[Peace-discuss] Re: New tactic? (and why it could backfire)

[Randall Cotton]

I'm fairly new to AWARE (my first involvement was going to DC last January)
and I have great respect and appreciation for Paul Mueth's efforts, having
listened to him on WEFT for years, so it is with some reluctance that I
write in opposition to his suggestion of civil disobedience at Market Place.

However, I'm very concerned that this kind of effort would not just be less
effective than others, but that it may indeed be counterproductive. Here's
my line of thought on this:

I believe a key reason why so many Americans support this war is fear,
primarily induced by 9/11 (whether they consciously realize it or not).
There are other key reasons of course, but I need to focus on fear for this
argument. Now, presuming that our cause here  is to convince those in favor
of war to instead be and work against this war, making news by creating a
spectacle of being anti-war in and of itself does not help that cause
because it won't do anything to help change minds. In fact, those whose
judgments are so clouded by fear that they actually support Bush's insane
rush to war will only resent us for obstructing something they think will
increase their safety. They will likely take it as an assault on the safety
of Americans including their own personal safety and thus they will view us
as their enemy and perhaps make them even more intransigent about going
ahead with this ridiculous war.

Civil disobedience in support of civil rights or the environment or nuclear
disarmament doesn't have this tangible fear factor working against it. Fear
is what makes this situation different and, in my opinion, inappropriate for
such a civil disobedience tactic at this point in time. I suspect it will be
perceived as a confrontational threat by the people we really want to
convince and as such, I'm afraid it would actually work against us.

In addition, I think civil disobedience is best used for opposing specific
unjust laws by breaking those same unjust laws. I'm concerned that
attempting to oppose war in Iraq by breaking private property laws would
muddy our message. Will we be perceived (or worse, portrayed) as opposing
private property laws instead of opposing this war?

Having said that, I don't preclude the possibility of some form of
information campaign at Market Place with the agreement of its owners (don't
know how realistic that is, though).

Rather than civil disobedience, I believe the best tactic against the
ignorant fear that fuels this war madness is non-confrontational education.
I'm solidly in support of legal, non-confrontational leafleting in public
places. I think it's appropriate to point out here that moveon.org recently
started coordination of a nationwide leafleting campaign. See:

http://www.moveon.org/leaflets

Now that I look, curiously enough, the one leaflet site in our area that's
been registered so far for this campaign is, in fact, Market Place Mall. One
of us, perhaps?

R
.