A.N.S.W.E.R.’s support for the brutal communist military junta that is murdering journalists covering the pro-democracy protests should once and for all put to rest the myth of the W.W.P. front group being “anti-war” or pro-freedom. This is part of the fund raising letter they e-mailed to supporters on the 27th of September:
People marched forward towards the steps of the Capitol determined to carry their anti-war message as the heavily armed police attacked and blocked peaceful protesters. Thousands joined a Die-In and symbolic funeral for the US Servicemembers and the legions of Iraqis who have perished in this criminal endeavor. Police reinforcements with shields and helmets marched down the steps of the U.S. Capitol building with guns and sticks in hand.
Iraq war veterans and the family members of soldiers and marines, joined by thousands upon thousands of high school and college students, stood face to face with a line of armed force that prevented their forward march to redress grievances for an illegal war and occupation.
Police forced Iraq War veterans and elderly veterans of other wars face into the ground and tied their hands behind their backs. Men and women in fatigues, students, mothers of soldiers and members of the American Muslim community were taken away in handcuffs and marched or dragged up the long Capitol steps.
More than 190 were arrested in all and when they were brought to jail together it was obvious that their spirit and solidarity was a testament to their determination to resist the war machine. Throughout the demonstration, and among those who were detained too, a collective spirit was crystallizing. Almost everyone could sense that something was new.
People were held on busses, many in tight cutting handcuffs, until the early morning hours. When finally processed at the police vehicle garage where everyone was held, people were directed to a door leading to an alley uncertain where they were, what they were to do or what would happen next as the door closed behind them. But as each person stepped outside a few yards and was seen a great cheer went up and across the street they saw people on the grassy embankment waiting for them. ANSWER organized hundreds of supporters and a legal team that stayed outside the jail all night long and greeted each newly released person with coffee, food, rides to the bus station or home if they lived in the DC area.
Before the action the government undertook significant efforts to try to suppress and repress the organizing efforts. The ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) was slapped with $38,000 in fines for putting up 194 posters that were legally wheat pasted announcing the Sept. 15 action. ANSWER was told they had to be taken down immediately, and refused. Instead, we filed a suit with the Partnership for Civil Justice challenging the constitutionality of the government’s actions.
When ANSWER held a press conference in front of the White House to protest the fines, the police from the National Park Service arrested the speakers and organizers—and horse-mounted police charged into the assembled media.
Ironically, this police attack in front of the White House came hours after Laura Bush gathered the media together inside the White House to condemn the police crackdown of “pro-democracy activists†in Myanmar.
“Pro-Democracy activists” in Myanmar. It should escape no ones notice that Brian Becker, the author of this fanciful account of the September 15th anti-war protest, uses the name forced upon Burma by a real military occupation. The quotations around Pro-Democracy activists is a nod to the Junta’s propaganda video which claims the protests are organized by foreign “destructionists.”
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That was an English language broadcast which claims the BBC and Voice of America are paying people to go to these protests. Odd that a day before the video was posted on Michelle Malkin and thus widely disseminated around the Internet, Brian Becker is already framing the Buddhist monk led protest as a front for something more sinister, don’t you think?
The current Burmese government is everything the W.W.P., A.N.S.W.E.R.’s parent organization envisions for itself if they were to take power; a brutal Stalinist dictatorship where the people in charge can do basically anything they want to the populace. It is this goal that led the group to the fertile recruiting fields of the “anti-war” movement where the W.W.P. could recruit young angry college students more likely to be enamored with their nihilistic revolution to act as shock troops for their violent anti-government activites. That’s why the anti-war protests have become progressively more violent, they are test runs for future “revolutionary activity.”
Becker sees his recruiting efforts paying off and ends his letter with this ominous passage:
When the large crowd, with so many high school and college students in attendance, poured into the streets around 1:00pm on Sept. 15 the excitement and buzz was palpable. People knew they were part of something very special, something different from the earlier anti-war marches. It wasn’t’t just the large crowd, which was marching 120 abreast, and filling up all eight lanes of Pennsylvania Ave. for many blocks. The march was impressive and new at other levels as well. ANSWER initiated the action and provided hundreds of organizers and volunteers. These people were the organizational and administrative anchor of the protest. But this was not an action of one group or entity.
Sept. 15 was a genuine and broad coalition of diverse organizations. Iraq Veterans Against the War, D.C. Chapter; Grassroots America, Veterans for Peace, Camp Casey Peace Institute, Hip Hop Caucus, CodePink, National Council of Arab Americans and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation worked together in joint planning.
The groups achieved an admirable level of cooperation and comradely working relations based on mutual respect and shared responsibility. Many other organizations also contributed. Ramsey Clark and thousands in the ImpeachBush movement mobilized as well.
As a response to the fascist mobilization of the so-called Gathering of Eagles, numerous local and national organizations joined together to offer a united security team.
Sept. 15 may be a harbinger of an even greater unity in the anti-war movement among Iraq war veterans and military families, the Arab American and Muslim communities, students and youth, the immigrant rights movement and other oppressed working-class communities—both those who are already unionized and the millions who need to be.
In our ongoing evaluation of the action, we will have to assess not only its strengths but any of its defects, weaknesses and mistakes. It is not possible to have such an energized action with many tens of thousands of people without there being a fair share of mistakes to learn from. None of the defects, however, can take away from the broader significance of the action.
In other words Becker is envisioning a revolution with the W.W.P. in charge, and the defects that need to be corrected would no doubt be the adherence to non-violence that most of the groups A.S.W.E.R.’s seeking to absorb promote. A.N.S.W.E.R. is showing their true colors finally, and the color is cold war red.
