[Peace-discuss] Fwd: LA Times: On Campus and Off, Antiwar Movements See New Vigor (fwd)

[Al Kagan]

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>Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 16:25:34 -0600 (CST)
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>Subject: LA Times: On Campus and Off, Antiwar Movements See New Vigor (fwd)
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>Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 09:13:29 EST
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>Subject: [iac-disc.] LA Times: On Campus and Off, Antiwar Movements See
>New Vigor
>
>The same is true in Seattle, especially the teach-ins.  The University of
>Washington Thursday evening teach-ins/panel discussions have had to move
>twice, each time to a bigger venue to handle the numbers of people.  And a
>friend of mine in Atlanta GA wrote about a successful march and rally there
>(no police problems, but they had a permit -- and lots of honks and waves
>from passersby).
>
>met
>~~~~~~~
>http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1028-01.htm
>
>Published on Sunday, October 28, 2001 in the Los Angeles Times
>On Campus and Off, Antiwar Movements See New Vigor
>
>Opposition to military action builds with a more polite, thoughtful
>approach than in days of Vietnam.
>by Elizabeth Mehren
>
>ÝAMHERST, Mass. -- As never before, their dance cards are full.
>
>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.
>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.
>
>"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."
>
>>From the Fields of Revolutionary Past
>
>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.
>
>Signs of Growing Opposition in Streets
>
>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."
>
>Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
>
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-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu