United for Peace and Jelly? Junipers? Jerkarounds?

David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org, Feb. 13, 2009

Some months back, United for Peace and Justice held a big conference in
Chicago for three days, and hundreds of us from all over the country
spent most of those three days voting on the language to go in the
documents that would determine what UFPJ would work on in the coming
year and a half, especially the program document. In past years, I
hadn't bothered to push for inclusion of accountability, but this year I
did. I went to the conference, and we voted overwhelmingly to make
accountability and prosecution for war crimes an item on the agenda, and
we explicitly voted to make it just as important as the other items. We
then formed a working group. But our agenda is ignored by UFPJ, is not
part of plans for a big event on April 4th and other events on the 6th
anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and is left out of a list of things
to talk to Congress about in the coming week. In fact, the list of
things to talk to Congress about in the coming week looks a lot like a
program document that someone has taken and rewritten in private, which
means that they could have spared us all those tedious hours in Chicago.
Let's compare the two documents.

Here are the section headings in the document we all voted for:

UFPJ PROGRAM FOR ACTION
As amended and adopted at the 4th UFPJ National Assembly – 12/13/08

1) We remain committed to the urgent goal of immediately ending the U.S.
wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and bringing all the troops
home.
• 6th Anniversary of the War in Iraq:
• Pressure on Congress to End the War in Iraq:
• Voices of Iraqis, Humanitarian Crisis and Rebuilding Iraq:
• Afghanistan
• Support for Military Resisters, Veterans and Military Families:
• Truth In Recruiting:
• Campaign to Bring Home the National Guard:
2) Our work for peace and justice will include an action response to the
economic, social and environmental crisis at home and worldwide.
• Economic Crisis and a Green Job Economy:
• End to Global Warming, Climate Justice Now:
3) We will work to prevent new wars in Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere.
• Iran – Stop Threatening, Start Talking:
• Nuclear Disarmament:
• Pakistan, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere:
4) It is time to challenge the Global War on Terror and the Empire
Building Agenda of the U.S.
• No Foreign Bases Campaign:
• End the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian Territories:
• Offering New Approaches for U.S. Foreign Policy:
5) Defending, protecting and expanding civil liberties, civil rights and
democracy are necessary
steps to ensure our ability to achieve our other strategic goals.
• Restore Civil Liberties, End Torture:
• Accountability and prosecution of high officials guilty of war crimes,
including the supreme crime of aggressive war.
• Immigrant Rights:

***

Here, in contrast, are the section headings from the new version:

BEYOND WAR - A New Economy is Possible
Send America to Work, Not to War
1. Militarism
Out of Iraq and Afghanistan
16 MONTH PLAN FOR IRAQ
AFGHANISTAN
THERE IS NO “GOOD WAR”
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
FOREIGN BASES
MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
THE PENTAGON IS NOT A JOBS ENGINE
HUMANITARIAN AID

2. Poverty
CUT THE MILITARY BUDGET AND FUND HUMAN NEEDS
POVETY [sic] IN THE UNITED STATES
HOME FORECLOSURES
HEALTHCARE
EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT
GET RID OF INEFFECTIVE “TRICKLE DOWN” ECONOMICS
THE GRAVITY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS
WE SHOULD INVEST IN GREEN

3. Racism
BLACK PRISON POPULATION
BLACK POVERTY
EDUCATION

***

What do you notice?

First of all, section 5 of the document we carefully wrote by committee,
voting on almost every line, a section we explicitly voted to make equal
with the others so that it would not be ignored, has been deleted.

Second, new items have been added, including making racism one of three
main headings. Now, I for one would have voted to include fighting
racism in our work if someone had raised it. But did they? Not that I
recall. If they did, it lost.

My question is what the point of the endless tedious edit-the-documents
conference was, why the pretense of laborious democracy? Why the
elaborate efforts to claim to be the coalition of coalitions, if there's
just a little clique rewriting everything?