Read the Italian version: Siate Pazienti Con Noi

by GEORGE LAKEY

1. HOW LARGE IS THE CONCERN FOR PEACE IN THE U.S.?

The U.S. is a very self-absorbed country. Most people are brought up to believe that the U.S. is the center of the universe. That means that only a small number of people consistently think about the state of the world regarding peace issues like nuclear proliferation, arms sales, ethnic cleansing, the economic squeeze on poor countries, and human rights.

What wakes up the U.S. public is when war directly and dramatically affects the U.S. For example, when U.S. casulties increased in Vietnam and more young men were conscripted to go fight there, much of the public began to pay attention. Even though the mass media mostly supported the war, public opinion against the war increased in that period.

I was among the very few in the U.S. to organize against the Vietnam war from the beginning, and it was exciting to participate in this waking up process. A majority of the sleepy U.S. public turned against the war when it woke up, which enabled the activist peace movement to grow larger and become more militant in its actions. After many years we did our part in forcing the U.S. government to leave Vietnam.

Compared with the Vietnam war, the U.S. public has awakened much more quickly on Iraq. It was a help that there had already been so much good peace work done in the lead-up to the Persian Gulf war, so that the first President Bush led an almost-evenly divided country into war. The second President Bush had an extremely hard time leading the U.S. into the current war, even though so many U.S.'ers were frightened by the horrible experience of 9/11. This time the hawks needed dramatic lies, coercion, and manipulation to launch the war and could not make war in the most effective way (by sending enough troops) because of the strength of the anti-war forces.

The bad news is that most the U.S. public will continue to be self-absorbed and try to ignore critical peace-related issues. The good news is that the wake-up time is getting shorter, and it is easier in some ways to mobilize for peace in the U.S. now.

2. WHAT IS THE ROLE OF EUROPEAN AND OTHER FOREIGN OPPOSITION TO U.S. MILITARISM?

The run-up to the present Iraq war illuminates this question. Most of the well-known and credible leaders in the U.S. who opposed the war decided not to speak out. The way the U.S. mass media works is that it needs famous people to advocate a point of view in order to cover it; the media do not believe that consumers will pay attention to news if it is only about ordinary people.

In the early part of the run-up to the war, therefore, although there were hundreds of demonstrations in the U.S. opposing the war, these were not covered by the mainstream media and peace advocates themselves didn't know how strong the movement was at the grassroots. Then the European and other opposition (for example, Nelson Mandela's) spoke out strongly and the U.S. media started to cover it. This, in turn, stimulated more U.S. protests, because at last "someone famous" was advocating a point of view and the media could report it.

This interaction between European and other foreign leadership, the U.S. media, and the U.S. public expanded the political space so that more U.S. leaders like Al Gore could step out and oppose the war. As they did so, the media covered anti-war points of view more strongly and the peace movement swelled, finally reaching the point where in February 2003 the U.S. had the strongest, broadest based anti-war demonstrations in decades, joining the global protest.

3. WHAT ARE THE MOST INHIBITING FACTORS TO INTERNAL GROWTH AND LEADERSHIP IN THE U.S. PEACE MOVEMENT?

This is an important question, because anyone might think that the U.S. has plenty of peace initiative from within to give leadership. The U.S. has three historic peace churches -- the Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, and the Quakers -- which for centuries have maintained a pacifist witness and play an important role in peacework. There have been periods when the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), for example, has been the largest and best geographically-positioned peace organization in the U.S.

The U.S. also has some long-time pacifist groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation and War Resisters League, whose members remain awake to peace concerns whether there is a hot war or not.

Europeans are also aware that, in addition to leading intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, U.S. academia has included a growing field of peace research. With centuries of pacifist tradition, and a kind of "peace studies industry," why isn't there more effective leadership for peace developed inside the U.S.?

We need to look at how the U.S. is divided by race and class. Demographically, the most consistent anti-war segment of the U.S. is African Americans. Decade after decade, this is the group that most supports peace. When polls are taken on a war, African Americans are the first to wake up. Civil rights groups in the '60s were among the earliest to speak out against the Vietnam war. When the U.S. invaded Grenada and there was virtually no wake-up time for the public in such a brief intervention, 70% of whites supported the invasion and 70% of blacks were against it. The Congressional Black Caucus is the most consistent group in Congress to support peace policies and oppose specific wars. Consider presidential politics: aside from the Vietnam wartime crisis which produced Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, Jesse Jackson is the only peace candidate to become a major contender in a Democratic presidential primary.

The tragic history of racism in the U.S., however, separates whites from blacks. One result is that self-defined peace groups are usually white-led, and the whites don't know how to (or don't want to) connect with the most peace-inclined people in the U.S. -- blacks. The public profile of peace groups in the U.S., therefore, is white, which is hardly a motivator for blacks to join them!

A similar dynamic operates in social class terms. Demographically among the white population, the class most opposed to the Vietnam war was low-income people who had not finished high school. The anti-war movement, however, was led by middle class people who were unconsciously limited by their class bias. Very few anti-war organizers knew or cared that the whites whose opinion was most against the war were low-income people.

This dynamic continues today regarding the Iraq war. The part of the white population that most opposes the war is low income people. White middle class people mostly support the war. Who do most anti-war organizers reach out to for members in their groups? White middle class people!

For the core of the U.S. peace movement to lead the public more effectively, it needs to drop its classist and racist biases and integrate itself so it can reach out effectively.

4. WHAT DOES THE U.S. PEACE MOVEMENT WANT TO DO ABOUT THE U.S. EMPIRE?

In responding to the first question I pointed out the reactive nature of the U.S. peace movement, responding to "hot wars" which wake up the body politic. This means that, while many peace activists would regard themselves as anti-imperialist, there is little work being done to create a vision of what the U.S. would look like without its empire. (Let alone what the world might look like without the U.S. empire.)

Without a vision of the U.S. without empire, the public discourse is: which style of empire management one prefers. The Kerry vs. Bush contest was partly about which team we trust most to run our empire?

The good news is that there is substantial overlap in the U.S. between peace activists and the environmentalists. The mass environmentalist social movement is newer than the peace movement -- it showed its muscle in the '70s by stopping the nuclear power industry's plan to increase reliance on nuclear energy. As a newer movement, it is more open to new ideas than the peace movement. For example, as a white-led movement it has been addressing its racism more thoroughly. It has also been a more visionary movement, putting much more of its resources into alternatives.

Similarly, there is overlap between the global economic justice movement which has taken off since the Battle of Seattle, and peace activists. The global economic justice movement is also more interested in vision than the traditional peace movement, and its visionary impulse may influence the peace movement.

5. WHAT'S THE ROLE OF NONVIOLENT ACTION IN THE U.S. PEACE MOVEMENT?

The theory and practice of nonviolent action -- a technique for struggle sometimes called "people power" -- is a force for overcoming some of the limitations of the U.S. peace movement. Nonviolent struggle achieved legitimacy within the U.S. through the civil rights movement, and in that sense is a gift of African Americans to U.S. movements for social justice.

Although nonviolent action was responsible for most of the gains of working class people historically (think of the strikes and boycotts!), there was little consciousness of nonviolent action as a theory and technique of struggle until the '60s. Other movements then rapidly picked it up in the U.S.: women, environmentalists, people with disabilities, farmworkers led by Cesar Chavez, sexual minorities, senior citizens, and so on. I found myself "completing the circle" when I led training workshops for labor unions that were mostly white and introduced them to refinements in technique based on black people's experience.

Even though many white students in the anti-Vietnam war movement were too racist to turn consciously to their black student comrades to learn from them how to be most effective in using nonviolent protest, the white students were still influenced by black people's experience. That influence continues today in the peace movement. Now a confluence of experience of various movements is being drawn together by trainers and researchers to advance the theory of nonviolent struggle itself.

Now, at last, it's possible in the U.S. peace movement to clarify the substantially different applications of nonviolent action, and therefore to clarify strategic options. Nonviolent action has three quite different applications, all being used by U.S. peace activists as well as by movements around the world. The most obvious is the application of nonviolent social change, for example to change policies toward Iraq or Colombia or Palestine. The second application is nonviolent social defense, for situations where a movement is trying to protect the status quo. Greenpeace is a famous example because is often uses nonviolent action to defend whales or forests. (Greenpeace was started by Canadians but has had strong participation from the U.S.)

The third application is third party nonviolent intervention, for situations where activists are being killed or threatened and they need a third party to come in as a human shield. U.S. peace activists have done leadership work in developing this application, for example by joining Peace Brigades International which has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Why I believe that nonviolent action has promise to move the U.S. peace movement beyond its limitations is that

• its origins mostly lie in the working class and people of color,
• it is used increasingly among many movements which are oppressed by the U.S. empire,
• as a strategy and method it does not privilege white male professionals, but instead invites them to an arena where women, people of color and workers have already been acting,
• its theory is visionary because in its very nature it is a struggle alternative to violence and war, and its further implications undermine the empire,
• internationally coordinated, like the worldwide anti-war protests of February 2003, which the NY Times called "the other superpower," nonviolent action reduces the self-absorption which clouds even peace activists in the U.S.,
• third party nonviolent intervention ("human shields") provides a method for U.S. people to be in active solidarity with threatened activists in the Global South WITHOUT our imperialist baggage. When we use third party nonviolent intervention, U.S. activists are in humble service and cannot bring our arrogance and entitlement. This is one of the most human ways to act against our empire.