Black Agenda Report:
Finding a Way to Solidarity
By Glen Ford
BAR Executive Editor
When as many as two million immigrants and their supporters, most of them Latino, turned out for demonstrations against draconian undocumented worker legislation in cities across the nation this spring, everywhere the question was raised: Is this the new civil rights movement? By all appearances, some kind of great awakening had indeed occurred which, if sustained, would transform the participants and, eventually, the society at-large.
However, Black opinion was decidedly mixed. Traditional and progressive African American organizations generally supported the explosion of Latino activism, and marveled at the coordination and sheer size of the rallies in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Houston, Seattle – at least two dozen cities, nationwide. Luminaries such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, NAACP chairman Julian Bond, the SCLC’s Rev. Joseph Lowrey, and numerous Black congresspersons were quick to make a positive connection to the struggles of the Sixties.
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The US-backed special tribunal in Baghdad signalled Monday that it will likely delay a verdict in the first trial of Saddam Hussein to November 5. Why hasn't the mainstream media connected the dots between the Saddam's judgment day and the midterm elections?
Here's how the story was reported pretty much everywhere: "An Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein for the killing of Shi'ite villagers in the 1980s could deliver a verdict on November 5, officials said, a ruling which could send the ousted leader to the gallows…"
A possible death-sentence for Saddam and his top lieutenants on November 5? Now, shouldn't that raise a few eyebrows somewhere? If you happen to have a calendar close at hand, pull it over and take a quick look. That verdict would then come, curiously enough, just two days before the midterm elections. It's the sort of 
AN ACTIVIST GUIDE TO ENDING THE WAR IN IRAQ: THE PRESSURE OF PEOPLE POWER AGAINST THE PILLARS OF POLICY.
This is a strategy for sustaining the anti-war movement through the ups and downs of the long war in Iraq. I do not believe the war can be ended just by a moral escalation of protest. Nor is resistance likely to "drive" the Bush Administration out of office. For those who want to end the Iraq War, not just witness against it or resist it, I offer this strategy:
It will be ended by enough people power pressure against the pillars of the policy.
The Iraq War rests on certain "pillars":
1. the pillar of public opinion, above all;
SolidarityEconomy.net's Carl Davidson debates Mark Solomon, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism on the left, the movement to defeat the right and the future of socialism