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Act Now to Stop War and End Racism—also known as International ANSWER and the ANSWER Coalition—is a radical protest organization which has taken a leading role in the post-9/11 anti-war movement.

Politics and tactics

ANSWER characterizes itself as anti-imperialist, and its steering committee consists of socialists, Marxists, civil rights advocates, and left-wing progressive organizations from the Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, Filipino, Haitian, and Latin American communities.

ANSWER has helped to organize many of the largest antiwar demonstrations in the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks, and has also organized activities around a variety of issues, ranging from Palestine, to immigrant rights, to Social Security, and the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles. Though its national headquarters are in Washington, D.C., where it organizes its national antiwar demonstrations, the coalition's influence is seen as being strongest in San Francisco, and increasingly, in Los Angeles.

ANSWER's organizing strategy centers on acquiring police permits for public demonstrations, and organizing national demonstrations, giving the group leverage over other groups that do not have the permits or a national network.

Founding and major protest actions

ANSWER banner at the head of an April 12, 2003 anti-war march in Washington D.C.

ANSWER was established by the International Action Center (IAC), which was founded by former United States attorney general Ramsey Clark and the Workers World Party. ANSWER was one of the first organizations formed to protest the policies of the Bush administration in the wake of the September 11 attacks. It was formed on an emergency basis within three days, and officially founded on September 14, 2001.

ANSWER's first major action was a September 29, 2001 "Anti-War, Anti-Racist" political rally and march in Washington, D.C., primarily in protest of the then impending U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. An estimated 8,000 people participated. ANSWER's next major demonstration took place on April 20, 2002, which according to ANSWER's website, drew 100,000 people to Washington in the largest pro-Palestine demonstration in U.S. history. On October 26 of that year, ANSWER held a demonstration against Congress' vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq, which according to its website drew 100,000 in San Francisco and 200,000 in Washington, D.C.

ANSWER called antiwar demonstrations on January 18, 2003 in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, which were each attended by 200,000 people, according to the group's website. ANSWER was one of several groups organizing the U.S. component of the worldwide February 15, 2003 anti-war protest, which was, across the globe, the largest anti-war rally that has ever taken place. ANSWER sponsored emergency demonstrations just before the launch of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, on March 15, 2003, which according to its website drew 100,000 people each in San Francisco and Washington. With United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), it cosponsored an anti-occupation protest in Washington on October 25 of that year which, again according to the group's website, brought out 100,000 people in Washington.

ANSWER called for national anti-war, pro-Palestine, and anti-Haitian coup demonstrations on March 20, 2004, the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The protest in New York, cosponsored by UFPJ, was attended by 100,000 according to the ANSWER website. ANSWER participated in the March for Women's Lives on April 25, and the protests of the 2004 Republican National Convention from August 30-September 2. ANSWER and UFPJ jointly sponsored a rally in Washington, D.C. on September 24, 2005, whose attendance was estimated by police at 150,000 and by organizers at 300,000 people.

ANSWER was involved with demonstrations on May Day, 2006, in support of rights for illegal immigrants, which brought out several million people across the US. These protests were organized by a number of groups unrelated to ANSWER as well.

In late June, 2006, ANSWER organized and participated in local rallies against the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Shortly after Israel invaded Lebanon two weeks later, ANSWER - along with the National Council of Arab Americans and the Muslim American Society - initiated a call for protests on August 12, 2006 against the "U.S.-Israeli War on the People of Lebanon and Palestine." Organizers estimated that the August 12 demonstrations drew 30,000 protesters in Washington, 10,000 in San Francisco, and 5,000 in Los Angeles.

Organizational members and prominent endorsers

Many of ANSWER's leaders were members of Workers World Party (WWP) at the time of ANSWER's founding, and are current members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist-Leninist organization that formed in 2004. When the WWP did function in ANSWER, the coalition was accused of being a front group for the Party. The organization is now accused of being a front group for the PSL, although some critics say that the PSL plays a more open and less controlling role in ANSWER than the WWP initially did. Unlike the WWP, the PSL has taken an official position on the steering committee of ANSWER.

As of March 2006, ANSWER's Steering Committee consists of:

Affiliations and criticism from within the anti-war movement

Few other prominent antiwar groups in the U.S. or elsewhere have formal relationships to ANSWER, although many have participated in the major ANSWER-sponsored protests. Even some sources very critical of ANSWER have had grudging praise for the group's organizational ability.

There has been much discussion among U.S. leftist opponents of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions of the degree to which they are or are not willing to work with ANSWER and with Not In Our Name (NION), which has a somewhat similar history, with the Revolutionary Communist Party (USA) having played a significant role in its founding.

Critics of ANSWER from within the anti-war movement generally urge support for their rallies, despite their qualms. For example, Michael Albert and Stephen R. Shalom writing in Z argue that most people at a "...demonstration will in fact be unaware of exactly who said what and whether any particular speaker omitted this or that point. What they will experience will be a powerful antiwar protest. And most of the public will see it that way too."

The Lerner incident

ANSWER has been accused of antisemitism by some Jewish (and other) human rights activists after rabbi Michael Lerner was banned from speaking at a February 16, 2003 anti-war rally in San Francisco, less than a month before the U.S.-led International coalition invaded Iraq. The story raged around the internet for a time and received mainstream media coverage, but when Lerner later admitted he had not asked to speak at the rally, the L.A. Weekly concluded, "the Lerner brouhaha was less hot-buttoned than advertised.". The fact he did not ask to speak, however, has caused people to speculate as to the need to ban him in the first place.

The rally was co-sponsored by national organizations ANSWER, NION, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), and the local Bay Area United Against War. Lerner is founder and editor of Tikkun magazine and the Tikkun Community that grew out of it. The Tikkun Community was (and as of 2004 is) a member of UFPJ.

Lerner is one of the most prominent Jewish leftists in the U.S. David Corn of The Nation referred to him in this connection as "the progressive Jew" (italics Corn's). It seems to be universally agreed that Lerner's name was floated by the Tikkun Community a possible speaker at the rally, but effectively vetoed for reasons stemming, at least in part, from Lerner's public criticism of ANSWER. However, there is some disagreement about the precise reasons for the veto and the appropriateness of Lerner as a speaker at the rally. Lerner had criticised ANSWER and Workers World for using anti-war rallies as a platform to criticize Israel. While several sources have conjectured that ANSWER was trying to keep a pro-Israel speaker out of the rally, that interpretation was somewhat disputed by a letter issued by the other antiwar coalitions - NION and UFPJ - explaining that they were merely following the agreed protocol by vetoing Rabbi Lerner.

In a statement issued February 11, 2003, ANSWER claimed in its defense that, "One of the first agreements that was made between the groups organizing the Feb. 16 anti-war protest was that none of the coalitions would propose rally speakers who had publicly attacked or worked to discredit one of the coalition groups... His views on Israel and Palestine had nothing to do with . Within the anti-war movement, there is a wide spectrum of diverse and opposing views regarding Israel and Palestine, which will be expressed on Feb. 16." They claimed it was not a matter of them "vetoing", but of adherence to a decision that had already been made. They also stated, "We strongly abhor all forms of racism and bigotry, including anti-Semitism. At the same time, we don't believe that criticism of Israeli government policies should be labeled as anti-Semitism any more than criticism of U.S. government policy should be labeled as anti-American."

Break with UFPJ

Although ANSWER worked with United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) to build the September 24, 2005 Washington, D.C. rally, a December 2005 statement by the UFPJ Steering Committee says that UFPJ "has decided not to coordinate work with ANSWER again on a national level. The document cites three reasons for the decision: "1) ANSWER did not honor the agreed-upon time limits for its sections of the pre-march Rally... 2) ANSWER delayed the start of the March... and 3) ANSWER did not turn out many volunteers." The document says that the UFPJ Steering Committee "did not have consensus" about the decision not to work with ANSWER, but had "a more than two thirds supermajority … We make no recommendations or mandates on this issue to UFPJ member groups in local or constituency-based area…"

ANSWER responded by saying that "UFPJ has publicly proclaimed its intention to split the movement," and accused UFPJ of "a false and ugly attack on the ANSWER Coalition," and of doing so for "embarrassingly petty and astonishingly trivial" reasons. Besides giving their own version of the events surrounding September 24, ANSWER's statement indicates some less trivial differences between the groups: they criticize UFPJ for its willingness to support the ideas of moderate politicians, such as John Murtha, who are disaffected with the war, while ANSWER "considers it harmful to try to tailor the message of the progressive movement to please the long-awaited but fictional support from the politicians." ANSWER asks, "Why is it that UFPJ's leadership can build a gushing "united front" with imperialist politicians but not the ANSWER Coalition, which has organized hundreds of thousands of people to promote genuine peace and self-determination?"

At considerable length, ANSWER argued that the current split has historical roots, dating back to "the first Iraq war of 1990-1991, some of the same leadership forces now in UFPJ chose to create a second antiwar coalition and insisted on marching under the banner "Economic Sanctions Not War" while some of those who are today in the leadership of ANSWER argued that economic sanctions were war—and a weapon of mass destruction at that. We contended that economic sanctions against Iraq would result in a form of genocide against the Iraqi people and that the only correct position for the U.S. antiwar movement was to demand, 'No war against Iraq.'… The economic sanctions ultimately took the lives of more than one million Iraqis, most of them children under the age of five, according to the UN's own statistics… The question for the antiwar movement is this: are we building a movement that comprehensively challenges imperialism or are we opposed only to certain tactics employed by imperialism such as overt, unilateral military invasion?"

Regarding the prospects of working again with UFPJ, ANSWER wrote, " the united front that was formed at initiative to have been remarkably successful," and later, "Different groups may have different slogans on their banners, but they should try to overcome the forces of division so as to march shoulder to shoulder against the real enemy."

Although the language of the UFPJ Steering Committee statement makes the break appear definitive, they have published similar statements (rejecting future work with ANSWER) in the past, only to later agree to united demonstrations. Most recently, a May 2005 decision to the same effect—announcing a September 24 demonstration separate from the one initiated by ANSWER—was reversed when UFPJ agreed to a united antiwar demonstration. Previous united demonstrations between the two groups took place on October 25, 2003, and March 20, 2004.

Immigration protest involvement

In addition to anti-war activism, ANSWER is involved in advocacy for rights for illegal immigrants, for whom it supports immediate and unconditional amnesty. ANSWER became involved in immigrant rights activism through protests against Save Our State, a California-based anti-illegal immigration protest group, and the Minutemen Project, a group which patrols the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent illegal border crossings, and which ANSWER views as practicing racist vigilantism. These protests began soon after the founding of the Minutemen group in April, 2005. ANSWER has not usually been the primary organizer of these protests but has actively supported them. For example, ANSWER helped organize counter-protests of rallies held by right-wing groups in Alhambra, California on June 21, 2005; in Sacramento, California on August 29, 2005; in Los Angeles on January 7, 2006; and in Burbank, California on January 21, 2006.

ANSWER has also been involved in the much larger demonstrations in opposition to the Sensenbrenner Bill and support of legalization for illegal immigrants that have occurred across the United States since March, 2006. ANSWER was not the primary organizer of the initial large protests in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas in late March and early April, but endorsed them. ANSWER was more prominent in the promotion of a May Day "Day Without An Immigrant" strike and boycott, because this call was controversial within the immigrant rights movement, contributing to a growing division between its left-wing advocates and moderates who believed a strike and boycott would be counterproductive.

ANSWER's position on the left side of this issue led to criticism; Jaime Contreras, president of the National Capital Immigrant Coalition and chairman of the local Service Employees International Union in Washington, D.C., told the Washington Post regarding ANSWER that, "Groups... that have done nothing on immigration have no reason to stick their nose where it doesn't belong... They have no business saying, 'Let's do a strike' when it will create a humongous burden on immigrant groups. They need to stay in their box." Brian Becker, ANSWER's national coordinator, responded that ANSWER has in fact been involved in immigration in the long-term, and that "We are just part of the coalition; we are not spearheading it at all... Whatever the immigrant rights community calls for is what we support."

References

Notes

  1. Largest anti-war rally, Guinness book of world records, 2004
  2. Thousands protest the Iraq war, September 24, 2005, retrieved February 4, 2006.
  3. , August 13, 2006.
  4. What you should know about ANSWER, the Workers World Party, and the International Action Center on Infoshop.org
  5. Michael Albert and Stephen Shalom, Z, October 24, 2002; Ten Q&A On Antiwar Organizing; Michael Bérubé Toward an Ideal Antiwar Movement: Mature, Legitimate, and Popular
  6. Ten Q&A On Antiwar Organizing, Michael Albert interviewed by Stephen R Shalom, ZNet, October 24, 2002
  7. Authoritarianism and Anti-Semitism in the Anti-War Movement?. Tikkun, May/June 2003. Link is to page on the Internet Archive, archived Oct 19, 2004.
  8. Left takes up cause of rabbi who had criticized anti-war group, February 14, 2003, retrieved January 19, 2006.
  9. UFPJ Rejects Future Work with ANSWER, December 12, 2005, retrieved January 1, 2006.
  10. A.N.S.W.E.R. Responds to UFPJ: Our Position on Unity in the AntiWar Movement December 16, 2005, retrieved January 1, 2006.
  11. UFPJ Fall Mobilization: New Dates and Location May 23, 2005, retrieved January 11, 2006.
  12. Alhambra: Morris, Bob (June 21, 2005). "Successful protests against SOS/Minutmen continue". Politics in the Zeros. Retrieved 2006-04-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
  13. Sustar, Lee (2006-04-28). "Organizing the new movement". Socialist Worker. Retrieved 2006-04-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. Fears, Darryl (2006-04-14). "Immigrant Groups Split on Boycott". Washington Post. p. A03. Retrieved 2006-04-16. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

Criticism of ANSWER

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