Peace activists need more effective ways to work for peace — against the Iraq war. We need to organize something larger, more pervasive, and less ignorable than the small and medium-sized demonstrations we’ve organized so far. To stimulate discussion, below are some alternative approaches. Comments and other suggestions are welcomed.
1. Massively Huge Demonstrations
Up to now, demonstrations and marches against the Iraq War have had participant numbers ranging from tiny to moderate. As an example of a tiny demonstration, every Thursday, rain or shine, small handfuls of mainly Quaker Peace activists hold silent vigils, holding candles and peace signs, in many U.S. cities. At the other end of the scale are marches against the Iraq war with thousands or tens of thousands of participants. Some — such as those in early 2003, just before the U.S. invaded Iraq — had 50,000 marchers, but that is small compared to, say, demonstrations in Europe and South America, in which hundreds of thousands or even millions of people jam the streets.
More to the point, 50,000 is small compared to the millions of people in any major U.S. metropolitan area — 70% of Americans — who oppose the Iraq War. What can be done to induce a larger proportion of them to show their opposition by participating in a demonstration?
Part of what is holding them back is a lack of desire to waste time and energy on efforts that may be for nothing. [See Dialog with a Non-Marching Cynic] The irony is that if the demonstrations were ten times as large, they would have more of an impact. Another deterrent is the fact that many people are struggling to get by and feel that they don’t have time for protesting.
Many people are also hesitant to participate in demonstrations and marches that push causes they don’t agree with. The typical anti-Iraq-war demonstration includes activists and speakers for many causes, such as Palestinian rights, immigrant rights, the environment, political candidacies, even vegetarianism. While most of these are worthy causes, the vast majority of Americans, 70% of whom are opposed to the Iraq war, are turned off — and more to the point, kept away — by this.
Compare that to the demonstrations in the 1980s that brought attention to the injustices of South African apartheid, convinced many U.S. businesses to divest from there, and eventually forced the Republican-controlled U.S. government to abandon its policy of “constructive engagement” with South Africa. The main organizer of those demonstrations, a U.S.-based activist organization called “TransAfrica”, focused like a laser-beam on a single issue — opposition to apartheid — and thereby brought together people from all over the U.S. political landscape, including Republicans.
TransAfrica also exhibited a degree of political savvy that most current anti-war organizations simply do not have. They knew how to play serious, hard-to-ignore political hardball with the U.S. government.
In contrast, we have Int’l A.N.S.W.E.R., the main organizer of the large anti-war marches. A.N.S.W.E.R. has many truly great organizers and a lot of experience staging demonstrations, but they are not nearly politically savvy and focused enough. Their demos are too wide-ranging, which as described above keeps the masses of anti-war Americans away.
What the anti-war movement needs now are demo-organizers who are as single-mindedly focused on opposition to the Iraq War as TransAfrica was on opposition to apartheid in the 1980s. If A.N.S.W.E.R. cannot do this, it may be time for another organization — perhaps MoveOn.org — to try staging big anti-war demos, with the goal of making them really huge and therefore impossible to ignore.
2. Shifting Lifestyles Toward Peace
Just as the environmental movement is slowly convincing people in industrialized countries to change their lifestyles in small ways to reduce their carbon footprint, the anti-war movement should convince people to do things — even little things — to help bring about peace. That is exactly the goal of the Iraq Moratorium — to get people to commit to do something against the war every day, every week, or even once a month.
Possible things to do: wear a black ribbon or armband to work, write one’s representative, submit a letter to a newspaper, stand on a street corner at rush hour holding an anti-war sign, start a political reading/discussion group, invite friends over to watch anti-war films, volunteer for an anti-war political candidate. Are there other possibilities?
3. Business Anti-war Movement
The idea here would be to get a significant number of businesses — OK, maybe not oil or arms companies, but other businesses — to unite against the war and draft a statement such as:
We’re not leftist peaceniks, but we’ve had enough of Bush trashing the Constitution, the economy, and the world. We’re not going along with this any more. When a company CEO is driving his company into the ground, it is the duty of the Board of Directors to fire him or her. President George W. Bush is the U.S.’s most incompetent CEO in history. He is driving the nation and the principles on which it was founded into the ground. Congress, as the Board, must step up to its responsibility to reign him in or fire him. Now. We will support them.
Then the consortium of companies would need to take actions — both indirect ones like lobbying Congress and direct ones like ceasing to take military contracts and divesting from war-profiteering firms — to stop the war.
At least in Silicon Valley, plenty of execs are opposed to the war and to Bush/Cheney’s draconian anti-terrorism measures. That is clear from the long-standing close association between Al Gore and many Silicon Valley venture capitalists, such as John Doerr. On the Republican side, Silicon Valley’s opposition to the war is clear from the surprising degree of support in California for the vehemently anti-war, anti-Patriot-Act Republican candidate Ron Paul. (We will ignore for now his problematic positions on other issues.)
The main trouble with this idea is that it is extremely difficult to get business execs to take a public stance and even harder to get them to orient their companies against the war. They tend to avoid risk, and steps such as those described above definitely carry risk.
However, if a lot of U.S. businesses could be induced to join the anti-war movement, that would be very hard for the government to ignore.
4. Taxpayer Revolt
Bush/Cheney, with Congressional complicity, is funding the war by running up unprecedented deficits. They are not raising taxes to pay for the war because Americans would immediately revolt against that. Instead they are effectively taxing our children and our children’s children.
Somehow, anti-war activists need to educate taxpayers, to get them just as angry about all this off-budget, delayed-tax war-funding as they would be about funding the war with present-day tax-increases.
5. Boycotts and strikes
If all else fails, calling for general strikes, work stoppages, transit shutdowns, and general boycotts, is an option. It works in Europe. One question is whether such a thing is even plausible in the U.S. Another is whether it could be done without hurting small local businesses, which struggle to get by.
Less pervasive than general strikes but also effective are targeted boycotts. Even in the U.S., a grape boycott succeeded at convincing agribusiness to allow farm-workers to unionize three decades ago. For the anti-Iraq-war movement, the question is: what would the target industry be?
6. Conventional Political Action
One way to influence policy is to join the political process and start helping to make policy. For example:
- Lobby for secure voting technology or campaign finance reform
- Work for anti-war political candidates
- Run for office
- Vote
7. Internet Activism
The Internet has spawned new ways to organize people and political action. Online petitions, online fundraising, letter-writing campaigns, instant polls, even flash-mobs. Perhaps one of these methods can be used to create a critical mass of anti-war sentiment.
Perhaps the “killer Internet organizing tool” hasn’t appeared yet.
8. Your Idea Here
