Sunday’s pro-choice march brought nearly a million activists to Washington D.C., and became a campaign rally to defeat George W. Bush. Event planners pulled together an unusually broad political and demographic mix, which is positive news for the abortion-rights movement. But this diversity made some progressives like Pacifica Radio’s Amy Goodman uncomfortable.
Goodman expressed strong displeasure that former Clinton Administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had been permitted to address the abortion-rights crowd. Noting that Albright had supported the UN embargo against Iraq and that the Clinton Administration had refused to acknowledge genocide in Rwanda, Goodman asked a march
organizer why Albright was allowed to speak.
The organizer told Goodman and Pacifica listeners that the focus of the event was abortion rights and that not everyone participating agreed with each other on all issues.
She said that the their goal was to broaden the diversity of the pro-choice camp, and that they wanted to “create a movement, not a cult.”
Goodman did not reply to this analysis. She subsequently challenged another speaker to explain the frequent pro- John Kerry speeches coming from the podium, given Kerry’s position on Iraq. When told of Kerry’s long history of support of abortion rights, Goodman said that the rally was about much more.
Amy Goodman is as close as there is to a national progressive media icon, which is why her reaction to Albright and the pro-Kerry speeches is so troubling.
The goal of social change movements is to get the broadest possible support for the specific cause. When Cesar Chavez and his allies were building the United Farmworkers Union, Archbishop Mahoney and other Catholic leaders were not excluded from speaking at rallies because they opposed abortion-rights. Chavez formed a close personal and political bond with Bobby Kennedy, and was not deterred by the latter’s anti-Castro politics.
Martin Luther King Jr and other civil rights leaders sought financial assistance and political support from whomever they could get it; the foreign policy views of potential supporters was irrelevant.
But in what is left of America’s left, disagreement on any single issue can be grounds for separation. Each issue becomes a litmus test, one that any candidate with a chance of winning a major national office is guaranteed to fail.
Conservatives see politics quite the opposite. Two weeks ago the National Rifle Association held its annual meeting and their members expressed plans to work day and night to elect George W. Bush. Those attending the NRA conference certainly included those who disagreed with Bush on at least one of such issues as outsourcing, free trade, the economy, or the conduct of the war in Iraq. But the media did not report that Bush’s performance on these issue was criticized. Instead, it was all about guns. While a small minority of NRA members are mad at Bush’s support for renewing the assault weapon ban, the vast majority will vote for Bush as the pro-gun candidate,
Had Madeleine Albright opposed abortion rights while Secretary of State, or had John Kerry not compiled a strong pro-choice record over the past two decades, then Goodman’s concern would be understandable.
But abortion-rights has suffered a series of Bush-engineered setbacks over the past four years, both in the Congress and Republican-controlled courts. Progressives should cheer efforts to rebuild a more diverse pro-choice movement, even if this means that we will disagree with some of the participants on other issues.
