A publication like Green Left Weekly really comes into its
own at times like the present when we have supposedly
democratic governments rushing into an unjust war even while
the majority of the population is opposed to it. Green Left
distributers around the country are reporting a massive rise
in the sales rate. Some stalls are being beseiged by queues
of buyers! The challenge is to use Green Left to help the
progressive movement campaign and organise. Green Left
already functions as a great activist resource. Discussion
is an essential part of this and this new e-list is a
welcome expansion of Green Left's role in this.

There are many great discussions to be had but the most
critical discussion for the movement today, surely has to be
how we can organise to stop the new war for corporate greed
(and the ones that will surely follow if Bush & Co get away
with it).

We need mass action, and a really big round of such action
will take place around February 15 & 16, but more than just
getting the most people out on the streets for a day, we
need to aim at involving as many people as possible in
organising the movement. This is critical because the power
of mass action lies not in revealing to Bush, Blair & Howard
what they already now from the polls (that a majority are
against their war) but in the expanding politicisation,
empowerment and political activation of greater numbers of
people around the building of a mass movement against the
war.

I became an activist at the tail-end of the anti-Vietnam War
movement in Australia in the early 1970s and there are many
powerful lessons we can learn from that struggle. Most of
these lessons are summed up in an excellent book about the
same (but bigger) movement in the US. This book is "Out
Now", by Fred Halstead.

Of course there are differences between the anti-Vietnam War
movement and the one we are building today, not least the
fact that a majority of the world's population (and even
that in the US, Britain & Australia) oppose the war even
before it has begun. Other differences include the different
economic and political context (after 25 years of corporate
profit-first orthodoxy in governments, downsizing and
cutbacks), the fact that the right to protest in the streets
is supported by the great majority, the fact that we have
the internet, etc.

But I think the main lessons drawn by Halstead hold good.

Peter Boyle
Sydney