"A Critique of the Anti-War Movement in Vancouver," Mostly Water, March 30, 2009.

[This anonymous poster implies that a critique of the peace movement is ongoing. Maybe on the street in Vancouver. My experience here in Nelson is that a critique of any part of the social justice movement in Canada is long overdue. We may hope that a new generation of dissidents is growing weary of being beaten into the ground. -jlt]

A poster who wished to remain anonymous recently forwarded the following reflections on anti-Gulf War actions in Vancouver in 2003. Similarities noted.

I hope to add to the critique of racism in the anti-war movement, (and the peace movement in general) with the following reports of small events that occurred during initial [2003] anti-Gulf War protests in Vancouver B.C.

In 2003, protests against the war in Iraq came right at the tail end of a province wide resistance against the election of the 'Liberal' Party to the provincial government, who promised sweeping conservative changes and cuts to government social programmes. Anarchists in B.C. had been deeply engaged in intervening in this popular movement for the previous year (from 2002).

In Vancouver, during the initial big waves of protest against the Gulf War all of the activist groups banded together to form “Stopwar.ca” At first, it seemed exciting to have every group in the whole city working together. But the organization quickly devolved and degenerated. It was very much a repeat of the failure of the Anti-Liberal movement in that it became dominated by union groups and their pre-existing systems of racism, sexism and ageism that made them not only irrelevant to the people most effected by the issues they were protesting, but they also became an actual hazard to building real resistance movements.

There was yet another big pointless stroll through the city against the war.

Read the rest here =>
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