[Peace-discuss] It's up to us

[C. G. Estabrook]

 From Justin Raimondo's attack on the United National Antiwar Conference in 
Albany last weeked:


"...What is needed is not another leftist-dominated 'coalition,' which puts on 
conferences that address the faithful, reasserts their well-worn dogmas, and 
sponsors marches of a few thousand (at most). You’ll note that these marches 
nearly always take place on the coasts – especially San Francisco, that bastion 
of the left’s past glories – but never penetrate into the American heartland. 
Until and unless they do, the antiwar movement, as an organized force in 
American politics, will literally remain a fringe phenomenon.

"The irony here is that it was the Trotskyists in the 1960s who really 
understood how to build a mass antiwar movement: the Socialist Workers Party 
(SWP) had a really effective strategy and that was to make the antiwar movement 
during the Vietnam era a single issue movement. The idea was to unite all who 
could be united around a simple axiomatic principle: Get the US out of Vietnam. 
Period. The SWPers were among the most energetic and effective antiwar 
organizers because they knew the difference between building a mass movement 
around the issue of war and peace and building a political party: the former had 
to be broad and all-inclusive, as opposed to the latter, which, by definition, 
has a more comprehensive (and self-limiting) character..."


Full article (which I don't entirely endorse, although I think the above is 
correct) at 
<http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/07/27/why-is-the-antiwar-movement-stalled/>.