Gitlin on the student peace movement

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Sep 21 07:34:47 PDT 2001


Nathan Newman wrote:


>On the other hand, I have great confidence in our ability to challenge the
>current war fever, as I wrote. And great confidence in the current new
>generation of activists to try new better tactics that actually promote
>positive alternatives, rather than just a "no" strategy.

The first task, it seems to me, for a peace movement right now would be to stop the U.S. from doing anything horridly crazy. I don't think you need to come up with an alternative; for the moment, "no" is urgently ok. Time is pretty short, from the sound of some of the rhetoric. Over the longer term, I agree that just saying "no" isn't enough, but that's an issue for the longer term.

Doug



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