The Quinton Report indicates that radical activist Steven Ceci, with the Baltimore People's Power Assembly, was one of the organizers of Batimore's anti-Israel protest over the weekend. See, "
Anti-Israel protest organized by Marxists."
Ceci is interviewed at this clip from WBAL-TV 11 Baltimore, but as is always the case with media coverage of communist activists, the dude's full background isn't revealed:
A search on Ceci's background picks up a number of results going back to the mid-2000s. He's been affiliated with the Troops Out Now Coalition protesting the Iraq war, as well as Baltimore All Peoples Congress -- both front groups for the IAC, which is itself affiliated with the communist revolutionary World Workers Party.
Here's the Gaza solidarity organizing page at the International Action Center, "
Around the world, people stand with Gaza against Israeli massacres." Also at Workers World (newspaper of Workers World Party), "
U.S. protests in solidarity with people of Gaza."
Some background on IAC at the
World War 4 Report (back in 2002-03):
The dirty open secret on the American left--universally, but rarely openly, acknowledged--is that ANSWER is led at its core by an outfit called the International Action Center (IAC), which is itself a front group for the reactionary and Stalin-nostalgist Workers World Party. What nobody wants to say out loud is clearly evident: IAC and Workers World support genocide.
IAC's frontman, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, is a founding member of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, and IAC routinely dismissed accounts of the atrocities against Bosnian Muslims and Kosovar Albanians as imperialist "lies." Even now, IAC supports Milosevic almost without reservation, portraying him as a defender of socialism. During the worst of the Bosnia bloodshed, IAC«s Clark travelled to Bosnia to meet with Serb strongman Radovan Karadzic (now indicted on war crimes charges) and offer his support.
Workers World also supported Deng Xiaoping in the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, portraying the protesters as "counter-revolutionaries." In 1991, Workers World split the movement against Desert Storm by refusing to condemn Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. In the ensuing years, Clark and IAC dismissed human rights allegations against Saddam as more imperialist propaganda.
Workers World Party--whose cadre such as Brian Becker are ANSWER's most visible spokespersons--is a vigorous apologist of mass murder.
And see John Perazzo, at Discover the Networks, "
The Many Faces of Socialist 'Peace' Activists: The International Action Center" (2006):
The socialist International Action Center (IAC) is one of the most significant and influential organizations on the American political landscape today. It is also among the most dangerous. Its leaders have spawned a considerable number of additional groups –ostensibly independent entities focusing on their own respective crusades. But in truth, they are not independent at all; each of these groups is the International Action Center – radical socialism dressed up in the variegated vestments of such noble sounding causes as “peace,” “social justice,” “civil liberties,” and “human rights.” The unifying theme underpinning IAC’s (and its cohorts’) activism is an unwavering contention that a racist, imperialist United States is the world’s chief violator of these high ideals; that America is the central wellspring of evil on earth – guilty of unspeakable atrocities, past and present, foreign and domestic. Based on this premise, IAC aggressively supports a host of organizations and individuals who detest America so passionately that they in fact seek its destruction – so that a new socialist paradise might one day be built atop its smoldering ruins. This would be of little import if IAC were an impotent group of fringe lunatics without much social influence. But such is not the case. Rather, millions of unsuspecting Americans have been subtly, incrementally infected by IAC’s axiomatic belief that the United States is the focus of evil in the modern world. To understand how this has occurred, we must first understand exactly what IAC’s mission and worldview are.
IAC is, most notably, the driving force behind the antiwar group International ANSWER (henceforth, ANSWER), about which more will be said momentarily. IAC is a fiercely anti-American organization whose creed reads, “Information, Activism, and Resistance to U.S. Militarism, War, and Corporate Greed.” It is staffed by members of the Workers World Party (WWP), a Marxist-Leninist vanguard that idolizes the former Soviet dictator and mass murderer Joseph Stalin and regards Fidel Castro as a hero of the common man. Founded in 1959, WWP has been, since its inception, a fierce critic of the United States. Having supported the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, as well as the barbaric regimes of Slobodan Milocevic in the former Yugoslavia and Kim Jong Il in North Korea, WWP frankly defines itself as follows: “We’re independent Marxists who respect the struggles for self-determination and progress of oppressed nations. We try to understand their problems in a world dominated by Western imperialism. . . . Our goal is solidarity of all the workers and [all the] oppressed against this criminal imperialist system. . . . We fight hard for a better life right now, but we know that nothing is secure . . . as long as capitalism exists. So our goal is a society run by the workers, not just as pawns in a capitalist political game but as collective owners of the social wealth.” Such are the ideals of the organization behind one of the largest “peace” movements in world history. IAC was founded by Ramsey Clark, the onetime U.S. Attorney General (under President Lyndon Johnson) who now works as a defense lawyer, generally representing clients he portrays as victims of American civil liberties and human rights violations. For decades, Clark has consistently condemned American foreign policy and its related military campaigns, from the Vietnam War, to the Iraq War, to the broader War on Terror. Conversely, he has backed myriad groups, governments, and individuals with rabidly anti-American, and even terrorist, agendas. Whatever the nature of any conflict, Clark invariably sides with America’s adversary.
IAC and ANSWER remain loosely affiliated today. Brian Becker is now ANSWER's
national coordinator. IAC founder Ramsay Clark frequently headlines ANSWER events, for example, at the San Francisco chapter's
2012 teach-in on the 9th anniversary of the Iraq war.
Here's the statement on the group's from the Anti-Defamation League, "
International Action Center & ANSWER: An ADL Backgrounder" (2011):
Under the guise of an anti-imperialist and anti-war agenda, the Far-Left International Action Center (IAC) and its affiliate, the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, have been at the forefront of injecting anti-Israel fervor and support for terrorism into the anti-war movement.
Founded in 1992 by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, IAC regularly organizes protests against capitalism and what it perceives to be American imperialism, including policies related to the economy, immigration issues and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. ANSWER, its anti-war spinoff which was founded in 2001, has a narrower agenda and focuses on "campaigning against U.S. intervention" in foreign countries.
IAC and ANSWER's ideology is strongly rooted in the Workers World Party, a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party founded in the 1950s on the principle that only socialism will end "exploitation, racism and war." Both IAC and ANSWER organize many anti-war rallies around the country and they have become a galvanizing force behind the anti-war movement, leading the way in expressing opposition to the United States' wars abroad.
Along the way, they have consistently sought to link the Palestinian cause with other "anti-colonialist" and "anti-occupation" initiatives. ANSWER signs at anti-war rallies often read, "Occupation is a Crime: Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine." By equating the United States' wars abroad to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ANSWER has sought to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the anti-war movement's agenda, and has, to some extent, succeeded in making the conflict a core issue for the anti-war left.
In addition to its anti-war activity, IAC and ANSWER have sponsored and organized numerous anti-Israel events, rallies and demonstrations in the United States. ANSWER in particular has positioned itself as the leading organizer of the large rallies against Israel that usually take place during periods of heightened tension, including the Gaza War in the winter of 2008-2009 and the summer 2006 war in Lebanon. These protests, often co-sponsored by other anti-Israel organizations, regularly featured anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic rhetoric, expressions of support for terror and offensive Holocaust imagery likening Jews and Israelis to Nazis.
ANSWER and IAC have both repeatedly expressed support for terrorist groups determined to dismantle the state of Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as "resistance" groups fighting U.S. forces abroad. Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs expressing solidarity with these groups are often on display at ANSWER and IAC-organized anti-Israel rallies. IAC representatives have also attended conferences in the Middle East with Hamas and Hezbollah representatives to discuss strategies for shoring up support for these groups.
More.
These groups are vehicles for the most vile eliminationist anti-Semitism. Mainstream media outlets do significant harm in omitting any mention of the ideological, anti-Semitic background of organizers like Baltimore's Steven Ceci and his ilk.
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Los Angeles #Gaza Protesters Demand Extermination of Israel and Death to the Jews."
