The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and occupations

By: Ian Chinich

I thought that the conference was a complete success in that we came out of it with the knowledge that there is a broad consensus that we will have local demonstrations in the fall and 2 massive national demonstrations (east and west coast) in the spring. We agreed on the basic tenets of “Troops Out Now”, massive united action, and non subjugation to the Democratic Party. There were obviously disagreements on a lot of other issues (political and structural), but we affirmed out understanding on some very key principles and strategies.
The heads of Answer, UFPJ, and Troops Out Now coalitions were there and spoke Saturday night about working together for a massive mobilization in the spring. The head organizer of the west coast longshoremen who was responsible for the may day strike was also there as was one of the head organizers of the Los Angeles immigrants march in 2006 and the 5 million person general strike of undocumented workers and others in solidarity. Iraq Vets Against the War, Vets For Peace, and Military Families Speak Out had reps there. There was a number of different socialist parties (in addition to a bunch of wackos from the sparticus youth and the internationals). Pro Palestine groups were there as were people from war resisters league, Campus Antiwar Network, Students for a Democratic Society, 3 State AFL CIO leaders, some reps from national unions in Canada, as well as many groups from across the country.
It was also good to see Son of Nun perform for the millionth time.
Over the course of the weekend, we talked to many leaders in the movement. Found that there was One interesting story was we came across a former black panther from Chicago. When asked if he knew Fred Hampton, he replied “Yeah I knew him, I am the one that recruited him….. And if he had listened to me and not picked ______ for security minister, he would not be dead right now.
I met the heads of the March on the RNC group. They are really energetic and confident. The workshop was very informative and I interesting enough sat next to leslie cagan (the head of UFPJ). According to her, they are mobilizing for both the RNC and the DNC.

There was a huge debate about when to do a massive mobilization. A vote for fall local demonstrations are set to happen on December 9-14 (after a vote of something close to 94-112). The debates about mobilization questions took a large part of Saturday. Sunday had all the controversial questions (Palestine and Afghanistan being central demands in the antiwar movement.

Palestine came first. The conferences coordinating committee brought a proposal about educating about Palestine. There was another proposal to include it in central messaging. The central messaging resolution won consideration. Afterwards, there was a proposed amendment to take out the mention of “Christian and Jewish Zionist lobbies and the military industrial complex” it failed by 3 votes. The vote was then taken on the resolution and it passed.

There was then a contentious argument on modifying the name of the group as well as the central joint principles to include Afghanistan in every mention of Iraq. It passed. Lastly there was a debate over taking steps to prevent an assault on Iran. Some argued that this would take away energy from Iraq, but it was eventually agreed upon.
A continuation body was then proposed with member groups being given one vote and an administrative council being made to organize the next conference and to do administrative things during the next meeting (not related to points of principle).

The thing that probably saved the day is that the crazy groups/parties didn’t make proposals or argue for amendments. Though I am not sure their changes and ideas would pass, they still didn’t do that.

Criticism: Though CAN and SDS both had speakers, neither came in much force and were unable to largely influence the tone and debate (causing most of the non youth character of the conference in general)
We spent too long with speeches and not enough time actually debating. This became the most clear on the short amount of time we spent debating structure at the end and the fact that we had to vote in the last 5 minutes before the hotels turned people out.
The staff wasn’t strong enough in holding to the rules (allowing once instance where someone from the Internationalists made a point of order and went on a long speech….refusing to get off the mic and pretty much had to be taken out and the mic seized. Another time happened when someone else made a point of order and demanded that the conference was a bourgoise conference and that to prove him wrong we would need to establish that the structure opposed capitalism.
Criticisms aside, it was still really productive, but I guess we will need to see if groups actually do what they said at the conference.