Learning Lessons, Lessons Learned
I'm going to tell a 19-year-old story with a current day tie in. I want to speak to political purity tests and the folks who don't like Donald Trump but have issues with Harris-Walz. For not condemning the Democratic ticket, I've been called a Zionist (as a slur) online by someone who obviously knows nothing about me aside from the fact that I'm planning to vote for the only candidate who will defeat the fascists trying to take over the US.
In 2005 I learned a lifetime of organizing lessons in the planning of a single event. My tiny local group of activists, we styled ourselves as Fayetteville Peace and Justice, decided we wanted to have a demonstration at a local park on the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the US led coalition forces. We were an eclectic bunch from a variety of backgrounds. Two of our old heads and been fighting the good fight since the 1960s, one as a card-carrying member of the radical far left and another as a bodyguard for Dr. King who had marched on Selma and faced the Alabama State Troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Others were local organizers for NOW and veterans of the anti-nuke campaigns of the 70s. I'd cut my teeth in activism organizing against the death penalty. There were roughly a dozen of us but we had connections.
I was a member of a couple of national coalitions of military families and veterans against the war. Others had friends at the national and state level of other antiwar coalitions. As the word spread, we heard from campus groups of all types, from the newly formed Iraq Veterans Against the War as well as the activists from a previous generation who had formed Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Documentary film makers wanted to come. Folk singers wanted to lend some culture to the day's agenda. The North Carolina Council of Churches sent a representative to organizing meetings. We were offered a hand by people who had experience with the nuts and bolts of organizing - getting permits, raising money, figuring out how many portable toilets we needed and on and on.
The organizing meetings were hard. We would have a representative from a local conservative African American Baptist Church submit a proposal. They would be followed by a group of transgender veterans who called themselves the Cuntry Kings and wanted to do a skit. Then we'd have a member of the US House of Representatives followed by a student group from the International Socialists Organization who wanted to wave a Palestinian flag from the stage. People were suspicious. They got their feelings hurt. There were threats of walkouts and power plays. It was hard, but we all really, really wanted to pull off a landmark demo so we kept going.
I just don't know how to be circumspect about anything. I never have. I was outspoken in the community, in email on conference calls. I got hate letters from people in town who thought I was a radical communist. I lived (and still live) in Fayetteville, NC which is the company town for Ft. Liberty (then Ft. Bragg). I'm not a natural negotiator but I am honest and committed and I try to relate to people where they are at. I talked to the transgender vets as a veteran myself. I talked to the local church people as a member of the same community. I let the radical students know that I supported a great deal of what they stood for. In the end, on March 19, 2005, we had the largest antiwar demonstration outside a military base since Vietnam. No group boycotted and we presented a united cross-community front of veterans and civilians, Baptists and Socialists, white, black, Latino, straight. LGBT, old and young, local and out of state and every other combo. The next day the local paper commissioned an opinion poll and half the people questioned were in favor of bring our troops home - and this was in the most military loving town in America. A little-known fact is that three years later, Obama carried the vote in the precinct located on Ft. Bragg. Soldiers were tired of war, and they were tired of Bush.
We can defeat Trump. Stop the purity tests. Remember this from a letter I wrote shortly after Charlotteville:
Moderates, liberals, progressives and radicals need to keep their eyes on the prize and not their fingers pointed at each other. If you think tearing down statues is wrong, then don't tear down any statues. If you think fighting fascists in the street is wrong, then stay on the sidewalk but stay in the struggle. Conversely don't impose any purity test on middle aged folks who are frightened but still committed to ending white supremacy and the abdication of presidential responsibility. We are all in this together and the enemy of our enemy is our friend.
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