Protest days: the peace movement comes out in global demonstrations on 18 January and 15 February

Soon, the United States of America will go to war once again to fight for democracy and human rights on behalf of the free world. Once again, they will take on Saddam Hussein and will try to change one of the most brutal regimes in the world today to bring freedom and justice to the oppressed Iraqis. Once only military targets have been taken out and a multi-party democracy established, the US will generously help to rebuild the economy and infrastructure of the new Iraq to present to the world a successful first democracy in the Arab world.

Hold on! You might want to shout out, this is not quite the story, right?

Beginning in the ‘democratic world’, where speaking one’s mind is not endangering life and limb, people may not be content to leave it to the fourth estate – the media – to question the drive to war or to dig deeper into all those stories about the ‘hidden agenda’. Not only from their governments but also increasingly from their corporate enterprises, they are demanding answers to pressing questions about the true interests at stake in the Middle East. And, in the coming days and weeks, more and more will be taking to the streets to make their voices heard.

openDemocracy brings you today and in the next weeks an overview of some of the demonstrations happening around the world, between the dates of 18 January and 15 February. The former marks the 12th anniversary of the first Gulf War, the latter the likely beginning of the second. We have started gathering information on the chosen cities, organisers, links and planned actions, as well as devoting limited space to their slogans, quotes or statements, so that you will get a taste of their concerns. But to truly understand the people involved, their work and their proposals for approaches other than war, do visit their sites.

So far, on openDemocracy, we have reported very mixed feelings about the peace movement. Todd Gitlin, our North Americas editor has called it ‘slapdash’, drowning in old left nostalgia when people desperately need pragmatic answers about how to deal with Saddam Hussein, and when the pragmatists of the world urgently need to come together. Last December, George Packer made a similar point about the American movement in the New York Times: ‘Speakers at the demonstrations voice unnuanced slogans like “No Sanctions, No Bombing” and “No Blood for Oil”. As for what should be done to keep this mass murderer and his weapons in check, they have nothing to say at all.’ Nor, as Douglas Murray points out in his strong attack on Rosemary Bechler’s positive account of the last London peace demonstration, do they have much to say about the violence of Palestinian suicide bombers. Many of those protesting against war around the world will indeed see the latter as victims in, if not martyrs to, their cause.

Sure enough, these peace movements will again be attacked for the simplicity of their bannered messages or their supposed and sometimes real anti-Americanism. Are they blind to the undeniable facts of the true extent of the Iraqi leader’s evil rule? But the truth, as always, is much more complicated. Saddam Hussein’s crimes have indeed been known for decades to those who wanted to listen, people who – strangely enough – were found more often than not in the peace movement, when those in power did not want to hear. It is no wonder then that, to many demonstrating now, the Saddam stories are old news and will not silence them.

The ‘new’ news is George W. Bush’s grasp for unilateral global rule. Rarely has a bid for power been so aggressively hyped with such simple messages repeated over and over again by a complicit mass media. Does the global peace movement have to learn from this and concentrate its many voices into similarly stark slogans to hammer its message into the heads of the silent majorities: that it is not fine to sit back and watch TV; that other views, and more information can be found on websites such as openDemocracy; and lastly, that change is possible?

Efforts have been made to distinguish between hostility towards Israeli government policy and criticism of the Israeli people. Other efforts have been made, rightly or wrongly, to walk alongside the minority of Muslim protestors whose rhetoric, at least, it is impossible for anyone interested in world peace to share. Some path-breaking dialogue has certainly come into existence as a result.

John Rees from UK’s Stop the War Coalition, hotfoot from Cairo where he has been catching up on plans for anti-war mobilisation in Egypt, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East, won’t hear of any problems: ‘The point about the coalition is that it comes together on common concerns – stopping war on Iraq, stopping the racist backlash in this country…. We unite on those issues which we share and discuss our differences fraternally.’ These activists cling to the things they do know: ‘But we in the Peace Movement are absolutely clear that a democratic and peaceful solution cannot come from bombing in Iraq by Washington and London….’ Is this good enough?

Those unnuanced slogans won’t go away because they have enough truth in them to require some answers – and nuance flies out of the window in the large silence emanating from the other side. Meanwhile, the January 18/19 protests listed here will find many peace activists enthusiastically in solidarity with those American counterparts who are willing to question the Bush doctrine, their own support coming the other way for the second tranche of protest in February. What we are talking about, which is hard to chronicle, is the choices made by hundreds of thousands of individuals from very different backgrounds and with very different priorities. What would it take to fairly assess the cumulative impact of all these moments?

Whether we are active in the peace movement or not, we believe the task is to persuade as much as to protest. This means accepting that others can have good reasons – such as hatred of Saddam Hussein’s cruel despotism - for demanding desperate, if UN-sanctioned, measures. The hope that persuasion is possible must surely be based on the belief that those who disagree, do so in good faith. Persuasion, and mutual responsibility begin here.

Europe
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The seed for coordinated anti-war protest in Europe was planted at the European Social Forum in Florence on 7–9 November 2002, attended by upwards of 50,000 people. The final resolution included a pledge to hold simultaneous demonstrations in around eleven European countries on Saturday, 15 February 2003, repeated at a planning meeting in Copenhagen on 15 December 2002.

Preparation in most countries went swiftly ahead, encountering problems mainly in countries where governments had previously spoken out against the US. So in early January, Bernard Dreano of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, France wrote to say that: ‘the anti-war French movement has been quite weak up till now, because Chirac’s position was more or less clearly against the war…. But now things are moving quickly. Yesterday, Chirac said that “war was possible” meaning French support for war is possible….’

In Eastern Europe, the motivational problem is more fundamental as Petr from the Czechoslovak Federation in Prague told us: ‘At the moment we do not know about any planned actions against a likely war on Iraq. The situation here is somewhat different from the majority of countries in western Europe. People are not used to expressing their views that way. When we organised an anti-war demonstration after the war started in Afghanistan, around 50 to 80 people turned up to participate, the majority from anarchist circles…. Any kind of action in the Czech Republic or Slovakia seems to depend on the anarchists’ capability to organise it. Sad, but true….’

Africa, Asia, Australasia and South America
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The story is similar in other parts of the world. Besides demonstrations in all the bigger Japanese cities as well as in Indonesia, there is little to nothing happening in the Far East. South Korea’s protest is still focused on US policy towards North Korea and the presence of American troops in the country, exacerbated by the unintentional killing of two schoolgirls by an US army tank.

Similarly, there are no large-scale demonstrations organised in sub-Saharan Africa with only local Muslim-led demonstrations in South Africa, on the East African coastline or sporadically in western Africa. North Africa will possibly see larger scale demonstrations, as the Cairo declaration of the International Campaign Against US Aggression on Iraq (ICAA) on 18–19 December was the initiator for organising global protests for Saturday, 18 January. The 400 representatives of civic organisations from 20 countries resolved to take action in solidarity with the people of Iraq against threatened US aggression and in solidarity with the Palestinian movement for self-determination.

The biggest South American protest will possibly be the one at the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre at the end of January. ‘The search for political solutions, the promotion of movements against war and in favor of peace, the building of a culture of peace and social inclusion, are part and parcel of the preoccupations of all those who call for a strong mobilization in order to establish the vision that “Another World is indeed Possible”.’ (Working group of members of the International Council coordinated by Francois Houtart, August 2002)

It will also be the launch pad for more demonstrations later on in most other Latin American countries. Scheduled for April 20 are protests in Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Mexico so far.

North America
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All these global protests will only be the supporting choir for action in the country where it really matters. And while the troops go out to play on distant shores, it is the American home front which indeed shows the largest contingent for discontent.

Here, 18 January has additional meaning (apart from being the anniversary of the First Gulf War) in that it coincides with the Martin Luther King memorial weekend celebrating his birthday 74 years ago. In his time, King (15 January 1929 – 4 April 1968) spoke out against the US war in Vietnam, linking the movement for civil rights with the one against the war. In his ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech at Riverside Church in 1967, he stated, ‘The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government…. [F]or the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.’ (See www.internationalanswer.org.)

Not everyone finds that a demonstration gives voice to what they want to say. US organisations are starting to take up the challenges of modernity. MoveOn.org, part of the Win Without War coalition, launched a TV advertising campaign on 16 January to harness support. By funding the 30-second commercial, Americans have been able to demonstrate popular support in a popular medium. The organisers are creating debate using ‘21st-century tactics to spread their message beyond the traditional ranks of the antiwar movement’ (Boston Globe, 16 January 2003).

Protests in US and Canadian cities

This information on protests is compiled from peace.protest.net,
United for Peace and War Resisters League.

Albuquerque, NM
Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
Atlanta, Georgia
Austin, TX
Bainbridge Island, WA
Berkeley, CA
Bethesda, MD
Boulder, Colorado
Brattleboro, VT
Brea CA
Burlington, VT
Cambridge, MA
Cedar Rapids, IA
Columbia, MO
Costa Mesa
DC and San Fransisco
DeKalb, IL
Dubuque, IA
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Fox Lake, Illinois
Fredericton, New Brunswick
Fresno, California
Geneva, Illinois
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Honolulu, Hawaii
Houston, TX
Huntington Beach California
Indianapolis, Indiana
Iowa City, IA
Kent, OH
Lac Cruces New Mexico
Laguna Beach, California
Lancaster, Pa.
Las Vegas, Nevada
Kalispell Montana USA
Lewisburg, PA
Lincoln, Nebraska
Little Rock, AR
Long Beach, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Mariposa, CA
Milwaukee
Moline Illinois
Montpelier, VT
Moscow, Idaho
Nashville, TN
New Orleans
New York City
Omaha, Nebraska
Oneonta, NY
Petaluma, California
Peterborough NH
Pittsburgh, PA
Ravensburg
Redlands, California
Reno, NV
Rochester, NY
Salem, Oregon
San Diego CA
Santa Barbara California
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Springfield, Missouri
St. Augustine, FL
St. Louis Missouri
Tampa, FL
Toronto
Tulsa, OK
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
Venice/Port Charlotte, FL
Vero Beach, FL
W. Philadelphia, PA
Washington, DC
West Hartford, CT
Willimantic Connecticut