An Open Letter to Our Movement

[bemildred]

These are tough times for the anti-war activists in the United States. At a moment when the momentum of our global movement is on the rise, many here at the center of the empire are filled with doubt and uncertainty. We watch the rise of global people’s resistance to war in Iraq and the ubiquity of international governmental and popular opposition to war in Iran. We see the new successes of movements against occupation and for Palestinian equality and human rights from British academics to the Congress of South African Trade Unions to Israel’s former deputy mayor of Jerusalem. And yet. And yet we are tired, hesitant. Is it worth the effort to mobilize, whether in Washington or our local community, to protest once again? Is it worth writing one more letter, organizing one more teach-in, planning one more sit-in in a congressional office?

The answer is yes. It is worth it. And the world is waiting for us to do so. Somehow we have to renounce our isolation from that very international movement in which we play such a vital part. It is time for us to reclaim our global citizenship, and live up to the demands, the hopes, the expectations that the rest of the world holds for us. Only when global resistance – from people, from governments, perhaps at some point once again the United Nations – challenges these U.S. wars will our domestic mobilization have a chance to succeed. But even the most vibrant and deeply rooted international opposition will have little impact if we fail to do our part here.

Our sense of uncertainty, exhaustion, even despair, is understandable. We have worked hard yet the wars continue. Victory remains out of reach. But it is time to put aside our despair, and reclaim our initiative. It is time we measure the value of our political mobilizations beyond a specific vote in congress – good organizing always means a long-term politics of erosion. Erosion of support for the war in Iraq, for Israeli occupation …our job is to wear them out. We have to wear out their willingness to keep waging war. So it is time we get even more serious about challenging U.S. policy that equates war with democracy, occupation with liberation, death and destruction with human rights. Given what our government is doing in our name with our tax dollars in Iraq, in Palestine, off the coast of Iran – to name just a few places – we don’t have the right to give up.

WHAT HAPPENED

We know that Congress is not the peace movement, and elections by themselves don’t end wars or create justice. If we look back at all the times the Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, most of the time it wasn’t enough. Two exceptions, though, stand out. In 1936-38, FDR enacted much of the social justice legislation that formed the New Deal. And in 1964-66 Johnson was able to get landmark civil rights legislation passed. What made those historical moments possible, both times, was the work of huge, powerful, progressive movements, willing and able to shut the country down if elected officials ignored their demands. The Communist-led social and labor movements of the 1930s, the civil rights movement at its height in the mid-1960s… that’s what forced the U.S. government – however reluctant – to do the right thing. That’s the lesson for today.

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http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/advocacy/protest/general/2007/0604openletter.htm