Tag Archives: United for Peace and Justice

Whose war?! OUR war!

Posted on by
2

United For Peace and Justice Iraq Moratorium November 16 Acacia Park Colorado Springs
At the demonstration last week to mark UFPJ’s Iraq Moratorium we marched from City Hall to the IVAW guard tower installation in Acacia Park. On the way we chanted a call: “WHOSE WAR?!” with the response: “BUSH’S WAR!” It was not the time to quibble between protesters, but should it really not have been “YOUR war?”

It is OUR war now isn’t it? We are engaged in it, the Democrats in congress are funding it, we support the troops who are fighting it. It’s OUR war. We might prefer to say it belongs to the idiots among us, but now they’re pointing the finger back at us. It’s our war, YOUR and MY war unless you have an alibi.

It seems to me the antiwar effort can no longer even be about THE war, nor just about Iraq or Afghanistan. The objective now is to resist empire. Repudiate imperialism.

It’s no longer about extracting our boys to bring them home. We’re over there for keeps, to share the fate of the victims of the destabilized hell we have unleashed. Now the antiwar pacifist message has become defeatist, by imperialist standards. We must ask our soldiers now to take their fingers off their joy sticks, quit playing the conquering occupiers, become a repentant reconstruction force, and serve their time working to pay off our nation’s war debt.

Protest the Iraq War in Denver Saturday

Posted on by
4

United For Peace and Justice in Denver OCT 27It’s just a short trip up to Denver and back, so combine the demo with some other activities and protest the continued occupation of Iraq by American troops.
 
October 27, Saturday:
Regional protest set for Denver

Colorado Springs peace activists will travel to Denver on Oct. 27 to join a nationwide action calling for an end to the Iraq war. The protest will demand an immediate end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. People from all walks of life will gather in 11 major cities around the country in a national expression of the breadth and depth of antiwar sentiment in this nation.

Colorado Springs residents will gather at the Justice and Peace office at 214 East Vermijo for a carpool around 9 a.m. For further details, contact Pete at dynamic@ppjpc.org

National Peace Action fails to mobilize large numbers

Posted on by
Reply

Reports are hard to come by as the US corporate press has done its very best to disappear this action, but it appears that somewhere between 20,000 to 80,000 protested against the war yesterday in Washington D.C.

This is a very low turnout that hardly even begins to correspond with the very real opposition the US Occupation actually has against it. Why such low numbers then?

The main reason this mobilization failed to gather more participants, is simply that the leadership of this political movement for Peace is splintered and totally uncooperative with each other.

In addition, one must question the motives of organizations like MoveOn that have a gigantic membership, yet fail to encourage people to participate in anything much other than voting for Democratic Party political hacks. That is their main interest, and the antiwar aspect of their work is most marginal.

Add to that, the UFPJ (United for Peace and Justice) boycotted this action while calling for their own actions (which they are failing to build properly) in late October. The UFPJ preferred to be sectarian once again, rather than uniting in joint action with ANSWER, the organizers of yesterday’s action.

Many Americans continue to misplace their faith in the Democratic Party and still see this party as wanting to provide some future salvation for them rather than continue their current participation in the neo-con game plans. However, the Democrats silence in regard to the Bush-Cheney open plans to attack Iran and Syria show that this is absolutely not the case. They have failed to provide any real opposition to Republican militarism, and instead have enabled it.

We need for the national groups to increase the mobilizations of people in protest and into the streets, and not just twiddle their thumbs and pretend that this activity is inconsequential. If the leaderships of MoveOn and UFPJ continue their abstentionism, then people will not be mobilized as they well could be, and should be. Let’s hope for better next month when once again their is a national call to mobilize. Unfortunately, this call comes from UFPJ leaders who feel that all they should much do is get proPeace people arrested at the offices of Senators and Congressmen nationwide. The future doesn’t look good unless a new leadership begins to emerge from the ranks.

Contrasting the Libertarians with UFPJ

Posted on by
Reply

The Democratic Party-tied, United For Peace and Justice (the largest beginning of a kernel of a national US antiwar coalition), has been a disaster for those wanting truly to mobilize antiwar sentiment in the US. So has the Democratic Party-tied organization, MoveOn.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the old leadership of the US antiwar movement during the Vietnam Era continue to busy themselves talking in Marxist tongues and contemplating their own navels at Louis Proyect’s do-nothing site, Marxmail.

But what about the Libertarians? Check out John Walsh’s commentary, ‘Shaming the Official Antiwar Movement‘.

How the Democratic Party supporter’s sectarianism holds back building the antiwar movement

Posted on by
Reply

John Walsh has just published an outstanding article at Counterpunch about how the sectarianism of the leadership of the national UFPJ (united for Peace & Justice) is holding back the construction of a much larger and more active antiwar movement.

The UFPJ is one of two national antiwar coalitions, and is dominated by Democratic Party supporters that refuse to work with others in a united manner. Control is what this ‘coalition’ is about, and central to that is their desire to use control to help elect Democratic party politicians who often go on to betray the antiwar cause.

As the Democratic Party continues to rot, some liberals just refuse to let go. Their grandparents believed that the DP was the party of change, as did their moms and dads. These liberals just refuse to deal with the basic reality that through the generations, all the ‘change’ the DP has brought has been from a net BAD to a net much WORSE. To these types, this addiction to the Democrats has been much harder to fight than even that of being addicted to food, alcohol, heroin, and tobacco.

Let’s be real. The UFPJ has failed to mobilize the American public into the streets in protest, where asses if they had this war would have already been over. The issue of stopping the US military from rambling along zonkers under the Bush Administration direction should unite us all, Libertarians, liberal Christians, Socialists, Anarchists, and the Democratic Party liberal voters, too. Unfortunately, each group has often acted as if they owned how opposition to Bush should be allowed to unfold. The net effect has been a diminished response to any action from the public at large.

The UFPJ has been about the worst of the sectarian offenders due to the obvious fact, that the Democratic Party leadership itself is not really antiwar, but just mildly anti-Republican instead. The UFPJ leadership is made up of liberal democratic Party voters who hope only to lobby to put the DP into offices, and not oppose very much the Democrats politicians already there. Letter writing, lobbying, and prayer are the type of strategies they most often want to engage in. That, and action that gets people arrested, such as sitting down in the middle of the street, or crossing onto military property or into recruitment offices. Working with non liberal Democrats to enlarge public protest rallies and marches is not anywhere much on their radar.

Unity, not sectarianism. And unity not just to elect Democratic party politicians, but unity to stop US militarism in its place and then to roll it back and out of American life altogether.