Oct. 5: Wednesdays Against War series

(by John Brown News From Babylon [US]Sept. 25, 2005)

One of the questions that has been troubling me is: What are the limitations of building a movement for social change around ending a war? All wars end. Then what? The War in Vietnam, which we fought against so successfully, ended. Then what happened? If that question weren't relevant today, we wouldn't be marching against a war in Iraq. We wouldn't once again be crying, "Bring the troops home."
It seems to me that the organizers of the Brecht Forum, as they often do, are asking the right questions and providing a space to begin to answer them.
Dan

At least 102,000 dead in Iraq
At most 500,000 marched in DC
Are we doing enough?
What next?

Oct. 5, 7.30 pm

WEDNESDAYS AGAINST WAR

BRECHT FORUM
451 West Street
(that's the West Side Highway) between Bank & Bethune Streets
(A, C, E or L to 14th St. & 8th Ave. Walk down 8th Ave. to Bethune, turn right, walk west to the River, turn left 1, 2, 3 or 9 to 14th St. & 7th Ave. Get off at south end of station, walk west on 12th St. to 8th Ave. Left to Bethune, turn right, walk west to the River, turn left.)

After the March: A Reflection Space for the Anti-War Movement This event will be a town-hall meeting, a space in which members of the audience will be able to carry on a discussion with a panel of activists involved in organizing events related to the Sept. 24-26 weekend in Washington DC, as well as organizers from other efforts such as the anti-militarist, anti-racist, anti-globalization, and Palestine solidarity movements. It is intended to be a space for reflection --the kind of space normally unavailable to the anti-war movement at mass rallies and mobilizations to discuss the issues that come up in organizing events such as the DC mobilization, including questions regarding "leadership," decision-making, and accountability in the movement.

Come join us this Wednesday,
Invited panelists from: ANSWER, Blue Triangle Network, Campus Anti-War Network, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Palestine Activist Forum of New York, The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, St. Patricks Four, Troops Out Now Coalition, United for Peace and Justice, World Cant Wait, and Others.

We cant get no satisfaction going from one anti-war mass rally to the next, building momentary alliances that rarely go beyond a solidarity of one-liner banners and slogans, leaving much untouched, undiscussed, and in need of debate! As much as we appreciate the immense efforts spent towards building spaces where we celebrate our numbers, we feel with despair the lack of spaces for substantial political discussion among anti-war activists and around anti-war actions.

The questions are grave and call for a series of collective in-depth conversations between activists as diverse as the anti-war movement itself: What is the nature of the Iraqi resistance and how do we build solidarity with the resistance given the dilemmas and rightful hesitations around the issue? What are the implications and limitations of building an anti-war mobilization around military families?

What is it that were missing when we take "Bring the Troops Home" as our common slogan, the one most easily spelled out and most widely heard?
What is the nature of the economic colonization currently at work in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and how do we begin to address it and continue to resist it even after the troops are out?
How do we engage with the "we broke it, we bought it" tendency among many who want U.S. troops out of Iraq but feel that they are somehow necessary to prevent chaos? Why have we forgotten Afghanistan? How do we bring Guantanamo home? What are the possible areas of convergence, interdependence and mutual influence between the anti-war and the anti-capitalist movements?

The Wednesdays Against War series at the Brecht Forum is an initial attempt at building such a conversation. We have a lot to learn from one another, thus the events are planned as roundtable discussions, town-hall meetings and intensive workshops.
Invited guests include but are not limited to: Diana Dolev, Antonia Juhasz, Lisa Lynch, Barbara Olshansky, Anthony Arnove, Rahul Mahajan, Sinan Antoon, Eve Ensler, Dahr Jamail, Yanar Mohammad, Adam Shapiro, David Graeber, Herbert Docena, Baher Azmy, Asli Bali, and Mahmood Mamdani.