[O29] Troops out NOW or "at some unspecified date in the future to be determined according to the whim of Congress"?

[DAVID KEIL]

This is to agree with Keith, Dave, Arlene, Brian, John, and Nate, and
to thank Gary for starting the thread. Gary is letting us know about a
development within UFPJ in which one of its national co-chairs, Judith
Le Blanc, is advancing a new approach: "It is up to us to turn the
growing opposition to Bush into a massive movement to set the date and
bring the troops home now."

This in effect appears to advance two contradictory demands. (Unless
"set the date" means "set the date as today". But "set the date"
doesn't mean that, it means "You, President Bush, set the date." We
know Bush well enough to know that the date won't be today if he gets
to set it.)

Le Blanc urges us to build a movement that "reaches out beyond its
traditional constituents..." I think she means reaching out beyond its
current components. In that sense I agree with the article. I choose
to read "a massive movement to set the date and bring the troops home
now" as signifying a massive movement in the streets composed of two
wings: (1) a wing that wants setting the date for withdrawal and (2) a
wing that demands immediate withdrawal.

I agree with this idea of a unified movement despite different
perspectives. The alternative is to invite the set-the-date people to
sit out the antiwar activities and let the out-now people handle
everything. The alternative is an organizational split, just after the
successes in overcoming splits in the movement, first in Boston, then
nationally. I don't favor an organizational re-splitting process.

The set-the-date people, who seem to be centered in Congress, the
AFL-CIO leadership, MoveOn, and Progressive Democrats of America,
should be invited to join this out-now movement without necessarily
dropping their war-now/peace-soon perspective. If they are slow to
join because they are uncomfortable in an out-now crowd, we should
demand that they join and should make it more uncomfortable for them
to be outside than to be inside the action coalitions. If they miss
October 29, we should say, "Don't miss the next one that we're
planning."

Unfortunately, Judith Le Blanc's slogan, "Set the date and bring the
troops home now," is too self-contradictory to raise as a single
demand for an action. For that reason we need to have a debate, as we
have had on this listserv. The debate might get warm. One side is
going to win and the other is going to lose. If the out-now side
loses, it needs to build a cohesive out-now wing and bring its out-now
placards to every action, it needs out-now leaflets and out-now web
sites and an out-now media presence. But I don't think out-now will
lose, because it makes too much sense to too many people. If we send
our weakest out-now debaters out against set-the-date as debate
training, I think they're going to win even against the strongest
set-the-date advocates.

Every action needs a strong out-now speaker to explain the right of
self-determination and to explain the connection between out now and
supporting the needs of military families and of soldiers, female and
male. Don Gurewitz, who led the Student Mobilization Committee during
the Vietnam war, is a Boston person. I wish he could be asked to speak
October 29. I wish a group like Student Mobilization Committee existed
on every campus. SMC never wavered from Out Now.

Of course, the scenario of a two-winged movement is hypothetical,
because the set-the-date people aren't yet too involved in building
actions like S24 and O29. So I agree with Judith Le Blanc that we
should reach out beyond the current components of the movement. If the
set-the-date forces aren't used to marching in the streets, we should
take them by the hand. We should invite and demand that they join the
united antiwar actions and bring their ideas on demands to the
post-O29 planning meetings for democratic discussion and decision
making.