 December/January 2004-2005
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Sara Burke, Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
Building "The Mother of All Coalitions" Mark Solomon is a Professor Emeritus of History at Simmons College and a National Co-Chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). At this moment the vast constellation of new Internet groups, reenergized labor and civil rights organizations, the hundreds of anti-war groups, resilient women's, gays', veterans', youth and student groups, and scores of single-issue organizations, are making clear that they will not go away and are gearing up for the next round of struggle against reaction. The coalescing of these groups is the only reliable foundation for contesting the two parties and building an alternative electoral organization. Perhaps the greatest challenge at this juncture is to do the hard work of uniting these formations into a powerful, flexible, informal coalition based upon a common, minimal program, mutual support, joint funding, and the organization of projects -- a coalition that is structured to accommodate all manner of progressive groups, from the overtly electoral to the tax-exempt. Such a coalition could include an independent third party, but allegiance to that party would not be a condition for participation in the larger alliance. This is an optimal moment for local, regional, and national progressive and liberal groups to come together to formulate a minimal program and to reach out to untapped constituencies, especially those who bear the brunt of Bush's continuing right wing assault. Progressives' great rocker and good person, Bruce Springsteen, offers a resonant programmatic starting point: economic justice and a living wage, civil rights (embracing human and constitutional rights), a clean environment, and a "humble" peaceful exercise of US power in the world arena.
The Bush second term is poised to institute
a regressive flat tax, collapse social security (on the road to
destroying the last vestiges of the New Deal), intensify the Iraq
war, and solidify a reactionary Supreme Court. The need to defeat
that agenda is more than enough goad to build and consolidate
the unity of the real majority for justice and peace. 
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