Organizing Against War: A Roundtable Discussion Among Southern Peace Activists

On February 15, 2003, thousands of Southerners joined 10 million people across the globe to voice their opposition to U.S. plans for war on Iraq, in what has been called the largest single protest (or event of any kind) in history. Rania Masri asked Southern anti-war organizers and activists to reflect on February 15 and the peace movement in general.

Participants:

Beth Lavoie (Atlanta, Ga.), local organizer and assistant director of the Middle East Peace Education Committee of the American Friends Service Committee-Southeast Regional Office (AFSC-SERO).

Ed Whitfield (Greensboro, N.C.), co-chair of the Greensboro Peace Coalition, active with the Jubilee Institute and the Beloved Community Center. Helped organize the Raleigh rally and march on Feb. 15.

Robert Jensen (Austin, Texas), associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, author of Uniting Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream, member of the Nowar Collective and the Southern Voices for Peace Speakers’ Bureau. Emceed the anti-war rally in Austin.

Jim Straub (Richmond, Va.), a Philadelphian who moved South two years ago. Works on labor, war and poverty issues with the Richmond Coalition for a Living Wage and Food Not Bombs.

Emily Harry (Richmond, Va.), a junior at Virginia Commonwealth University, worked with the local Food Not Bombs chapter to organize RECLAIM: A Conference on Community, War, and Oppression, March 21-23.

Hany Khalil (New York City), an Arab American organizer, raised in Texas, currently working with the anti-war paper War Times (www.war-times.org) and serving as National Coordinator of Racial Justice 911 (www.rj911.org). Cochaired the program committee of the United for Peace and Justice rally in New York City on Feb. 15.

Gregory Reck (Boone, N.C.), a cultural anthropology professor at Appalachian State University and co-founder of High Country Peace and Justice.

Michael Berg (Columbia, S.C.), Mid East Issues Coordinator for the Carolina Peace Resource Center, and local organizer for the Feb. 15 rally.

 

SE: Looking back, what were the major achievements of February 15, both nationally and locally?

Ed Whitfield: February 15 moved the anti-war movement firmly into the main stream of activity and participation. It reflects a critical mass of people around the world who cannot be ignored. It reflects the beginning of the broadening and merging of the struggles against war with the struggle against corporate globalization and the struggles around domestic issues of race, class and gender oppression.

Jim Straub: The sheer size internationally actually seems to have affected the geopolitical considerations of the warmongers, which is totally amazing. Along with F15, I’d cite some other recent events like the founding of the new Labor Against War coalition, MoveOn’s growth, and the pace of municipal antiwar resolutions as all being harbingers of a genuine mass movement.

 

SE: What new communities, if any, took part in this protest—either protesting with others, speaking out on the stage, or organizing the protest?

Beth Lavoie: A lot of regular, middle of the road, middle class white folks, both protesting and organizing.

Jim Straub: We’ve had folks like the NAACP and unions involved for the first time, along with an incredibly dynamic local women in black group, Muslim students group, and more. This didn’t happen accidentally; activists here have been prioritizing people of color and working-class peoples’ involvement from the planning stage, as well as combating the sexism that crops up in antiwar organizing.

Michael Berg: We had more Gulf War veterans, student from Benedict and Columbia Colleges as well as antiabortion conservative Christians morally opposed to the war.

 

SE: What problems need to be solved within the movement?

Beth Lavoie: I think the left needs to remember it’s not preaching to just the choir now. Tone down the rhetoric. I believe we should definitely keep pointing out connections between the different issues but do it in a language that doesn’t completely alienate our newcomers.

Robert Jensen: It’s no secret that the antiwar movement is still overwhelmingly white and middle-class. One obvious challenge is to create a movement that expands beyond that.

Jim Straub: Not enough activists are building relationships with their local unions, living wage coalitions, churches, civic associations and community groups. [There needs to be] more emphasis on local struggles, door-knocking, coalition and relationship building, and generally connecting this movement to the multiracial working class. . . . There are fundamental structural reasons this war is happening and if we don’t fight for revolutionary change to deal with that we’ll be stuck doing harm reduction forever.

Hany Khalil: We are far from having built a base in communities of color large and broad enough to impact policy. . . . It’s urgent that we make a breakthrough in tackling institutional racism’s destructive effect within the peace movement. . . . We must broaden and deepen our support by targeting a broad range of sectors. That means connecting the war on Iraq to racial and social injustice at home and to US attacks on other Third World nations abroad. We can and must reach far beyond the middle class, white constituency often thought of as the movement’s natural base.

 

SE: Does the South play a special role—both in the war itself and in the anti-war movement?

Beth Lavoie: Well the South is more conservative and very caught up in the military industrial complex. So as the song goes, “If we can make it here . . .” If the South erupts I think Bush will listen.

Hany Khalil: The Southeast and Southwest are home to the military-industrial complex, the petrochemical complex, and the right-wing white base of the Republican party. These are major domestic forces behind the war, making the South the material and ideological base of the U.S. empire. As the percentage of the U.S. population living in the South continues to grow, the importance of this region to national and international politics grows, too. Traditionally, the peace movement has been strongest on the two coasts. It’s now clear that without a strong base in the South, we’ll never have the power to restrain the U.S. war machine. Developing our own “Southern strategy” must be a high priority.

 

SE: What is needed for this movement to grow and become a more significant force?

Beth Lavoie: We need to take this opportunity, with middle of the road types joining up, to debunk the myth that protesting and activism are unpatriotic or foolish meddling and reassert the fact that dissent is essential to democracy and has shaped the history of our nation. In short—make them activists for good, not just for this antiwar movement.

Robert Jensen: At the same time that we try to reach more “regular” people, we also have to push a radical analysis. That is, as we mainstream the movement we shouldn’t give up the compelling nature of a radical critique of the U.S. economy, political system, and culture. The power of the movement lies in envisioning and articulating a radically different world.

Jim Straub: Every local antiwar movement organizer in the country should be attending union, civil rights, church, civic association, and block club meeting in their city to broaden the base further. And we need a nonsectarian revolutionary pole in the movement, to articulate why the US keeps on doing shit like this, in a way ordinary people can evaluate seriously.

Michael Berg: In the South, we need to reach out to all the churches. In the South, the key to people’s hearts and minds is through the churches.

 

SE: What is your personal source of strength?

Jim Straub: The fact that kids with rocks facing down tanks in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip have totally thrown the military planning of the entire New World Order off-balance never ceases to amaze and inspire me. So, I’d have to credit the inspiration of the Palestinian people for keeping me going with all this organizing most days. That and a lot of coffee.

Emily Harry: I am compelled to work for justice in all aspects of my life because that is what Jesus did. Jesus’ social movement was very much focused on grassroots revolutionary change in the community, and as a believer in Christ, that is where my commitment stays, Revolution in the community is what I’m all about.

Gregory Reck: My three little girls and the world they will inherit; my recently deceased mother who was a political radical to the core and who would have been (and maybe somehow is) out in the streets now; my conviction that I can’t be silent in a world of injustice and war; my profession as a cultural anthropologist who has lived and done research with rural peoples in Mexico, India, and Appalachia; my repetition of the mantra, “If not me, then who? If not now, then when?”