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SEATTLE - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - regardless of their financial backing -
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. |
