[Peace-discuss] National Assembly: 1 milliion surround the White House next Spring?

[Randall Cotton]

What if all anti-war activist groups across the nation, large and small,
finally united together at the most grassroots level with the goal of
bringing about the largest anti-war demonstration in U.S. history? A
demonstration not attached to any political party, not attached to any one
meta-group like United for Peace and Justice or ANSWER (yet including
them), with a tightly focused and uncompromising message of "troops and
bases out of Iraq now" (period). What if all groups nationwide started
mobilizing NOW for a date in Spring '09?

Such a movement might be born at the "National Assembly to End the
Iraq War & Occupation" in Cleveland, Ohio on June 28th and 29th. AWARE
should be there.

In September 2005, AWARE sent 2 busloads to the UFPJ/ANSWER demonstration
in DC. We organized it in 2 months. What if we started planning NOW for a
DC demonstration 10 months from now? That's 5 times as long, so why not
that many more buses (10)? What if we planned NOW to attend, inviting
friends NOW, started talking about it NOW on "AWARE on the Air" every
week, flyering at Main Event starting NOW, putting up a billboard NOW,
mentioning it at every AWARE Presents event starting NOW, writing letters
to the editor NOW, making Public Square spots NOW?

And what if every anti-war group in the country did the same?

Indeed, that's the premise of the upcoming "National Assembly" conference
coming up June 28-29 in Cleveland, Ohio. And it's a premise that demands
our direct participation and support.

>From the www.natassembly.com website: "The objective is to place on the
agenda of the entire U.S. antiwar movement a proposal for the largest
possible united mass mobilization(s) in the future to stop the war and end
the occupation." The main "action proposal", which would be debated,
possibly amended, and voted on at the conference calls for "massive,
united, independent and bi-coastal Spring 2009 demonstrations against the
war" motivated by a call for "nothing less than the immediate and
unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops and bases from Iraq".

If this movement is only partially successful in Spring '09, it would
still deserve our support because it could build into something
bigger in Spring '10. And even if this initiative falls flat on its face
for some reason, given the admirable premise I don't think we can even
*pretend* to be a genuine anti-war group unless we participate and support
it. And indeed if it was to fail, please let it not be in part because
local grassroots groups like AWARE didn't support it at the beginning.

In fact, it *will* fail unless groups like us commit to it at a grassroots
level. There is no overarching meta-organizer sitting in DC here. It's a
much more decentralized approach that envisions local and regional groups
all networking with each other to collectively mount a truly massive
nationwide focus on a single demonstration day next Spring (and perhaps
each year thereafter until we actually get out of Iraq).

You may wonder what might be different about this demonstration? There
have been many demonstrations in recent years and none of them approached
the size of the ones held even *before* the war. What will be different in
Spring '09?

Well, for one thing, Bush will be out of office. Despite the momentum
behind the Iraq War that we understand to exist within the "permanent
government", a different administration may not have the same deaf ear to
mass public protests that the Bush/Cheney White House has. Maybe they
will, but it's incumbent upon us to test it robustly.

Also, we know roughly 2/3 of the country now opposes this war. And many of
them have opposed it for years. Some more than 5 years. With the change in
administration, I suspect that perhaps 1% of those 200,000,000 people who
oppose the war are just so sick and tired of the war at this point, that
given enough advance notice, they would make plans to attend a
well-organized, massively publicized demonstration even if they had to
travel halfway across the country to do so. 1% of 200,000,000 makes a
million for each coast. A million each in DC and SF, perhaps.

Another difference is that this particular demonstration overcomes and
bypasses the bad blood and rivalries between the two heretofore most
capable national demonstration organizers - "United for Peace and Justice"
and ANSWER. In the past, even when these two organizations tried to join
together to create a large demonstration (instead of splitting
participants between their own separate demonstrations), things were still
riven by deep divisions, differing philosophies and personal conflicts
which ultimately limited the potential of such demonstrations. In December
2005, UFPJ vowed never to work with ANSWER in coordinating national
demonstrations.

But this new effort is not coordinated by either UFPJ or ANSWER (though
they are each sending their National Coordinators and would presumably
contribute their support along with other groups nationwide). This effort
was initiated by members of American Friends Service Committee (Quakers)
and US Labor Against the War and is intended to be much more grassroots
oriented (it's not even a formal project of either AFSC or USLAW - it's
its own thing). But for such an effort to be successful, anti-war groups
across the country have to step up, get involved and provide support.
Groups like AWARE need to participate in the conference, join and network
with other groups and do what we can in our corner of the Midwest to make
this idea come alive.

I'm taking on a role here to inform folks about the conference and urge
AWARE (and any other anti-war group this message reaches) to send
representatives to this conference in support of the specific goal
identified - the most massive national demonstrations possible on both
coasts, as a nationwide movement, not an individual group's event, without
any compromises involved with attaching to any particular political party
or politician but rather with the sole, unqualified demand of  "the
immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops and bases from
Iraq".

My role is not to go myself and represent AWARE - I think I'm more
effective at raising awareness and advocating that someone else go
(hopefully two folks). Besides, I've represented AWARE in the past at a
peace conference - let someone else go who hasn't yet.

No one has come forward yet volunteering to go (some interest has been
expressed, but no one has committed). I don't anticipate any
problem in funding this, all expenses paid.

Here are the details:

June 28 and 29th are Saturday and Sunday. Registration fee $50 per
attendee. Hotel room at the conference itself is $140 per night (including
tax), not cheap, but again, I don't anticipate that raising money will be
a problem, even for a two night stay (night of 27th and 28th). Hotel
details specific to the conference are at:

http://www.clevelanddowntownhotel.com/nationalassembly/

It's about an 8 hour drive, 450 miles (not as far as Minneapolis, to which
several folks from round these parts trekked this past weekend). So gas
could be like $160 at 20 miles/gallon. Or perhaps we could get a cheap
flight instead (I spotted a $265 rate just now).

If someone is willing to step forward and commit, I'm willing to do
whatever I can to make it easy for them to do so (hopefully two folks
willing to room together, actually). But time is short. Please consider
this now and contact me right away if you're interested.

I plan to put forth a proposal for AWARE to fund all or part of this at
this week's Sunday meeting (regardless of whether we have someone
committed to going or not - the proposal could only be ratified the
following week anyway).

R