arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

"February 15 is going to be the single biggest day of protest in world history and it's being organized with incredible speed," says L.A. Kauffman a staff member for United for Peace & Justice, the main organizing force behind the day of demonstrations around the U.S. in opposition to an attack on Iraq.

"The theme of this march is ‘The world says no to war' and the sense of global solidarity is greater than I've ever seen," Kauffman says. There are marches in over 500 cities around the world.

By all accounts, the mobilization is historic. "The peace movement has grown exponentially in a very short time," says Eric Laursen, a New York City-based activist and independent journalist. "A lot of the building blocks have been in place for an anti-war movement to grow… like labor coalitions against the war, organizations like the War Resisters League and a campus movement for global justice and against the war that's stayed vigorous since the 1960s."

Kauffman adds that, "While there was a noticeable reduction in grassroots organizing the first year after September 11, the networks and infrastructure built during the years of the global justice movement, from 1999 to 2001, were still in place… as anti-war activism began accelerating" last fall.

Barbara Epstein, a professor in the History of Consciousness program at UC Santa Cruz says activists from the global justice movement can provide a "radical edge to the growing anti-war movement. One of the questions for the movement is how to contain a radical edge while building a broader movement."

"The main strength of the anti-war movement is its breadth," says Epstein. "Anti-war sentiment seems to have taken off in certain sectors of the Protestant and Catholic churches. It's impressive how many mainstream churches have come out against the war. I think the churches are horrified by the moral and legal implications of a war."

Another important element in the rapid growth of a broad-based anti-war movement is the role of people of color. "This mobilization looks to be substantially more racially diverse than either of the anti-war mobilizations of 1990-91 or large-scale peace movements in the past," says Kauffman. "People of color are overwhelmingly against this war. You see that very dramatically when you're out leafleting by who responds positively. And people of color are in the leadership [of the anti-war movement] from the get-go." A difference between the current anti-war movement and the one against the Vietnam War in particular is that campus organizing is not yet a central element. "The draft in the 1960s organized the movement," Epstein says. "The campuses were hotbeds of activity between the demonstrations during the Vietnam War. The fact that there is no draft today poses a different type of challenge for anti-war organizers. Young people have always played a very strong role in social movements and we can't do without them."

While students are not organizing today on the level of the hundreds of campus strikes that occurred after the killing of students at Kent State and Jackson State in May 1970, Laursen cautions against concluding that students are not active. "Organizers on college campuses are often organizing off-campus with other groups. Just because you don't see demonstrations happening all the time on campuses doesn't mean students aren't involved."

The immediate goal, says organizers, "is trying to stop the war before it starts." However, Kauffman notes, "What the movement will do if the war begins is unclear."

Laursen suggests activists need to "develop a strategy for how to turn this movement into a long-term active resistance to American imperialism at home and abroad."

Over the last year, the anti-war movement has succeeded in turning out large numbers of people by focusing on conflicts in the public eye. Last April, 100,000 people marched in Washington, DC, in opposition to the furious Israeli assault then underway in the West Bank. Epstein says that while the issue is now the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, next year the peace movement could be organizing against a U.S. assault on North Korea or Iran.

"The peace movement needs to address itself to the aim of world power rather than focusing on one specific instance and then the next," Epstein says. But she adds, "If you want to mobilize large numbers of people, it's specific instances that get them out in the street."

Another concern expressed by some observers is a repeat of the first Gulf War. One poll on the eve of the 1991 war found that less than half the American public supported the U.S.-led attack on Iraq; 55 percent were in opposition or on the sidelines. By the war's end, with a smashing U.S. victory and few body bags returning home, opposition dropped to a miniscule 9 percent in polls, the anti-war movement quickly dissipated, and the first President Bush basked in 90 percent approval ratings.

"This is a real danger," Epstein says. "My guess is that's what Bush is counting on. Bush is disregarding the very strong anti-war sentiment in the country. He thinks once he starts a war, the media will support him and public opinion will support him and that could happen."

"This time," says Laursen "a long-term occupation of Iraq will be harder for the public to ignore. This is just the first step in a very long-term project by the United States."

"What we need to be thinking ahead to as an anti-war movement is how we're going to broaden out to oppose this entire American imperial project," Laursen continues. "We're going to have to educate the public about the fact that a 10-year occupation of Iraq is, for example, going to rob our schools of money and increase the domination of oil companies and financial interests over our government."

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