Saturday - Sept. 24 - Washington, D.C.

Surround the White House!

to demand:

Stop the war in Iraq!
Bring the troops home now!

*  End Colonial Occupation from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti & everywhere!
*  Support the Palestinian People’s Right of Return!
*  Stop the Threats against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran & North Korea!
*  U.S. out of the Philippines & Puerto Rico!
* Stop the anti-immigrant, anti-labor offensive at home, defend civil rights!
*  Military recruiters out of our schools & communities!

For bus information from Richmond:

Phone: (804)769-1449 (ask for Garrie)
E-mail: RichmondBus@riseup.net

Tickets: $20 donation requested, but no one will be turned away. To reserve a seat, send a check or money order payable to "Garrie Rouse" to:
 
VAWN - PO Box 146 - Aylett, VA 23009 - Attn: Garrie Rouse

VAWN Buses are also being organized from Norfolk and Blacksburg/Staunton. More information will be posted soon.

 Why VAWN is supporting the A.N.S.W.E.R. march & rally:

The pressure is building on the Bush administration to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. According to recent polls, more than half the people in this country now believe the war was a mistake, if not wrong. Even some of Bush’s own military leaders have recently hinted that limited troop withdrawals could be coming.

And yet, President George W. “Please-let-me-in-the-Texas-National-Guard-so-I-don’t-have-to-go-to-Vietnam” Bush announced in early August that he may be sending even more troops to Iraq in preparation for elections scheduled for later this year.

Now is the time to increase popular pressure on the administration. It’s time for hundreds of thousands of people to go to Washington, D.C., and forcefully demand “Bring the troops home now!”

Unfortunately, the U.S. anti-war movement is divided. Two major coalitions have each called for mass marches and rallies for the same day, in the same city: Saturday, Sept. 24, in D.C. Many organizations around the country, including the Virginia Anti-War Network (VAWN) have called on International A.N.S.W.E.R. and United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) to join together in one unified action on that day. As of early August, it doesn’t look like that is going to happen.

So VAWN had to make a decision: would it support the A.N.S.W.E.R. protest? The UFPJ protest? Both? Neither?

The VAWN steering committee took up this question Aug. 7 at its bimonthly meeting, held in Norfolk. After a nearly two-hour discussion, committee members unanimously agreed to endorse and build for the march and rally initiated by the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition.

This is why: The main difference between the two protests is that A.N.S.W.E.R. is raising the right of the Palestinian people to return to their own homeland, while UFPJ is not.

By now it should be clear that there will be no peace in the Middle East until there is justice for the Palestinians. Period.

We are dealing here with the right of an oppressed people to determine for itself its own future. The Palestinians, driven off their land by Europeran settlers backed by powerful Western states, must be free to establish their own homeland, their own country.

Similarly, the Iraqi people, formerly colonized by European forces, must be free to determine their own form of government, their own leadership, their own relations whith the rest of the world. And they can’t freely make those decisions while they are occupied by a foreign power.

And here at home, the Black Nation in the United States must be free to determine its own destiny, to choose its own forms of organization, its own leaders, its own relationships with other peoples.

The same principle of the right of self-determination applies in all three cases. And recognizing and respecting this right is the founding principle for the Virginia Anti-War Network, as explained in VAWN’s mission statement, called The Green Sheet.

The VAWN steering committee decided to endorse and support the A.N.S.W.E.R. protest because its demands are most in line with VAWN’s. And it decided not to endorse the UFPJ protest in order to send a message that abandoning the Palestinian struggle is unacceptable.

VAWN is now working to bring people to D.C. on Sept. 24. Buses have been reserved by VAWN affiliates in Norfolk, Blacksburg and Richmond. (In order to show its willingness to work with all forces in the anti-war movement, VAWN’s buses will be open to anyone going to D.C. that day, whether their destination is the A.N.S.W.E.R. protest or the one called by UFPJ.)

We urge everyone in Virginia who is against the war to come to D.C. and march behind the VAWN banner that reads: “Bring ‘em home now! Money for jobs and education, not for wars and occupations!”

We owe this to the GIs, their families, and to the struggling people of Iraq.

 VAWN's Call for Unity in the Anti-War Movement

The steering committee of the Virginia Anti-War Network met June 5 in Blacksburg. Among other issues, we discussed our participation in national actions being called for this fall in Washington, D.C. We would like to communicate the conclusions of our discussion to the national anti-war coalitions.

U.S. activists from across the political spectrum have made it plain that they can all agree on one fundamental demand: The U.S. must immediately and unconditionally withdraw all its forces from Iraq. Whatever differences exist on other issues, there is no disagreement here. This is the one overriding demand that must be brought home as forcefully as possible to the seats of power.

VAWN is committed to mobilizing as many people as possible to attend national actions called for this September. But we have decided, for now, to postpone endorsing any single action.

VAWN has no organizational affiliation with any of the national anti-war coalitions. However, that doesn’t mean we view our network as a movement unto itself. A number of our founding organizations mobilized for last October’s Million Worker March. Less than two weeks after our founding conference, we attended the counter-inaugural protests in Washington, marching with the D.C. Anti-War Network and standing with International A.N.S.W.E.R along Pennsylvania Avenue. And we were a contingent in the March 19 march in Fayetteville, N.C., which was strongly endorsed by United for Peace and Justice.

However, we are deeply disturbed that two separate mobilizations have been called for Sept. 24 in Washington, D.C. Both protests will demand "Bring the troops home now!" So why two competing mobilizations? This is a severe disservice not only to the anti-war movement as a whole but more importantly to the struggling people of Iraq and to the U.S. troops who increasingly are questioning this criminal war.

A.N.S.W.E.R., in our view, without making a serious effort to achieve tactical unity, staked out a date for a national mobilization and then proceeded to collect a list of endorsers in order to present a fait accompli to the rest of the movement. This action was taken in complete disregard to the call for unity put forward by the U.S. Labor Coalition Against the War.

Then, UFPJ not only called a competing mobilization but announced its decision to refuse to negotiate a unified action with either A.N.S.W.E.R. or the Troops Out Now Coalition. In our view, this is not a position that advances the strength and efficacy of the anti-war movement.

To its credit, TONC recently put out a statement urging a unified action, but crafted the statement in a way that seemed almost designed to ensure it would not be accepted by significant sections of the movement.

We agree with TONC that there can be no tactical unity based on abandoning the struggle of the Palestinian people, or any other struggle of oppressed peoples for self-determination. However, there is no reason why there can’t be one general unity demand — "Bring the troops home now!" — along with a diverse range of progressive co-chairs, speakers, banners, signs, contingents and issues, allowing each organization to raise the struggles to which it is committed.

The TONC statement contains this sentence: "The grassroots of the movement are looking to those of us who make decisions to put our differences aside in the interests of the struggle to get the U.S. the hell out of Iraq."

Actually, some of us in the "grassroots" have also been making decisions. We have decided to dig in and build the movement to end this war and all other wars of U.S. intervention. We have decided to build a movement based on respect for the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, based on bringing together anti-war activists with those fighting for social justice here at home, based on a commitment to leaving no struggle behind, no matter how "controversial" to the right wing.

And we are building that movement here in Virginia, a so-called "red state" that boosts the highest per capita military spending of any state in the country, a state that is home to the Pentagon, the CIA and the world’s largest U.S. Navy base. If we can achieve tactical unity here, there is no excuse for not achieving it on a national level.

We are calling on A.N.S.W.E.R., UFPJ, TONC and the MWMM to put aside their organizational differences and agree on one, unified fall mobilization.

The struggling peoples of the world do not have the luxury of accommodating our disunity.

TO BE SENT TO: International A.N.S.W.E.R.; Million Worker March Movement; Troops Out Now Coalition; United for Peace and Justice

cc: Black Workers for Justice; Black Voices for Peace; D.C. Anti-War Network (DAWN); D.C. Labor Against the War; North Carolina Coalition for Peace and Justice; South Carolina Progressive Network; U.S. Labor Against the War; Democracy Now!; Mother Jones; National Newspaper Publishers Association; In These Times; The Progressive; Z Magazine