[Nettime-bold] Minutemen for Peace.

["Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>]

Yo, Nettime. Yanks mobilising for peace. 

 Lachlan
 
 third.net
 coalition.org.uk
 difference.ca


-----Original Message-----
From: EdMole <EdMole@myope.com>
Sent: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 22:10:52 +0200
To: copyLeft <copyleft_attitude@april.org>
Subject: [copyleft_attitude] FW: Around the Country, Citizens Mobilizing for Peace

Si vous etes à NYC ces jours ci ou ailleurs :


----------
From: Den Dotson <animateden@mac.com>
Reply-To: ArtAndTragedy@topica.com
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 14:19:30 -0500
To: attack_On_America@topica.com
Cc: ArtAndTragedy@topica.com
Subject: Around the Country, Citizens Mobilizing for Peace


Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com
September 19, 2001


If the United State's until-recently somnambulant peace movement is going to stop the
looming war the United States is both hurtling towards and largely
yearning for, it's going have to grow up. Fast.


That's not as ridiculous a prospect as it might seem for people who
remember that only two years ago, when the faithful were called to rally
against the decimation of Yugoslavia, virtually nobody came. But only a
few days after the most devastating direct attack on the United States
in its history, there were thousands gathering for a peace vigil in New
York. Sunday, some 4,000 rallied in San Francisco; another 2,000 in
Portland. The day after tomorrow, a huge crowd is expected in New York
for a peace procession from Union Square to the Army recruiting station
in Times Square.


In communities across the country, large groups of people who didn't
know each other a week ago -- folks who'd been working on missile
defense or gun control or feeding the hungry or immigration or global
justice or any of 50 other issues, and people who hadn't been active on
any political issues at all -- have been meeting and finding their
common ground. They've been reassuring each other that they're not
insane, and that they're not alone in wanting the United States to not
respond to a horrific crime by flattening some country, any country.


And they're right; they're not alone. While the dominant sense -- the
only sense, to hear our networks -- has been to go kick some A-rab ass,
there's a significant, and broad, counter-current. At first glance, it
seems astonishing; only a week ago, thousands died and virtually
everyone in the country began worrying about their own physical safety
and that of their loved ones. Of course something needs to be done.


But what? Is war, especially the prolonged one George Bush is now
warning of, the answer? Well, that depends on a few niggling details.
Like: Is it a war? Who's the enemy? How can we fight them? And, perhaps
most critically, what constitutes victory, and how will we know when
we've won?


The lack of answers should give everyone pause. They're certainly giving
the Bush Administration pause. To its credit (so far), while the
rhetoric has been understandably bellicose and the White House has been
busy lining up foreign support and military options, it hasn't blindly
lashed out yet in retribution. That's the most immediate concern of the
incipient peace movement: that the perpetrators be accurately
identified. The second concern is that innocent civilians not be
targeted; it would be an enormous mistake, morally and politically, for
the United States to make somebody else's ordinary people pay for the
deaths of our ordinary people.


(Well, some of them were ours. An inconvenient little fact, omitted from
our myth-making, is that the World Trade Center was, well, a Trade
Center for the World. As of Monday, reported losses of foreign nationals
in the attack include at least 2,500 dead and missing from 43
countries -- maybe half of the total casualties.)


At the moment, the United States, as the aggrieved party, has the
world's sympathy, cooperation, and moral respect. As soon as it
incinerates a city full of people who had nothing to do with our
grievances, the War Against Terrorism instantly becomes just another
Yankee invasion. And, as I mentioned yesterday, that's just the scenario
Bin Laden dreams of and any rational person should dread.


For that reason, a lot of people feel like they're out of step with what
political leaders are calling for and media pundits are cheerleading
for. Those people want terrorism stopped, but not at the expense of
innocent lives, not at the expense of the Bill of Rights, and certainly
not at the cost of World War III. (None of which are likely to fully
stop terrorism, anyway.)


The infant peace movement's challenge is to call for the U.S. to pursue
a more reasoned, effective strategy while still recognizing people's
justified anger and not sounding like apologists for terrorism. That
will require tact, clarity, and understanding. Just as the Bush
Administration has not yet actually made a case that Osama bin Laden
(let alone the Taliban, let alone the poor, beleaguered people of
Afghanistan, let alone the rest of the Islamic world) were responsible
for the attacks, activists don't know for a fact that the attacks were
motivated by past U.S. atrocities. And that's not what the public wants
to hear, anyway.


One bad sign in that department is that the September 29 anti-World
Bank/IMF demonstrations in Washington D.C., which have been called off
by their major organizers, are being replaced by a proposed anti-war
event being peddled by the International Action Center -- a noisy,
parasitic front group for the Stalinist Workers World Party that stuck
its face in front of the cameras and de-legitimized thousands of Middle
American demonstrators at Bush's inaugural last January with its
irrelevant pet issues (e.g., Mumia) and over-the-top hostile rhetoric.


During the Gulf War, the IAC distinguished itself by defending the
conduct of Saddam Hussein. The worst-case scenario is the IAC, in front
of the White House, pulling a similar stunt next week, with national
media being given a snapshot of the "peace movement" as smaller and, for
most people, far more repugnant than it actually is -- a movement that
draws cheers when police move in. Much of the more mainstream peace
movement won't go near the IAC, but happily, it doesn't need to. The
young activists of our new century have a tremendous advantage, not even
available during the Gulf War: the Internet. In many ways, it renders
the need for massive centralized rallies obsolete, allowing concerned
citizens in communities across the country to organize locally and still
be heard globally.


There's nothing like the imminent, realistic specter of World War III to
terrify, and motivate, a lot of people. But folks wanting to stop war
don't have much time; the movement has to grow up, fast, pull together a
wide variety of ideologies and perspectives, and figure out how it can
have an impact in policy-making -- all before the U.S. commits itself to
a tremendous, irreversible mistake. The race is on.



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