Not In Our Name actually has two distinct parts -- the Not In Our Name Statement and the Not In Our Name Project. The statement is an antiwar manifesto with more than 100 celebrity signatories, including Martin Luther King III, actors Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover, novelists Russell Banks and Barbara Kingsolver, playwright Tony Kushner, rabbi and activist Michael Lerner and law professor Kimberly Crenshaw, that was published as an ad in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. The project is the activist arm, involved in putting together actions like the Oct. 6 rally, and is being run by Mary Lou Greenberg, a founder of Refuse & Resist and an official of the RCP.

The RCP's ideology isn't just harmless campus Marxism. It supports Peru's maniacally brutal Shining Path ("Support the People's War in Peru!" screams the RCP Web site), the communist guerrillas who specialized in urban terrorism, and venerates the bloody insurgency in Nepal and lauds the Maoist campaign to "liberate" Tibet.

In an article for WorkingForChange.com, Seattle Weekly journalist Geov Parrish writes about Not in Our Name statement coordinator Clark Kissinger, whom he identifies as a "core member" of the RCP, "I still have vivid memories of Kissinger explaining calmly to me once why, when the RCP took over, it would be necessary to shoot everyone who didn't agree with them." Kissinger is also a founder of Refuse & Resist, whose members organized Not In Our Name and who act as its spokespeople.

Of course, this is not at all evident in the Not In Our Name statement, a beautifully written declaration of conscience whose sentiments would be shared by a great many liberals. "Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression," it begins, calling on people to "resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since Sept. 11, 2001, and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world." Most of the people who signed it have nothing whatsoever to do with Maoism or the RCP.

Kissinger, meanwhile, denies that Refuse & Resist is affiliated with the RCP, and though he acknowledges he's a member of the party and a writer for its newspaper, he says he has no idea who is currently running it.

Questions about the party's role anger him -- he calls such questions a "throwback to the McCarthy period." As to Gitlin's suggestion that associations with hardcore communism might discredit the antiwar movement, Kissinger, who knew Gitlin in SDS, shoots back, "He's trying to find reasons why he's moved so far to the right. When big social events happen, some people step forward and rise to the challenge and other people run along behind criticizing."

Kissinger also says that the statement was specifically kept separate from the Not In Our Name Project so that signatories wouldn't be "endorsing any particular actions."

Tony Kushner notes that money raised for the statement is used only to buy ad space in newspapers -- none of it gets to Refuse & Resist, much less the RCP. "Do I have problems with the RCP? Obviously I do," says Kushner. "I think it's silly. I have nothing but disgust for groups like Shining Path. I think that the people I know who are members of the RCP who have been involved in this organizing effort are incredibly hardworking people who have in certain ways politics I disagree with and in other ways are working towards building a popular movement to oppose Bush's never-ending war."

But many people who signed the statement aren't even aware of the connection between Refuse & Resist and the RCP. Russell Banks, who helped draft it, says he didn't know that Refuse & Resist is affiliated with RCP, "and I don't think that most people know that."

He says he's not particularly troubled by the RCP's role, pointing out that liberals also worked with communists during the Spanish Civil War -- during a time when the latter posed a very real threat. "If you refuse to associate politically with people on specific issues because you don't agree with their whole program, you end up very lonely and harmless," he says, noting that he'd also be willing to march with Patrick Buchanan, another opponent of the war in Iraq whose politics he fiercely disagrees with.

He continues, "I'm not one of the usual suspects. This is not just a movement of old hippie leftists from the '60s. It's a very different kind of coalition. It crosses over into the younger generation, it crosses over into moderate liberal Democrats as well. I'm delighted to find myself on the same side as Ted Kennedy, and really, in some ways, as the director of the CIA."

"There's lots I don't agree with Clark Kissinger on," Banks says. "I do agree with him on this issue. He's waiting for the proletariat to rise up. I don't think that's going to happen, but on this issue we certainly can join hands."

Kushner concurs: "Withholding one's energy, one's name at a time of terrible political crisis like this and being overly fastidious about the company one keeps is also a way of being inactive."

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