October 28 2001
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.
"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."