Fear and Loathing At the
Anti-Intervention Conference

Want to Know How to Organize Against U.S. Imperialism?
Well, Here's How Not to Do It.

by Mark Worth
The Free Press

"A revolutionary age is an age of action. Ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. Nothing ever happens. A rebellion is, of all things, the most unthinkable. Such an expression of strength would seem ridiculous to the calculating intelligence of our times. On the other hand, a political virtuoso might bring off a feat almost as remarkable. He might write a manifesto suggesting a general assembly, at which people should decide upon a rebellion, and it would be so carefully worded that even the censor would let it pass. At the meeting itself, he would be able to create the impression that his audience had rebelled, after which they would all go quietly home, having spent a very pleasant evening." -Kierkegaard, in "The Present Age"
Having just returned from the "National Conference to Reforge the Anti-Intervention Movement," I can't help but feel deflated and disappointed by the experience.
The stated purpose of the lofty-sounding conference - a two-day confab organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War/Anti-Imperialist and held on the UW campus Nov. 5-6 - was to "gain political unity around opposing U.S. intervention." According to the conference program: "Among us, there are differences in how we see the New World Order, sources of war, and how to make social change. (But) we unite on the need to oppose U.S. interventions."
Great, I thought -someone was bringing together socialists, communists, generic liberals and other folks who oppose our government's tendency to get involved in areas that present economic problems or opportunities for U.S. political and corporate elites.
And finally, I hoped, left-wingers momentarily would drop their differences over the often esoteric nuances of revolution and social change, and unite to oppose U.S. neo-imperialism.
As it turned out, it was too good to be true. Instead of leaving the conference with feelings of empowerment, encouragement and unity, I was physically sickened by being dragged through hour after hour of grandstanding, political territorialism and rhetorical one-upmanship.
It was a lot to ask for - communists, socialists and liberals of different shades calling a two-day cease-fire to their long-standing ideological feuds and rallying under the same flag. As it turned out, it was too much to ask for.
Most speeches started out, fine enough, with panelists simply calling for an end to U.S. foreign intervention. But more often than not, panelists and conference attendees couldn't help but make a plug for their pet cause - feminism, racism, AIDS, prison reform, homelessness, gun control, what have you.
So much, in the words of the conference program, for "focus(ing) our attention on the effects of escalating U.S. intervention in the rest of the world."
Speakers were passionate enough, all right. But they covered little new ground in the debate over how to push the United States away from its war-dependent foreign policy, or even over the reasons that such a transformation should occur. Instead, conference attendees were fed tired soliloquies rehashing the evils of the U.S. military-industrial complex, the Western-centric structure of the United Nations, the lies of the U.S. military's "humanitarian" mission in Somalia and the "naked aggression"" rationale of the Gulf War, the replacement of fundamentalist Islam as the new "evil empire," ad nauseam.
I might as well have dug out my old Z magazines and re-read them. But I would have missed out on so many memorable moments if I had stayed home.
You could see the excitement emanating from the faces of conference speakers - people whose "audiences" usually are no bigger than a living room-full of like-minded buddies who finally got a chance to speak in front of a crowd of 100 or so. And attendees actually paid up to $25 to hear what was on their minds. Under these prime conditions, asking panelists not to pontificate was another hope that clearly was too much to ask for.
But the biggest disappointment was that only 3-1/4 hours of the two-day conference were earmarked for actual organizing. Realizing this after looking at the agenda, and recognizing that panelists were covering little new ground, I stood up mid-way through the first day and made a motion that the rest of the seminars be canceled and the remainder of the time be spent trying to actually "reforge the movement."
Judging by the hostile reaction of the crowd, you'd think I had just said "Newt Gingrich for President!"
"No way!! ... Sit down!! ... Boo-ooo-ooo!!"
The people would have none of it. After all, many of them had come hundreds of miles to have their views heard, and damn it, nobody was going to take their audience away. Even if it meant that some actual activism might get accomplished.
At that point, Brian Chambers, a VVAW/AI member and a conference organizer, escorted me outside the UW Architecture Building and proceeded to try to adjust my attitude. I told him I felt that the speakers were "masturbating in public," and that we should be using this rare Liberal Summit to talk about action opportunities instead of preaching to our already-converted selves.
(Others, including members of a polished socialist delegation from England, agreed that the "feel-good speeches" were standing in the way of efforts to articulate a united message against U.S. intervention.)
Angered, the beret-wearing Chambers said I had "insulted" him, and that I had no right to "disrupt" the conference like that. He said the conference was not called to come up with an action plan. "We're having this conference so we can plan more conferences," he said.
I almost fell to the ground. How often have you heard jokes about liberal groups that just have meetings so they can schedule more meetings? As frustrated as I was with Chambers, I was even more embarrassed for him.
The conference was a study in the pathology of radical left-wing activism. It's no secret that many liberal organizations fail or stagnate because meetings only lead to more meetings, which lead to still more meetings. People sit around trying to out-articulate each other in reciting the Party Line on the distribution of wealth, the environment, reproductive rights, social justice or whatever the issue was that brought them together in the first place. This pattern was repeated - if not elevated to a higher level - at the anti-intervention conference.
For these "activists," at least, the times aren't a changin'.

It got me thinking that maybe these radical liberals don't actually want to try to accomplish anything. There's ample evidence, - both historical and current - to support this theory. For example, when a panelist at the conference said that she doesn't vote, a cheer broke out. The very least that any liberal with a conscience and the desire to steer society should do is to vote for sympathetic politicians (i.e. Clinton over Bush, Lowry over Eikenberry, Locke over Hill, Rice over Stern).

But no. It's much more comfortable to rant about the capitalist-patriarchal-sexist-racist-homophobic-military-industrial-multinational-corporate-complex without exposing yourself and your ideas to a public challenge. And apparently, it's much more comfortable to rant at each other than make actual plans to re-energize a movement.
That's how the conference ended up, with Revolutionary Communists, Freedom Socialists, International Socialists and members of other socialist sub-species trying to shout down each other as the final seminar, called "Reforging the Movement," came to a close at 7 pm Sunday.
As an exercise, I passed around the room four or five sheets of paper that said "Anti-Intervention Contact List" at the top. I sat back and watched what people did when the list came around. Some people signed up. Others blankly stared at it and passed it on. Some laughed at it and flipped it on the floor. I guess this last group of people realized for themselves that the whole idea of "Reforging the Movement" was a joke.
How can you reforge any movement without knowing how to contact other people involved in the struggle? How can you unite around one issue when you're so paranoid that you can't let two days go by without feeling the need to pontificate about your pet issue? How can you expect 100 people to organize anything when you don't discuss a strategy of how to do it or what your message is going to be?
So disharmonic was the gathering that no one could even agree on a slogan to take with them out on the streets after the conference ended. "No U.S. Troops Anytime - Anywhere" was suggested by Chambers and members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a group that's politically sympathetic to VVAW/AI.
Instead of folds rallying around this aphorism, a fist fight almost broke out. No vote was taken on the slogan. Nor was one taken on a lengthy resolution proposed by the Freedom Socialists, perhaps the least-offensive socialists I've ever encountered, but who couldn't keep themselves from interjecting "anti-capitalist" into the document. (What if you're an anti-imperialist capitalist? Find another conference, I suppose.)
The only bright spot of the weekend came in the person of Sidney Stock, a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility who visited Iraq with the Gulf Peace Team. Stock quieted the room as he spoke of the importance of acting like human beings. Whether the crowd was overcome by emotion or apathy was unclear. Either way, Stock's surprising speech was a sneak attack aimed at all of the warring factions.
"If we can't stand people , they pick that up real quick, and they're not going to listen to what we're quick, and they're not going to listen to what we're saying," Stock said in the soothing, though out-of-place voice of a therapist. "We have to give up out anger and resentment. But don't worry - it won't disempower us and we won't lose our purpose."
Imagine telling this to a crowd of revolutionary left-wingers:
"How can we love each other better and support each other better? We need to get over the embarrassment about loving. It's OK to be mushy once in a while. And we need to learn to be silly again."
Here was the kicker:
"We're conditioned not to listen, to think about what we want to talk about, and to look for opportunities to interrupt so we can tell our story," he said. "If we do take over the world, what's to say that we won't become like those that we replace?"
In closing, Stock said: "Every enemy on this Earth is a potential ally."
It seemed, however, that these words were lost on people who apparently think that every ally on this Earth is a potential enemy.

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Contents on this page were published in the December/Jan, 1994 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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