Washington, DC, September 24, 2005. Leslie Cagan, Jesse Jackson, and Cindy Sheehan on stage during a rally against the Iraq war that drew hundreds of thousands of protesters to Washington. Two sponsoring coalitions agreed to split stage time at the rally;

The September 2005 anti-war protest in Washington, DC was hailed as a revival of a movement. The march brought out 300,000 protesters, by organizers' estimates, and was indisputably the largest since the start of the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. After a summer in which Cindy Sheehan's [7] campaign to demand personal accountability from the vacationing George Bush had riveted the nation, the march attracted record numbers of military veterans and grieving families -- giving the movement an unassailable moral credibility.

But it is significant that this credibility arose from the rank-and-file marchers while that very credibility may have been undermined by elements of the demonstration's organizational leadership.

Since the prelude to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the large, visible antiwar protests in the United States -- especially the marches in Washington, New York, and San Francisco -- have been led by two organizations that have at times cooperated but have frequently been at odds: United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ [8]) and International ANSWER [9] (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). For the September 24 march, they agreed to cooperate by dividing the stage time equally, with different speakers and different banners, although ANSWER actually held the permit.

Both UFPJ and ANSWER have been criticized by some activists as top-down and insufficiently democratic. But concerns are growing over ANSWER's links to a doctrinaire organization called the Workers' World Party [10] (WWP), which has a history of seeking to dominate coalitions and has held many ultra-hard-line positions on international issues.

Steve Ault, a gay activist in New York City since 1970, served as UFPJ's logistics coordinator for the historic pre-war mobilization on February 15, 2003; the Republican National Convention protests in 2004; and the May 1 march for nuclear disarmament this past spring. He charges that ANSWER is a front group for the WWP. Speaking as an individual -- not on behalf of UFPJ -- he decries what he sees as an imbalance between the two major antiwar formations: "When Workers' World forms a so-called coalition, it's not a coalition at all; it's a vehicle to attempt to amplify their power and control. It's not like UFPJ, which has no controlling faction."

History of Dissension

International ANSWER formed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, around the core of the International Action Center (IAC) [11], itself formed by Workers' World.

Many in the movement are unaware of these organizational connections, and of WWP's history of problematic political positions. In 1956, WWP supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary, claiming the Hungarian striking workers were "counterrevolutionary"; in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, WWP charged that protesters had launched "violent attacks on the soldiers," provoking the military's actions; during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, WWP portrayed reports of atrocities and mass rape by the Serb forces as "imperialist lies."

Ramsey Clark, the visible leader of the International Action Center, was a founder of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, and has also provided legal representation for some accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Recently, Workers' World has undergone a factional split (over tactics, not principles), with a breakaway group apparently taking most of ANSWER with it. This has led the IAC and the faction that still calls itself Workers' World to help found a new coalition, Troops Out Now! The breakaway faction, based mostly in San Francisco, is called the Party for Socialism and Liberation [12]. Troops Out Now!, which endorsed the September 24 march, remains based at the International Action Center's New York offices.

Managing the Split

For the antiwar movement, disagreements over WWP's politics have led to simultaneous separate marches in the same cities, or uneasy alliances in order to avoid such splits.

On May 1, 2005, UFPJ and Troops Out Now! held separate marches in New York City surrounding the review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty underway at the United Nations. Troops Out Now! rejected UFPJ's pro-disarmament theme. IAC spokesperson Dustin Langley told journalist Sarah Ferguson of the Village Voice, "Iran and North Korea have a right to get any kind of weapon they need to defend themselves against the largest military machine on the planet."

The current issue that has led to tensions with UFPJ is WWP's refusal to countenance any criticism of the Iraqi "resistance." Troops Out Now! comes closest to taking an open stance in support of the armed insurgents, calling in its literature for the antiwar movement to "acknowledge the absolute and unconditional right of the Iraqi people to resist the occupation of their country without passing judgment on their methods of resistance."

In the prelude to the March 2004 rally in New York, ANSWER insisted on making an end to the occupation of Palestine a central demand of the demonstration. UFPJ balked, stating that while they agreed it was important to address Palestine, the main purpose of the march was to express broad opposition to the war in Iraq. ANSWER responded by circulating a letter online, signed by numerous Arab and Muslim groups, charging that it was racist of the antiwar movement not to give the Palestinian cause equal footing.

UFPJ's member groups have "agreed to disagree" on how to achieve peace in the Middle East, taking no stance, for instance, on the right of return for Palestinian refugees -- a demand embraced by ANSWER. And unlike ANSWER, UFPJ has put out a position criticizing all attacks on civilians -- whether by the Israeli military or Palestinian militants.

Some have perceived UFPJ's "agree-to-disagree" position as an equivocation that has rendered the coalition vulnerable on this issue. In any case, ANSWER has proved itself adept at building coalitions with Arab and Muslim groups.

Ibrahim Ramey, national disarmament coordinator for the faith-based pacifist organization Fellowship of Reconciliation [13], says: "ANSWER has done much more organizing in pro-Palestinian Islamic communities. Activists need to have a debate over the question of Zionism, and I use the term deliberately. There is no principled discussion on it."

Ramey recognizes the contradiction that some of the same figures now pushing the Palestine question in the movement were also sympathetic to Milosevic, who was accused of genocide against Muslims. Ramey also admits that IAC's "position on Milosevic isn't something there is a lot of awareness of in the Muslim communities where ANSWER has been successful in organizing."

Mahdi Bray, director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, which works with ANSWER but is not an official member of the coalition, is aware of its position on Milosevic, and makes no bones about his disagreement. "I don't support that line. I think Milosevic was a genocidal butcher. But we can work with people we have disagreements with."

Bray credits ANSWER with "forcing the debate on Palestine within the movement. That was healthy and necessary. You cannot discuss peace in the Middle East region without discussing the occupation of Palestine."

Radical Critique?

Complicating the situation is that many of the commentators speaking out against ANSWER's problematic role in the antiwar movement have offered a liberal rather than a radical critique. In addition to the Palestine question, ANSWER has been repeatedly criticized for espousing the cause of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the journalist and former Black Panther on Death Row in Pennsylvania.

In the October issue of Rolling Stone, writer Tim Dickinson quotes Paul Rieckhoff, director of the Iraq veterans group Operation Truth, which boycotted the September 24 march. "It's not about Palestine, it's not about Mumia, it's about one focused message: Let's find a way to end this war."

From a purely tactical standpoint, there may be some logic to de-emphasizing unpopular issues in the interests of building a broad front around a single issue (Iraq). But from a moral standpoint, attacking ANSWER's positions on Palestine and Mumia Abu-Jamal rather than (or even in addition to) its stance on Milosevic and Tiananmen Square dangerously muddies the water. The prior two causes may be unpopular, but they are perfectly legitimate; in contrast, the Workers' World positions on Bosnia and Tiananmen Square constitute defense of the indefensible.

Which Way Forward?

Even among activists who see ANSWER as problematic, there is little consensus on how to address the issue.

Joanne Sheehan, staff of the War Resisters League, says of ANSWER, "They do what the administration they criticize does -- here are the 'good guys' and here are the 'bad guys.'

But she also feels the intrigues of national movement leadership have drained vital energies. "We put too much emphasis on these big demonstrations and not enough on grassroots strategy, which is what we should emphasize. After the big demo, there is always a sense of 'now what?' Do we just wait for the next big demo? I guess we have to have them to be visible, but there has to be a bigger strategy."

Sheehan explicitly does not fault ANSWER for emphasizing issues such as Palestine and Mumia Abu-Jamal. "My criticism is not that they toss too many issues together. I think it is important to help people understand how the issues are connected. But we need to do that in our grassroots work -- not from a podium."

Ibrahim Ramey says that he still believes "principled cooperation in a united front that understands its political differences is possible." But he stresses that this can only happen if there is "democratic debate" and recognizes that "there are major obstacles."

Steve Ault questions whether such cooperation should be the paramount value: "Everyone says unity, unity, unity… But I think they need to be exposed for what they are. There needs to be a full-blown discussion on this if we are going to build an effective movement."

For a different perspective, see the letter to the editor of Peacework speaking up for Ramsey Clark's contributions [14] to social change.