| Anti-War Protests Have Big Price
Tags Tuesday, March 18, 2003
SEATTLE &mdash Fox News Corporation
Large
anti-war protests come with a hefty price tag.
Money
is needed to rent or buy stages, sound systems,
permits and portable toilets, and tabs often run as
high as $200,000 per demonstration &mdash much
more than the average grassroots peace group will
ever have in its coffers.
So
who is picking up the tab?
"The
major anti-U.S. government demonstrations are
organized by people who have been around for a long
time, particularly the Workers World Party, which has
existed for more than 30 years now and has always
supported the enemies of the United States,"
said Herbert Romerstein, a retired agent of the U.S.
Information Agency.
The
Workers World Party describes itself as Marxist in
nature.
Officially,
protest organizers are groups such as Not in Our Name
and International A.N.S.W.E.R., but the
demonstration's sponsors have long histories of
backing anti-government causes.
Not
in Our Name is financed by the Interreligious
Foundation for Community Organization. I.F.C.O. is a
million-dollar-a-year non-profit that supports Cuban
dictator Fidel Castro and once sponsored a group
headed by Sami Al-Arian &mdash the University of
South Florida professor being charged with
fundraising for terrorist organizations Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
A.N.S.W.E.R.
is an offshoot of the International Action Center,
which intelligence officials say is a front for the
Worker's World Party. A.N.S.W.E.R. canceled a
scheduled interview with Fox News but a worker in the
Seattle field office acknowledged there are ties.
"There
are some Workers World Party members in
A.N.S.W.E.R.," said A.N.S.W.E.R. coordinator Jim
McMahan.
The
International Action Center was founded by former
U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who is a longtime
public face of the anti-war movement.
The
Workers World Party supports North Korea's brutal
regime and I.F.C.O. defied U.N. sanctions when it
made a trip to Iraq in the mid-1990s. Now, both are
sugar daddies to the anti-war movement.
"The
American people have the right to know whether
stooges of [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Il or
Castro or Saddam Hussein are involved in these
demonstrations," Romerstein said.
The
groups bankrolling these protests say they're
spending their money the way donors would want, and
protest organizers say it doesn't matter where the
money comes from &mdash the message is their own.
Others
wonder if knowing the fringe politics of the people
paying the bills might keep some demonstrators off
the streets.
But
anti-war organizers &mdash regardless of their
financial backing &mdash are plugging ahead and
are actually planning more aggressive action that
they say will be hard to ignore, despite the fact
that the United States is on the brink of war with
Iraq.
"People
will step up their actions, there will be active
civil disobedience," said Simona Sharoni of
United for Peace in Thurston County, Wash.
Direct
Action, a San Francisco Bay-area group of anti-war
veterans, has been drawing up their own battle plan
should there be a war.
They
say they will shut down 70 targets in San Francisco
alone, including power plants, water systems, the
Federal Reserve, oil companies, the Pacific Exchange
and the Transamerica Building.
And
their hit list goes beyond economic targets.
Some
protesters are promising to chain themselves to
fences at schools and day care centers so working
parents will have to stay home from their jobs.
Organizers say this will give others a chance to
contemplate how war affects the children of Iraq.
"The
civilians in Iraq are losing their lives and one day
of work is worth a thousand lives," said Leone
Reinbold, an anti-war activist in San Francisco.
Reinbold
helped organize the World Trade Organization protest
in Seattle three years ago. She blames the violence
and damage on anarchists from the radical fringe, not
the mainstream demonstrators.
All
the same, police departments from coast to coast know
that keeping things peaceful won't be easy.
"We
know based on the last one that each preceding
demonstration has been a little bit more volatile
than the one before," said Deputy Chief Greg
Suhr of the San Francisco Police Department.
Some
protestors are vowing to bring traffic to a
standstill, as they recently did on a Seattle bridge.
But many wonder if paralyzing the morning commute and
engaging in similar disruptions will win converts or
make enemies of people losing patience with their
tactics.
Fox
News' Dan Springer contributed to this report.
|
