This was originally written to the UFPJ Steering Committee. It has been slightly changed to address the wider peace and anti-war movements.
Michael T. McPhearson - Veterans For Peace Executive Director and Co-Chair of UFPJ
In a conversation I had with Bob Wing, founding co-chair of UFPJ, he pointed out to me that there is no longer a center of power to the left of President Obama. At least, that is the way I heard his comments. I think he is right, and that it helps explain the current political challenge facing the peace/anti-war movements in mobilizing allies in the wider social and economic justice struggles to resist the current wars and occupations.
The economy has pushed the average person into discomfort about their economic position, at best. Millions have lost their jobs, are underemployed or are awaiting the possibility of being evicted from their foreclosed homes. People are looking to government/the new Administration to solve these problems. Additionally, after eight years of struggle merely to defend the status quo, many organizations and people in economic and social justice struggles, are now engaging with Congress and the Administration, in order to move forward their individual issues, pushing the war to a second or third tier concern on their agendas. Make no mistake, the wars/occupations are still of great distress to people, but home comes first. This, in many ways, frees the U.S. government to conduct foreign policy as it chooses. As a result, to many it appears that the progressive left and in particular the peace and anti-war movements have lost momentum.
When I examine the peace/anti-war movements, I find it useful to look at three main coalitions to illustrate the range of political and philosophical positions involved. Using the left/center/right construct, I think it is safe to say that any anti-war/peace movement coalition usually falls on the left side of the spectrum. Looking only at the left side and using the same construct; Win Without War (WWW) represents the peace-right, United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) represents peace-center and the International A.N.S.W.E.R/Bail Out the People (IA/BOP) represent the peace-left.
One simple way to understand how these three positions approach change is to look at their relationship to the government and to the people. WWW is pretty much a policy coalition. Their primary approach is the inside game. They depend heavily on relationships with lawmakers and lobbying Congress and the Executive Branch. The coalition gains credibility via the prestige of its member groups. They seldom, if ever, hit the streets and they cannot organize mass demonstrations. They tend to define what is possible when engaging to create change and then push hard for that change.
On the other hand, the IA/BOP’s primary approach is the outside game. They rely on the energy and righteousness of the demands of those most negatively impacted by U.S. foreign and domestic policies. Their approach is rooted in making an anti-capitalist analysis, calls for mass demonstrations, demanding radical change and dramatically expressing the depravity of the government’s policies. Many times the peace-right will see the demands of the peace-left as understandable but alienating for the average person who are necessary to change government policies. As a result, I think that in the course of the current wars and occupations, these two ends of the left spectrum have rarely found common ground to work together.
United for Peace and Justice’s approach is two prong; inside and outside. UFPJ has organized and mobilized to express the sentiment of the people. It has exposed the connections between the waste and immorality of U.S. war policies and the lack of resources to meet human needs. The coalition is an extraordinary broad network of groups and people who look to UFPJ for guidance on the current wars and occupations. With the leverage of this network, UFPJ has also cultivated inside relationships and lobbied Congress. The political function of UFPJ is to act as a conduit to move demands and radical positive ideas from the grassroots to the peace-right and the larger center. UFPJ’s movement building role is to provide space for people to move their political conciseness towards engagement and activism. These two functions popularize the ideas and demands articulated by the peace-left which pushes the peace-right. As a result the peace-right begins to engage with the larger center, advocating for the same policy changes it once believed were impossible.
This bridging of the two ends of the left spectrum is reflected in their interactions. There are a number of organizations that are in WWW and also in UFPJ, and there are a number of UFPJ member groups who work closely with IA and BOP. UFPJ has worked with WWW and both IA and BOP.
The relationships of individual member groups and activist on the ground also reflect the process of right left and left right interaction. We activist work across these lines all the time. We attend many events and work on specific campaigns together. We use each coalition to fit our various needs to express resistance; organize, lobby, mobilize, push policy recommendations, or participate in civil disobedience. We teach and move each other on various issues. We are all resisting together.
With the above illustration and Bob’s comment in mind let us look at some of the challenges facing the anti-war and peace movements. Obama’s election provided unprecedented opportunity to organize a full spectrum peoples’ agenda demanding a brand new economy beyond war. By full spectrum I mean an agenda that addresses economic and social justice concerns across the all issues. Unfortunately, the electorate and progressive political activists in economic and social justice movements followed the usual ritual of coming together to elect a candidate and then once the person has won, engaging with that official on separate issues, rather than staying together to engage collectively. The politicians have trained us like Pavlov’s dogs to act this way. It is time to break this self defeating pattern.
Right now most of the peace/anti-war movements’ allies are either in the Obama orbit or being pulled to the left thus placing into question the effectiveness of the peace-center. The movement of allies’ attention from the wars/occupations has disempowered the peace-center thereby empowering Obama, making his “movement” the strong grouping on the left. The only place economic and social justice advocates had relative organized collective power was around the war. In my estimation they have disempowered themselves by now engaging with the Administration piecemeal instead of using the war as a lead to push through expansive change.
How self defeating is this? David Harvey wrote a short statement in his book,
A Brief History of Neoliberalism that I believe speaks directly to the importance of changing our behavior and how our lack of solidarity has provided fertile ground for Neoliberal policies to dominate in the United States.
“It has long proved extremely difficult within the US left, for example, to forge the collective discipline required for political action to achieve social justice without offending the desire of political actors for individual freedom and for full recognition and expression of particular identities. Neoliberalism did not create these distinctions, but it could easily exploit, if not foment, them.” (pages 41-42)
While I do not fully agree with his characterization of the why we have not been able to bridge our differences, I agree with the thrust of his view. I think that we have a unique opportunity now to create a political force that goes beyond other attempts in US history to build a coalition with a progressive agenda. First it must be understood that each position on the left spectrum is needed to move forward change and that we on the left should not vilify each other because our vision of how to make that change or what is possible at any one time are not exactly the same. We have much more in common than differences and if repression begins, we will all be targets.
As representatives of the people, we have a responsibility to understand that all the forces of the left are needed to make this change a reality, and while we should and must challenge each other to keep us honest and sharp (or in other words constructive criticism and conflict is good), demonization and incrimination within our ranks only helps our opponents. Most important our lack of discipline and focus is disrespectful of all those who have suffered and died in struggle for peace and justice because the energy and emotion put into malicious disputes are a distraction from transmitting demands and ideas from left to right and organizing from right to left.
The articulation of the anger, desperation, demands and new ideas of the powerless, and movement of people’s political thought from passivity to activity are crucial to the process of change be it reform or revolutionary. Without the agitation caused by this movement of ideas and people’s political sentiment, society would hold on to the status quo indefinitely. The popularization of progressive ideas from left to right moves the center of political thought to the left. This is how these ideas and demands become mainstream leading to policy or complete system change.
The peace/anti-war movements’ lack of organized people power has made us inefficient and unfocused at this process, but we have seen signs of our ability to make it happen. The fact that Obama needed anti-war rhetoric as a stepping stone to separate him from Hillary Clinton is an unintended consequence that we must claim as our victory in order to fully recognize how to use this power to gain intentional victories. The mainstreaming of resistance to torture and the possibility of criminal prosecution of government officials as well as a slight turn towards fairer news coverage and policy on Palestine/Israel are other examples of the peace-left and peace-center influences changing the center.
Because the peace-center is weak today does not mean that it is no longer needed. Sometime in the near future as it becomes clear that the Obama Administration will not bring the full change sought by economic and social justice advocates, they will turn to build a new power nexus. What better place than a progressive/peace-center configuration to pull elected officials more consistently to the left?
Meanwhile, this is the time for the peace movement to do its best work. If we do not hold our government accountable on Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan who will? If we do not keep the occupations in the public eye who will? If we do not stand up to militarism and the drumbeats of war who will? The answer is no one. The peace movement, among all other movements, is the only one poised to connect economic and social justice struggles in an effort for a peoples’ march towards full spectrum peace and justice. The peace/anti-war movements are situated to continue to make these connections and build the infrastructure for this new progressive/peace-center peoples’ movement.
The first two sentences of Harvey’s book provide a view as to the importance of the peace movement.
“For any way of thought to become dominant, a conceptual apparatus has to be advanced that appeals to our intuitions and instincts, to our values and our desires, as well as to the possibility inherent in the social world we inhabit. If successful, this conceptual apparatus becomes so embedded in common sense as to be taken for granted and not open to question.”
We are engaged in a struggle of conceptual frameworks and ideas. Our movements must make it “common sense” or sense held in common among activist working to move forward a progressive vision of peace and justice, that it cannot be achieved piecemeal. We as advocates of the people must understand that to have full spectrum political victories for the people, we must make it “common sense” in our society that all humanity deserves to be free of war, free of hunger, free of fear to be ones self and free to access healthcare, education and housing.
We have a lot of work to do and many obstacles to overcome. Now is not the time to lament over what we have not accomplished. Now is the time to understand what we have achieved and use that knowledge to do more.
Power to the peaceful!
This was originally written to the UFPJ Steering Committee. It has been slightly changed to address the wider peace and anti-war movements.
Michael T. McPhearson - Veterans For Peace Executive Director and Co-Chair of UFPJ
In a conversation I had with Bob Wing, founding co-chair of UFPJ, he pointed out to me that there is no longer a center of power to the left of President Obama. At least, that is the way I heard his comments. I think he is right, and that it helps explain the current political challenge facing the peace/anti-war movements in mobilizing allies in the wider social and economic justice struggles to resist the current wars and occupations.
The economy has pushed the average person into discomfort about their economic position, at best. Millions have lost their jobs, are underemployed or are awaiting the possibility of being evicted from their foreclosed homes. People are looking to government/the new Administration to solve these problems. Additionally, after eight years of struggle merely to defend the status quo, many organizations and people in economic and social justice struggles, are now engaging with Congress and the Administration, in order to move forward their individual issues, pushing the war to a second or third tier concern on their agendas. Make no mistake, the wars/occupations are still of great distress to people, but home comes first. This, in many ways, frees the U.S. government to conduct foreign policy as it chooses. As a result, to many it appears that the progressive left and in particular the peace and anti-war movements have lost momentum.
When I examine the peace/anti-war movements, I find it useful to look at three main coalitions to illustrate the range of political and philosophical positions involved. Using the left/center/right construct, I think it is safe to say that any anti-war/peace movement coalition usually falls on the left side of the spectrum. Looking only at the left side and using the same construct; Win Without War (WWW) represents the peace-right, United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) represents peace-center and the International A.N.S.W.E.R/Bail Out the People (IA/BOP) represent the peace-left.
