Reply #21: ANSWER basically shut UPJ out of the protest and took over the agenda [View All]

[LynneSin]

First, I would have never organized a DU gathering had this been solely run by International Answer. Personally, the group is too radical and brings too many pet projects into their protest who speak about issues that have nothing to do with the war. Acceptable topics for Saturday's events should have been the War and Bush's failure in the Gulf Coast. Instead they brought in every Tom, Dick & Harry to talk about their cause that had nothing to do with the main event.

You take a look at most of the stuff I posted about the protest and it was all from United for Peace & Justice, a group that broke off from IA because they wanted to be about the War and Bush administration and not all the pet causes.

Take a look at this link:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=3091

10:00AM All-Day Peace & Justice Festival Begins, Washington Monument Grounds
11:30AM Rally at Ellipse
12:30PM March steps off
3:00PM "Operation Ceasefire" Concert featuring Cindy Sheehan

That was the schedule for Saturday as posted by UPJ. Did it happen that way? Nope. At 12:30 the rally was no where close to getting started and at 1:45 we started formation of the protest march. And as for making the 3pm concert - well at 3pm our section was finally marching past the White House. It wasn't until 5pm that we got worn out from this extended march and ended up cutting the event short. We never even made it to the concert. And BTW, I didn't see any UPJ stands or presence at the event. It's almost like IA got in there and booted out UPJ because god forbid UPJ stays focused on the big issues instead of forcing me to listen to idiots talk about stuff that personally I don't care about!

So I can honestly say this much. Yes, I will attend future protests in DC, but if International Answer is involved I'd rather just take the bus from Delaware.

I think you can ask any DUer that came to the March for Choice in April 2004 held by Planned Parenthood & NARAL to know that you can organize a protest, have speakers relevant to the subject matter, stay on schedule and btw, bring 1,000,000 people to march. If I ever organize a DU Protest gathering again, I'll waite for another Choice protest because I know what their agenda is about and they'll stick to the protest at hand.

As for Cindy - why anyone would want to bitch about her is beyond me