle coming 
>> together to
>> realize that we have more in common than divides us and we share a 
>> common enemy.
>> That enemy is the Military-Industrial Complex and the oligarchy. The 
>> same
>> oligarchy that did a controlled demolition of our economy and they 
>> want me to hate
>> my neighbor for the pain I'm feeling because of that because they 
>> wouldn't take a vaccine that didn't work the way they said it did in 
>> the first fuckin' place! Well, I'm not gonna hate my neighbor! I'm 
>> gonna love my neighbor! [...]
>
>
>
> * What Max Blumenthal described in the Jimmy Dore Show segment titled 
> "“Boutique” Left Worked OBSESSIVELY To Undermine Anti-War Rally" 
> (https://rumble.com/v2ab5ju-boutique-left-worked-obsessively-to-undermine-anti-war-rally.html) 
> where guest host Aaron Maté and Max Blumenthal discussed who was not 
> supporting and/or undermining the recent anti-war rally.
>
> Maté & Blumenthal named and shamed Amy Goodman of Democracy Now who 
> gave a shamefully short coverage of the rally with no correspondent at 
> the rally, Blumenthal talked about how Code PINK for Justice opposed 
> the rally on specious grounds, and that the ANSWER Coalition is trying 
> to stage a upcoming competing rally built around vague inactionable 
> goals instead.
>
> Max Blumenthal said that Medea Benjamin was "backstage with us at the 
> rally, she was fully in support of it" but "one Code PINK staffer 
> after another, these kind of millennial professional left types, NGO 
> types, would say that they didn't feel safe at the rally as a Muslim 
> or as a gay person so she [Medea Benjamin] couldn't participate." 
> (19m40s). There was no reason for anyone to feel unsafe; no reports of 
> any problems have come up and there were not even speakers saying 
> things where they objected to Muslims or non-heterosexuals.
>
>
>
> * Chris Hedges wrote in 
> https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/12/chris-hedges-there-are-no-permanent-allies-only-permanent-power/
>
>> “The left has become largely irrelevant in the U.S. because it is 
>> incapable of working with the right,” said Nick Brana[1], chair of 
>> The People’s Party[2],
>> which organized[3] the rally with libertarians. “It clings to 
>> identity politics
>> over jobs, health care, wages and war, and condemns half the country as
>> deplorables.”
>>
>> We will not topple corporate power and the war machine alone. There 
>> has to be a left-right coalition, which will include people whose 
>> opinions are not only unpalatable but even repugnant, or we will 
>> remain marginalized and ineffectual. This is a fact of political 
>> life. Alliances are built around particular issues,
>> in this case permanent war, which often fall apart when confronting 
>> other
>> concerns. If I had organized the rally, there are some speakers I 
>> would not have
>> invited. But I didn’t. This does not mean that there are no red 
>> lines: I would not
>> join a protest that included neo-Nazi groups such as Aryan Nations or 
>> militias
>> such as The Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.
>
> [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_3nR0NmUW8
> [2] https://peoplesparty.org/
> [3] https://rageagainstwar.com/#Coalition
>
> Kim Iversen in 
> https://rumble.com/v29uevs-anti-war-activist-infighting-reaches-boiling-point-evidence-us-assassinated.html 
> covered this issue and interviewed Chris Hedges about this. Hedges 
> rightly identified the objections to this recent rally as being "about 
> woke culture" and how ineffective such people are at organizing 
> people. Hedges went on quite consistently and agreeably for most of 
> the interview.
>
> At 19m17s in the clip, Iversen asked about the above quote ("This does 
> not mean that there are no red lines: I would not join a protest that 
> included neo-Nazi groups such as Aryan Nations or militias such as The 
> Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.") and Hedges drew a line at organizing 
> versus attending -- "showing up". Hedges said everyone was allowed to 
> attend but he would not join a rally organized by the groups he listed 
> because, "The central tenets of those organizations are one: they 
> embrace violence, which I don't, but often that's racialized violence. 
> And if they wanna show up to this rally they're more than welcome if 
> they want to embrace those particular points you read out, all of 
> which I support.".
>
>
>
> * Max Blumenthal interviewed Medea Benjamin about 5 months prior to 
> Sunday's rally (that interview is shown in 
> https://youtube.com/watch?v=_n1M0ucV5II). About 2m into that interview:
>
>> Max Blumenthal: Do you think it's possible to work with 'America 
>> First' Republicans, I mean are they the opposition on this specific 
>> issue? Is it
>> possible to have a coalition with them?
>>
>> Medea Benjamin: [shook her head 'no' as Blumenthal spoke] Well, 
>> they're the uh... When you look at the reasons they voted against 
>> this [funding war with Russia via Ukraine] there's all kinds of weird 
>> reasons that I don't feel comfortable being in the same coalition 
>> with people who say that the problem in this country is immigrants, 
>> that they're not in favor of using this money instead of war to 
>> address the climate and they don't agree that there's a climate 
>> crisis. I think what we have to do is build up the opposition from 
>> the progressive community -- from those who care about the climate 
>> crisis and see that war is actually fueling that crisis. [...]
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