On the weekend of March 18-19, two demonstrations took place in Seattle to protest the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The first demonstration took place on Sunday, March 19, and was organized by ANSWER. About 2-3,000 turned up for an energetic rally, followed by a march through downtown Seattle.
We had a lively Socialist Alternative contingent leading antiwar chants over our bullhorn and firing up the crowd. We carried our “Money for Jobs and Education Not War” Socialist Alternative banner in the march, while Renton High School Youth Against War and Racism members carried the “April 18 Antiwar Student Walkout” YAWR banner.
The event was largely peaceful, except when police officers arrested and assaulted our new Tacoma member Mike for the “crime” of splashing water at a counter-demonstrator who was repeatedly taunting antiwar demonstrators. The police violently tackled Mike, pinned him to the ground, and charged him with assault and resisting arrest.
Once our members learned of Mike being arrested, we rallied a section of the march to Mike’s defense. At the height, Socialist Alternative members led 2-300 demonstrators in chanting “Cops are the tool of the rich man’s rule!” and demanding “Let him go!” in front of the police while they were cuffing Mike and carrying him away.
The next day, the front cover of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer carried a worm’s eye view photo of the police tackling Mike. The media focused on the arrest in an attempt to isolate the antiwar movement from working-class Americans.
After a brisk campaign of raising money to pay for Mike’s legal expenses and a small protest outside his arraignment hearing, all charges against Mike were dropped.
Seattle and Tacoma comrades intervened in the protest, selling Justice, distributing walkout leaflets, raising fighting fund, and advertising for the walkout organizing meeting immediately following the rally. 3 high school student members of Youth Against War and Racism plugged the walkout from the main stage. We got an extremely energetic response to the walkout.
Our members led a stimulating and dynamic walkout organizing meeting after the demonstration. Meeting in the mall foodcourt across the street from where the protest took place, over 25 students – both high school and college – participated in an energetic meeting to help students organize the walkout at their school and set up a YAWR club. The students participated in a lively discussion and took three inch stacks of walkout leaflets to distribute at their school.
The following day (Monday, 3/20), another march and rally took place downtown, this one organized by a wider group of organizations including the Church Council of Seattle, Jobs with Justice, the King County Labor Council, some individual union locals, and the Troops Home Now! Coalition. This demonstration had the potential to be much larger given that these organizations have in the past mobilized several thousand to antiwar events. The exception was that this protest took place at 3pm on a workday.
These organizations may have been turned off by ANSWER’s method of unilaterally calling antiwar protests without collaborating democratically with other groups to the point that they preferred to organize a separate demonstration rather than having to work with ANSWER. However, it is likely that the leaders of these reformist organizations also bear responsibility for the sectarianism within the Seattle antiwar movement. Some members of ANSWER claim that the leaders of these groups were unwilling to support ANSWER’s call for an end to the occupation of Palestine . While it is incorrect for ANSWER to insist on principle for the issue of Israel and Palestine to be a central demand of the demonstration (they instead should have made Iraq the main theme of the protest to ensure maximum unity within the movement and for maximum mobilization) , these reformist organizations were also quite inflexible in their dealings with ANSWER, preferring to organize their “own” demonstration.
This infighting within the movement was rather unfortunate. Instead of Seattle having one large demonstration of 10,000+, which was entirely possible given the huge dissatisfaction at the war and Bush’s escalation, there were two smaller demos.
We participated in a youth feeder march and rally that later joined up with the main rally. About 7-800 were present at the youth rally. Once both rallies joined together, the crowd reached around 1500. We again arranged for a YAWR high school activist to plug the walkout from the main stage, which really inspired the crowd.
After the rally, we held another walkout organizing meeting at a nearby church. This meeting was much smaller, with only 9 people in attendance. Nonetheless, the meeting was still productive and the students were very engaged.
Over the course of both days, were distributed around 13,000 walkout leaflets. The walkout mobilization is proceeding well, with students at over 25 schools are now organizing to walkout on April 18th.