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----- Original Message -----
From: NY Transfer News <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 4:11 AM
Subject: [CubaNews] Peace Movement Quietly Gaining Momentum/Boston Globe
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
source - Boston Globe - September 18, 2001
<http://www.bostonglobe.come>
(Thanks to David McReynolds for pointing this out
Voices of Restraint
PEACE VIGILS PLANNED THROUGHOUT THE US
Amid talk of war, movement pleads for reconciliation
By Alice Dembner and David Abel
NEW YORK - They are gathering quietly in vigils, not mounting
protests. And they are largely being drowned out by a feverish tide
of war rhetoric.
But across the country, voices of pacificism and restraint are
growing stronger.
Little more than a mile from ground zero of the incinerated World
Trade Center, a vigil at Union Square for the victims has already
evolved into an ad hoc center for the budding peace movement. The
square's monument to George Washington is not only draped in American
flags, but also covered with antiwar slogans.
Peace vigils have been held from Portland, Ore., to Cambridge, Mass.,
and hundreds more are planned over the coming weeks.
More than 100 civil rights and religious organizations plan to gather
Thursday in Washington to map a larger response to last week's
terrorism, hoping to moderate the government's support for military
strikes abroad and expanded law enforcement powers at home.
Separately, peace groups will gather in New York Friday to plan
national action against President Bush's declared "war on
terrorism," arguing that war is not the answer and will only add to
the carnage.
"We're mobilizing the peace community to call for reconciliation,
not retaliation," said Judith Mahoney Pasternak of the War Resisters
League. "The faster we start singing the songs of peace to counter
the drums of war, the better it's going to be."
While the War Resisters League said their organizing efforts have
been hampered by phone and e-mail failures at their offices only 11/2
miles from ground zero, other groups said they had been moving slowly
out of respect for the victims.
"We are committed to building public opinion in our communities and
then moving in the near future to a national expression," said
Judith McDaniel at the national office of the American Friends
Service Committee in Philadelphia. She confirmed that the office has
received several bomb threats since it launched a national "No More
Victims" peace campaign.
Meanwhile, some in Congress are questioning whether lawmakers are
rushing into actions that will harm America. Senator Patrick Leahy, a
Vermont Democrat, yesterday said he is worried that the push to relax
wiretapping restrictions could infringe on civil liberties.
"We do not intend to tie the hands of the intelligence community,
but neither do we intend to curb the rights of millions of
Americans," he said.
And Representative Barbara Lee, the California Democrat who was the
only member of Congress to vote against last week's resolution
authorizing President Bush to use force against terrorism, says there
is growing support for her stand.
"People are beginning to understand that we must show some
restraint, that we don't want to see this spiral out of control,"
Lee said. "We've got to make sure democracy is upheld and our
country is safe."
It's not only pacifists who oppose the war rhetoric, but also others
who look to history and see failures and abuses when the United
States moved without enough thought.
In 1998, they note, US forces bombed a suspected chemical weapons
plant in Sudan that turned out to be a pharmaceutical factory. And in
World War II, hysteria led the United States to round up
Japanese-Americans into internment camps.
"I really have a problem with the war analogy," said Stephen Zunes,
chairman of the peace and justice studies program at the University
of San Francisco. "This was not an act of war but a criminal act. We
need to think in terms of police actions in response. But I don't
think it would be unreasonable to have small-scale commando
operations to break up the terrorist cells."
Longtime pacifist and MIT professor Noam Chomsky opposes even that
action. "A call for revenge without thinking about what lies beyond
is a gift to the terrorists," he said. "It virtually guarantees an
escalating cycle of violence. An alternative in the short term is to
follow the rule of law through the United Nations Security Council or
the World Court."
Retired Boston University historian Howard Zinn suggests that the
answers to terrorism lie elsewhere. "We have to move from a
war-making nation to a nation that uses its resources for
constructive purposes ... to get at the grievances that feed
terrorism," he said.
In the Boston area, peace vigils are planned at noon today at the JFK
Federal Building and at 6 p.m. tomorrow at Copley Square, with a
planning meeting for more events to follow. At Tufts University,
members of the peace and justice studies program are circulating a
petition urging that "the search for justice" focus only on the
perpetrators of the crime, avoid targeting entire nationalities, and
respect civil liberties.
At Union Square in New York, young and old, Jews and gentiles, blacks
and whites have gathered around thousands of votive candles, American
flags, and pictures of the missing to pay their respects and chant
such slogans as "Vengeance isn't justice" and "Break the cycle of
violence: War is weakness, peace is strength."
"People need to know that there are other feelings in America, that
we are not all hawks hoping to exchange an eye for an eye," said
Josh Torpey, 24, a Manhattan teacher who met a group of friends on
Union Square Sunday night.
Ted Lawson, a 31-year-old artist from Boston, was creating a painting
of the American flag out of thumbprints of passersby to signify
American unity, but said he wondered whether previous acts of war by
the United States had encouraged terrorism.
Heated arguments have erupted throughout the park between those who
question US policy and those who believe the United States should
annihilate any group or country who helped organize the attacks.
But others were frightened about the prospect for war. Lighting a
candle next to a row of roses arranged to evoke the World Trade
Center, Christine Andriopoulos said she was scared.
"The message should be that the violence has to stop," she said.
"Here. Now. Forever."
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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