By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 20, 2005
Although President George W. Bush received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history, not everyone will be celebrating his second inauguration in the nation’s capital today. Pro-terrorist socialists and violent extremists pledge “direct action” – including initiating physical confrontations with police officers – that could divert critical attention from a terrorist attack.
Among those who will take part in today’s protests is a group known as Anarchist Resistance, but is more commonly called “the Black Bloc” for the black ski masks its members wear destroying property. Its history of riotous incitement is well-known. On the first day of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Black Bloc members demonstrated in San Francisco, smashing police car windows and windows in the Federal building, before opening a fire hydrant. Upon arrest, police learned the anarchists were armed with knives, hammers, and a taser gun. The Bloc’s “Call to Action” for this inaugural promises:
a massive resistance to the latest representation of 200+ years of murder, slavery, greed and genocide that has been the American way from George Washington to George W. Bush. There's nothing left to salvage in this empire that is the U.S. government. It's time to bring it down.
This year, the Black Bloc warns, “A space will be made for people to exercise their 1st Amendment rights whether the police allow it or not. We will not submit to illegal arrests, unlawful searches, or checkpoints.” Then the group begs for violence:
[I]t's time to put forward an alternate vision of protest; one of resistance to, not cooperation with, the authorities…Four years ago anarchists marched on the Inauguration [sic.], hundreds strong. The police set up check points forcing thousands to adhere to bag and body searches, in response – we smashed a secret service check point, opening up the parade route for all. While some waved the American flag, we burned it. While some booed, we pelted the motorcade with trash….
The event to which they refer occurred in 2001, when “the Black Bloc, using a cart pilfered from a construction site, flattened one of the government's vaunted security checkpoints, allowing hundreds of protesters to breeze through.” This year, a terrorist may breeze through with them.
Such a deadly attack would be entirely justified in the eyes of today’s protestors. “It is important from the first day of his second term of office to show continuing resistance to the criminal war in Iraq,” Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, told the communist Workers World newspaper. The IAC defined exactly the kind of “resistance” it prefers in its latest press release:
It is time for the antiwar movement to acknowledge the absolute and unconditional right of the Iraqi people to resist the occupation of their country without passing judgment on their methods of resistance. Even the founding charter of the United Nations clearly affirms the right of an occupied people to resist by force of arms. (Emphasis added.)
The nation can scarce take comfort knowing IAC’s front group, International ANSWER, has secured bleacher seating for its members along the inaugural parade route.
Nor is IAC alone in praising the enemy’s attacks. The International Socialist Organization plans a separate “Empire and Resistance” seminar this evening. A recent article in its newspaper Socialist Worker entitled “Supporting Iraq’s Right to Resist Occupation” argues, “One side aims to control Iraq to fulfill its grand plan to dominate the Middle East and its oil. The other merely seeks the right for Iraqis to determine their own future…Choosing sides should not be so difficult.” The article concludes, “The antiwar movement must not lose sight of the fact that its main enemy is at home – and any resistance to that enemy deserves our unconditional support.”
However, the Left is not content to pay mere lip service to the enemy.Radical “antiwar” group Code Pink has scheduled a full calendar of events this week. Code Pink also delivered $600,000 of cash and goods to “the other side” in terrorist-riddled Fallujah late last year, after hearing that Americans bombed a former hospital taken over by jihadists.
Code Pink’s ubiquitous founder, Medea Benjamin, played a major role in today’s protests and the week-long hatefest leading up to them. Benjamin, who referred to Castro’s Cuba as “heaven,” will be joined by longtime comrade and former Communist Party USA member Leslie Cagan, the founder of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). Benjamin and Cagan joined forces to establish the International Occupation Watch in Baghdad, whose stated goal is to get U.S. soldiers to declare themselves conscientious objectors, get sent home, and hasten the military defeat of U.S. forces in Iraq.
The two will speak at the three-day long Progressive Democratic Summit along with Tom Hayden, Dennis Kucinich, Jesse Jackson Jr., Jodie Evans, Kim Gandy of NOW, James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, Amy Goodman, Phyllis Bennis, Mark Weisbrot of Center for Economic and Policy Research, and John Grant of Veterans for Peace.
Tomorrow, the duo will warm up the “United We Stand” rally at Plymouth Congregational Church for the headliner: former talk show host cum leftist screecher Rosie O’Donnell. Representatives from Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and International ANSWER will also attend. Plymouth’s minister, Graylan Hagler, is a UFPJ co-founder.
The DAWN of Leftist Hatred
UFPJ sponsored the 50-member D.C. Anti-War Network (DAWN), which is coordinating all area protests. Many of DAWN’s far-Left national sponsors echo Cagan and Benjamin’s anti-American, anti-military, anti-capitalist agenda – to the point of engaging in sabotage of the war effort. Chief among these is SNAFU, which “supports resistance in the military” and tells soldiers they have a “duty to disobey” their orders. SNAFU’s “Call to Resist” states:
The resistance of soldiers helped bring an end to the war in Vietnam. It was soldiers, participating in the Winter Soldier Investigation, who documented the war crimes committed against the people of Vietnam. Soldiers in Vietnam helped stop the war by deserting, refusing to go into combat, and committing other acts of resistance. By 1970, the Army had 65,643 deserters, roughly the equivalent of four infantry divisions. The war stopped, in part, because soldiers forced the war criminals in Washington to stop.
Today’s soldiers can do the same.
Explicitly calling for mutiny and desertion is further than Jane Fonda went in her support of the Viet Cong.
SNAFU holds up “resisters” as heroes and offers support to deserters within the armed forces, including facilitating their travel to Canada. SNAFU’s website links to International Action Center, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Refusers Soldarity Network, and the Peoples Video Network (a communist group).
Other DAWN members state Americans are the real terrorists. National sponsor Socialist Alternative avers, “We see the global capitalist system as the root cause of terrorism, war, poverty, discrimination, and environmental destruction.” Osama bin Laden: capitalist. The Alternative also proclaims, “The Russian Revolution was the greatest step forward in history.” (Emphasis in original.)
The Peace Resource Project represents the overtly conspiratorial spectrum of DAWN’s membership. PRP sells bumper stickers bearing such messages as, “9/11=Inside Job,” “9/11: What Really Happened?” “End U.S. Imperialism,” and one that juxtaposes images of Bush and 9/11 on one side vs. Hitler and the Reichstag fire on the other. (It also has a section dedicated to “Vegetarian/Organic Farming.”)
Other DAWN sponsors include the Washington, D.C., affiliate of Indymedia; a group of leftist librarians known as Radical Reference; and the Yippies.
DAWN’s own protest rally will feature Benjamin, Cagan, Cobb, Zach Lown of the International Socialist Organization, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Iraqi activist Andy Shallal; Palestinian activist Mark Lance, and many others. DAWN is also hosting a “die-in” today, designed to block the intersection of 16th and H streets NW. If successful, this will further drain inauguration security and provide a welcome distraction for those with more sinister intentions.
Communists Against Bush
Other communist fronts protesting the inauguration today include the star-studded “antiwar” group Not In Our Name, whose “spokesman” C. Clark Kissinger heads the Revolutionary Communist Party, an ultra-violent Maoist sect.
The National Lawyers Guild is in town to provide free legal advice to Black Bloc their partisans, Congress once described the NLG as “the legal bulwark of the Communist Party.”
“Democracy Now!” radio host Amy Goodman and “conscientious objectors” will hold their own demonstration, as well.
Pittsburgh’s far-Left Thomas Merton Center is sending a bus to the protest. (TMC received $20,000 directlyfrom The Heinz Endowments, headed by Teresa Heinz Kerry, in 2004. They have received Heinz, tax-free“chartiable”money only indirectly before. TMC also protested the Republican National Convention when Kerry’s husband was running as the other party’s presidential nominee.)
Leftists Killers: An Appreciation
Other leftist campaigns are more benign (and more immature). One asks leftists to attend the inaugural parade and turn their backs as President Bush passes by. Others ask people not to spend a dime all day. Some leftists will “March Against Neo-Cons,” targeting prominent conservative (and, peculiarly, Jewish) think tanks. Rotund filmmaker Michael Mooreencourages teenagers to walk out of high school classes in disgust – and possibly get suspended in the process.
The fun continues over the weekend. Nostalgic leftists can celebrate left-wing terrorists of days gone by at two separate events on Saturday. University of Vermont professor Ron Jacobs will read from his new bookThe Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground, a glowing history of the leftist terrorists. Also Saturday,they can attend the “Spirit of the Black Panther in U.S. History: A Call for Unity” with Sister Shazza Nzingha of a modern-day Panther offshoot. (“Bring your family, friends, neighbors!”)1 One wonders what effect extolling violent extremists will have on the Black Bloc and their fellow travelers.
The authorities have prepared for such an eventuality. This year’s inauguration features the tightest security of any in memory. Tom Ridge has warned, “There is no specific threat directed toward the inaugural or the inaugural activities. But the fact that…the decibel level is down doesn't really mean that we would ever be less vigilant…This is the most visible manifestation of our democracy.” The terrorists already have a record of assaulting the Iraqi and Spanish electoral processes.
They hate the president for the country he represents and the freedom he’s pledged to extend to the whole human family. And they have friends on the American Left.
ENDNOTES:
1. These events are in addition to protest events that seem to have little to do with the inauguration. For instance, the “Freedom from Marriage” forum takes homosexual activists to task for pursuing gay marriage, because they believe marriage is corrupt. Its organizers ask, “What kinds of legitimacy is granted to same-sex unions through the State or Religion – two institutions that have historically murdered, ignored, and oppressed the Queer-identified?” Others have suggested protesting by giving money to the little-known National Network of Abortion Funds. Some will assemble to support electing Howard Dean DNC chair.
Ben Johnson is Managing Editor of FrontPage Magazine and author of the book 57 Varieties of Radical Causes: Teresa Heinz Kerry's Charitable Giving.