Trying to strike the right notes
The Antiwar Movement
David Cortright has seen his share of protest movements. As a soldier in Vietnam, he organized "GIs for Peace," and later he opposed the Reagan administration's policy in El Salvador and ran the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. So when the 56-year-old walked into a meeting last October before an antiwar rally in Washington, he did not go in wide eyed. "It was frustrating because there were 70 or 80 groups in the room, and the meeting went on endlessly, covering all kinds of issues: Palestinian-Israeli problems, racism in the U.S., the rights of gays and lesbians," sighs Cortright, speaking from the Goshen, Ind., office of his coalition, Win Without War. "I thought, `That's nice, but we got a war to oppose here.' "
Some 500 miles away, in Washington, D.C., sits Sarah Sloan, the chief spokesperson for International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). Sloan, 22, wants to fight on many fronts. A member of the socialist Workers World Party, she began her protest career at 17. ANSWER, she explains, was founded after September 11 to oppose the creation of what it calls a new American empire. "ANSWER opposes U.S. domination all over the world," says Sloan. "There are so many different groups involved."
These are the two very different faces of today's antiwar movement. Both faces will appear at a rally in the nation's capital this weekend, and both would like to claim the movement's future. But that future might be brighter if these groups could speak as one.
Growing opposition. There is antiwar sentiment out there. A year-end Gallup Poll reported that while a majority of Americans favor invading Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power, the number opposed had nearly doubled from a year ago, to 38 percent. But "unless we get bogged down in a long-term military occupation, or there is a steep recession, it would take a lot to get a really serious movement off the ground," says Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
ANSWER will run this weekend's rally in Washington, as tens of thousands of people are expected to gather at the west side of the Capitol to attend a "No War on Iraq" rally featuring appearances by fiery former Rep. Cynthia McKinney and punk-rocker Patti Smith.
Cortright's coalition brings together moderate groups, from the Sierra Club to the National Council of Churches, to oppose a war because they believe it would threaten America's security. "The image of American troops occupying Baghdad is like a recruitment poster for Osama bin Laden," says Cortright. Many Win Without War members will attend this weekend's rally.
But in February, the groups will once again go their separate ways. Win Without War will run television ads and conduct vigils. "We will continue to deliver a mainstream, patriotic message," says Cortright. "We are not trying to solve all the problems of the universe." ANSWER will stage a week of protests beginning February 13, the anniversary of a 1991 bombing of a bomb shelter in Iraq, and ending February 21, the anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X. -Bay Fang
This story appears in the January 20, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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