[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Antiwar effort gains momentum (fwd)

[manni at snafu.de]

Forwarded Message:
> To: Alison Candela <marmanet at worldnet.att.net>,    Maya Khankhoje 
<mayak at sprint.ca>, manni at snafu.de
> From: Andre Gunder Frank <franka at fiu.edu>
> Subject: Antiwar effort gains momentum (fwd)
> Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 21:03:37 -0500 (EST)
> -----
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
>                ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK
> 
> Senior Fellow                                      Residence
> World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
> Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
> 270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
> Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
> Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
> Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka at fiu.edu
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> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 19:31:13 PST
> From: shniad at SFU.CA
> Reply-To: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its articles
>     <SOCIALIST-REGISTER at YorkU.CA>
> To: SOCIALIST-REGISTER at YORKU.CA
> Subject: Antiwar effort gains momentum
> 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61647-2002Dec1.html
> 
> Washington Post   Monday, December 2, 2002
> 
> Antiwar effort gains momentum
> 
> Growing peace movement's ranks include some unlikely allies
> 
> By Evelyn Nieves
> 
> Amherst, Mass. -- The idea was hatched on a bright day in August, when
> Daphne Reed was celebrating her daughter's and granddaughter's birthdays,
> and the talk around the living room sofa turned to war.
> 
> Reed began worrying that her 25-year-old grandson, who spent four years in
> the Coast Guard, might be called to serve if the United States were to
> invade Iraq. Her family also wondered why the United States was threatening
> to invade Iraq even before United Nations weapons inspections began. And
> Reed fretted over the particular suffering that would befall Iraqi women;
> their sons and husbands would be killed, she said, and the women would be
> left in the rubble to fend off contaminated water and starvation.
> 
> "I said that all mothers should automatically be against war," Reed said.
> "It was against their nature to be violent instead of nurturing." Maybe, she
> said, it was time to start a movement -- Mothers Against War.
> 
> Reed's response is just a tiny part of a growing peace movement that has
> been gaining momentum and raises the possibility that there could be much
> more dissent if U.S. bombs begin falling on Baghdad.
> 
> The retired Hampshire College drama teacher e-mailed about 15 parents in her
> address book. Reed reached people such as Elaine Kenseth, whose five
> children include a son she adopted from the killing fields of Cambodia.
> Aileen O'Donnell, a veteran of the women's movement. Joanne and Roger Lind,
> whose son was a Vietnam War conscientious objector. And Elizabeth Verrill,
> who had never been involved in political causes. Before long, Mothers
> Against War had 50 core members, and thousands of supporters around the
> country and the world.
> 
> Most members of Mothers Against War are grandmothers in their seventies
> whose lives are already full. Yet they spend hours a day on the Internet,
> reading and spreading information on Iraq and the United States and planning
> for marches, e-mail campaigns and teach-ins. Having lived through the
> Vietnam antiwar movement, which took years to build, the Mothers Against War
> are buoyed to find themselves part of a fast-growing movement of people from
> every walk of life, from every political stripe.
> 
> The extraordinary array of groups questioning the Bush administration's
> rationale for an invasion of Iraq includes longtime radical groups such as
> the Workers World Party, but also groups not known for taking stands against
> the government. There is a labor movement against war, led by organizers of
> the largest unions in the country; a religious movement against the war,
> which includes leaders of virtually every mainstream denomination; a
> veterans movement against the war, led by those who fought Iraq in the
> Persian Gulf a decade ago; business leaders against the war, led by
> corporate leaders; an antiwar movement led by relatives of victims of the
> Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; and immigrant groups against the war.
> 
> There are also black and Latino organizations, hundreds of campus antiwar
> groups and scores of groups of ordinary citizens meeting in community
> centers and church basements from Baltimore to Seattle.
> 
> It has reached a point where United for Peace, a Web site started by the San
> Francisco-based human rights organization Global Exchange for groups to list
> events commemorating the Sept. 11 anniversary, has morphed into a national
> network coordinating events for more than 70 peace groups nationwide.
> 
> "We're taking the . . . Web site and rebuilding it as a one-stop shopping
> for the antiwar movement," said Andrea Buffa, who co-chairs the new network.
> "It's a campaign of all different kinds of groups, from the National Council
> of Churches to the International Socialists organization; I just got a call
> from the Raging Grannies of Palo Alto, who want to join. We're bringing
> groups together to develop a consensus statement and a calendar of
> coordinated antiwar events."
> 
> After large rallies in Washington and San Francisco on Oct. 26, the next big
> day to test the antiwar movement's might is Dec. 10, International Human
> Rights Day. Hundreds of groups plan events, rallies and civil disobedience
> to capture the nation's attention, including demonstrations in Lafayette
> Park across from the White House and at a military recruitment center in
> downtown Washington.
> 
> Otherwise, antiwar groups, which tend to rely on the Internet to receive and
> spread information, operate largely without the attention of the media or
> Capitol Hill. Yet many of those speaking out against an attack on Iraq
> represent large numbers of Americans, including John J. Sweeney, president
> of the AFL-CIO (with 13 million members); the National Council of Churches
> (which represents 36 Protestant and Orthodox denominations, with 50 million
> members); and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (the leadership
> arm of 65 million Roman Catholics).
> 
> Quietly Organizing
> 
> Among themselves, the groups are quietly organizing their ranks. A letter
> Sweeney sent to Congress in early October expressing deep reservations about
> the justifications for an invasion has begun to resonate among the rank and
> file, said Bob Muehlenkamp, a labor consultant and former organizing
> director for the Teamsters union. Several hundred thousand union members, he
> said, have signed up against the war, with more joining every week. He
> expects the numbers to balloon when leaders hold an organizational breakfast
> meeting for all unions in New York on Dec. 18.
> 
> "Union people are the most patriotic of Americans," Muehlenkamp said, "yet
> you can't find all-out aggressive support for a Bush war." Union members
> have the same concerns as others opposed to the proposed war, including a
> belief that the Bush administration has not weighed the economic
> consequences or made the case for an unprecedented attack, he said. But they
> have their own concerns as well. "For unions," he said, "it's their kids
> that are going to be doing the fighting. It's our sons and daughters who
> could die."
> 
> The National Council of Churches, which includes Lutherans, Episcopalians
> and President Bush's denomination, Methodists, is facilitating antiwar
> events for traditionally liberal institutions and conservative churches,
> said the Rev. Robert Edgar, its general secretary.
> 
> "Average, ordinary people," Edgar said, "who come from evangelical Christian
> conservative roots are organizing against the war." Edgar, who served in
> Congress as a Democrat from suburban Philadelphia from 1975 to 1987,
> recalled that he was a freshman Democrat during the last days of the Vietnam
> War. Even then, he said, he and other lawmakers had to fight to end U.S.
> involvement. He also remembered that it took the church -- meaning most
> mainstream religious institutions -- 12 years to start opposing that war.
> "Whereas, the threat of war now has even middle churches, not just liberal
> churches, involved in antiwar activities," he said.
> 
> During its annual meeting last month, the National Council of Churches
> issued a statement praising the National Conference of Catholic Bishops for
> reiterating its position against a U.S. invasion. "We thought it was
> important to acknowledge their important work," Edgar said.
> 
> Now, he said, the National Council of Churches -- fresh from its "What Would
> Jesus Drive?" television ad campaign to promote fuel efficiency -- is
> launching a "Seasons of Peacemaking" campaign, "moving beyond statements to
> actions. On December 8 through 15, there will be a series of actions across
> the country." The biggest day, he said, is Dec. 10, which is significant not
> only because it is Human Rights Day but also because it is the day that
> former president Jimmy Carter is to receive his Nobel Peace Prize. "Carter,
> as an evangelical Christian, represents a great number of people in the
> antiwar effort," Edgar said.
> 
> Indeed, on that day, religious groups across the country plan to stage mass
> acts of civil disobedience. Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, founder of
> Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, plans to join church groups in New
> York and get arrested, he said, for the first time.
> 
> "I've never engaged in civil disobedience before," he said. "But if some
> country was going to do this to us -- have a little preemptive war with the
> U.S., bomb our people, kill or maim people because they thought that at some
> time we might bomb them, we'd say that's a war crime. I feel that getting
> arrested is the biggest statement that I could make to say that what the
> Bush administration is doing is wrong."
> 
> That day, as well as the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Jan.
> 18-19, is important for the smaller groups across the country as well. Damu
> Smith, founder of the Washington-based Black Voices for Peace, said his
> group plans to begin a poor people's peace movement similar to the one King
> was organizing before his murder in 1968. Black Voices is planning its own
> rallies and forums in Washington, as well as participating in planning
> national events as a member of the steering committee for United for Peace,
> he said.
> 
> "Before Doctor King died," Smith said, "he was speaking out forcefully
> against the United States involvement in Vietnam. He made the point that the
> money being spent on bombs was money that could never be spent on addressing
> poverty. We are taking up Doctor King's legacy."
> 
> While African Americans and other minorities have been underrepresented in
> some national campaigns, such as the environmental movement, Smith,
> executive director of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, said
> that he has had no trouble recruiting against the proposed war. The group,
> which he began a few weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, in response to a lack of
> African American voices in the policy debates and newscasts surrounding the
> attacks, has more than 3,000 members, he said.
> 
> Not all are African American. "We get calls from people who say, 'I'm white,
> but I want to join your group,' just as in the civil rights movement. It's
> such a shame that the media has not focused on what is happening because
> there are so many voices working together."
> 
> Remembering Another War
> 
> Those who still remember the horrors of the Vietnam War, like the members of
> Mothers Against War, find themselves connected to this new antiwar movement
> on a personal as well as ideological level. The other day, as half a dozen
> core members sat in Daphne Reed's living room, they remembered friends who
> had fled to Canada to shield their sons from the military draft, friends who
> died in the war, and lives forever changed by the war.
> 
> Joanne and Roger Lind, 77 and 78, respectively, are retired professors of
> sociology and social work, whose son received his draft card as soon as he
> turned 18 in 1965. As Quakers, the Linds were actively working toward
> peaceful solutions to the crisis, including organizing teach-ins. Their son
> became a conscientious objector, and did community work, known then as
> alternative service. "But sons of our friends were not so lucky," Joanne
> Lind said. "They served two years in prison."
> 
> Elaine Kenseth, at 59 the youngest of the group, remembered that her friends
> started getting married in 1964 before finishing school so that their men
> could be exempt from the draft. "Others left for Canada. They lived there
> until President Carter created the amnesty for them."
> 
> She became active in helping refugees of the war resettle in Western
> Massachusetts, and adopted her Cambodian son, when he was 16. "When we say
> we're mothers against war," she said, "we're also saying we're mothers
> seeking peace. We are activists for spreading peace in the world."
> 
> Reed, recalling the four wars she has seen this country involved in during
> her lifetime, said she is often motivated by a single memory decades old.
> 
> She was visiting the nation's capital, she said, when she saw a man without
> a face.
> 
> "Yes," she said, "without a face. He had nothing but a plastic mask with two
> holes for eyes and one for mouth. It still swims before my inner vision,
> provoking an agony of grief that no one had been able to stop the war that
> took away that man's face."
>