the peace movement

here is an interesting article about the peace movement. things are not
hopeless after all.

---

> 
> LA Times. 28 October 2001. On Campus and Off, Antiwar Movements See New
> Vigor.
> 
> AMHERST, Mass. -- As never before, their dance cards are full.
> 
> Scholars of peace and diplomacy say that with little effort -- and no
> exaggeration -- they could schedule three speaking engagements per
> night. Elder statesmen of this country's antiwar movement report a
> similar surge in demand since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Academics
> who study terrorism or the Middle East are taking part in teach-ins that
> generally are packed.
> 
> Off campus, the voices of nonviolence are heard in such places as
> Worcester, a working-class city where a weekly vigil during rush hour
> draws cheers from passersby.
> 
> And in Northampton, where a draft counseling center has opened -- even
> though, at the moment, there is no military draft.
> 
> Any organized campaign to oppose U.S. military force in Afghanistan "is
> still in the process of taking shape," said Joseph Gerson of the
> American Friends Service Committee in Cambridge. But, he said, momentum
> is building.
> 
> "It's big and it's diverse," Gerson said. "I think it can be described
> as a peace movement and an antiwar movement and a justice movement."
> 
> The energy is evident in increased traffic on the Internet, where new
> peace sites are complementing existing sources of information about the
> war. But along with the vast virtual audience, actual crowds are
> growing.
> 
> In longtime centers of peace activity such as Berkeley and Madison,
> Wis., large demonstrations began before the first bombs were dropped.
> 
> But New England, long a focal point for activism, is where much of the
> antiwar action is unfolding.
> 
> The new pacifism feels almost polite, lacking the stridence of earlier
> generations of American protest. Resistance to the U.S. military
> involvement in Afghanistan is thoughtful, reflective. It is tempered by
> angst, anguish--and most of all, a fundamental abhorrence of what
> happened to this country when hijackers commandeered four jetliners and
> killed more than 5,000 people.
> 
> The focus still is diffuse; there is no monolithic chorus of dissent. No
> charismatic leaders have yet stepped forward. And if there is a single
> defining trait, at present it is a thirst for information.
> 
> With foundations in the vast and growing antiglobalization campaign, the
> evolving peace movement draws on long-standing, traditional
> organizations and philosophies. Days after Sept. 11, Quaker groups
> organized the first peace rallies. The War Resisters League, the
> Fellowship of Reconciliation and other old-time pacifist groups are back
> on the radarscope. Again and again, a well-worn chestnut from Mahatma
> Ghandi -- "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" -- shows up
> on handouts and bulletin boards.
> 
> "I'm seeing a lot less of the knee-jerk kind of stuff," said Stephen
> Zunes, a Middle Eastern specialist who directs the peace and justice
> studies program at the University of San Francisco. "People are
> concerned, and they oppose the war. But they realize this is a different
> kind of situation. They need the facts. They want more information."
> 
> A recent two-day speaking swing took Zunes from the Bay Area to Los
> Angeles to Eugene, Ore. His audiences were "big and enthused and
> agitated, but I think in a more reflective, responsible way than we have
> seen sometimes."
> 
> "Certainly there is passion out there, but it is a responsible passion
> -- one that has been tempered by the fact that we witnessed this
> enormous tragedy on Sept. 11."
> 
> Boston University history professor Howard Zinn said he has been
> "besieged" by invitations to speak about terrorism and the war in
> Afghanistan, with "more requests than I could possibly deal with." At
> 79, Zinn approaches the stepped-up demand as an eminence grise of the
> antiwar movement and as a bombardier from World War II.
> 
> What he sees, Zinn said, is a massive appetite for information and a
> resistance effort that is fast churning into action.
> 
> [N.B.] "Things are starting earlier now than they did with the Vietnam
> War," Zinn said. "In the spring of 1965, we had 100 people on the Boston
> Common. Just a week or so ago, we had 2,000 people at Copley Square.
> It's starting earlier, and I believe it will grow."
> 
> "Immediately after Sept. 11, if you talked about American foreign policy
> as having anything to do with the problem, people were horrified. It was
> too close. People thought you were diminishing the tragedy. I think as
> time passes, it will be easier to think in more long-term ways."
> 
> Out here in western Massachusetts, fertile territory for alternative
> views since the American Revolution, opposition to capitalism and
> corporate power was already fueling many students.
> 
> Right away, said professor Michael Klare, head of peace and world
> security studies at Hampshire College, "protests were organized by
> students who were already geared up for antiglobalization protests."
> They have a perspective that makes them distinct from many other
> undergraduates Klare has encountered in his post-Sept. 11 flurry of
> speeches and seminars. "Most students don't even have that. They're just
> bewildered," he said.
> 
> But some students--and many nonstudents as well -- crave involvement as
> a way to stave off feelings of helplessness. Over lunch one recent day,
> a table full of Hampshire College students talked about how and why they
> have plunged into action, forming a local branch of a group born at UC
> Berkeley on Sept. 12: Students for a Peaceful Response.
> 
> Their principles of unity, they explained, begin with a condemnation of
> the attacks of Sept. 11.
> 
> >From there, said 21-year-old Kai Newkirk of Shepardstown, W.Va., "we
> have the priority of stopping the mass murder of millions. We have a
> window of a few weeks."
> 
> Sydney Hoover, 17, a freshman from Upper Coe, Md., said she already was
> involved in an antiglobalization protest aimed at the International
> Monetary Fund and the World Bank. After Sept. 11, that effort hastily
> shifted focus to initiate a campus dialogue with a group called
> Activating Peace.
> 
> The loosely knit group launched nonviolence training seminars and began
> preparing speakers, Hoover said. With the goal of creating "some kind of
> visible dissenting presence," they reached out to local high schools and
> community groups, organized teach-ins and held a daylong walkout at
> Hampshire, a private school with 1,200 students.
> 
> The process unfolding at Hampshire reflects a powerfully American
> quality, said Dale Bryan of the peace and justice studies program at
> Tufts University, near Boston.
> 
> "This voice that for many represents rancorous discourse actually it is
> bona fide, genuine American participation," Bryan said. "It is what the
> country does well, to assemble and participate freely, and we always
> have. And sometimes it is directed at the government, and the
> Constitution says, well, sometimes it should be."
> 
> For those in "the movement" -- a timeworn sobriquet that the peace
> effort has clung to -- "this is how it is being realized: in day-to-day,
> face-to-face, ordinary conversations," Bryan said.
> 
> At Lincoln Square in Worcester, an industrial-era city in central
> Massachusetts, this theory plays out each Tuesday at a street vigil.
> Mothers, lawyers, clergy, students -- the number stays constant at about
> 50, though the participants change--stand at a busy intersection. They
> chant, wave signs, hand out leaflets and often hold conversations with
> people who come to a stop in their cars.
> 
> Out on the street in his suit and tie, Philip Stone, a 47-year-old
> attorney, said: "I think this is a fairly typical example of the kind of
> grass-roots peace activity that you will see going on all over the
> country. This is a location with high visibility, a place where we can
> demonstrate that there is thoughtful opposition to the policies of the
> current administration."
> 
> Kindergarten teacher Kathleen Connelly Legg, a 45-year-old mother of
> three, said she never protested during Vietnam and thought hard before
> showing up at Lincoln Square. She was troubled, Legg said, that "we, as
> the most powerful nation on Earth, are bombing the most destitute."
> 
> Though small, the weekly demonstration will help the seeds of a new
> peace effort to take root, Legg said.
> 
> "It spreads and it spreads as information gets out. I am hoping we are
> laying the groundwork for something much larger. I am hoping that we get
> that kind of time."
> 
> 
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> 

---