Stop the Next War Now (11 page)

A:
I think it’s a problem of our whole culture, and I’m guilty of it also. Even people who, on an intellectual level, know what’s wrong and what needs to be done feel limited in what they can do. “I can vigil at the White House on my day off or be part of a protest on a Saturday, but I couldn’t commit a week because I have rent to pay, I have student loans to pay off,” and so on. We need to figure out how to create cultures that support more than weekend opposition to war.

My parents and the Jonah House Community created a communal structure that sustained them. They didn’t own a house or anything worth confiscating; they didn’t have salaries or worry about where their next meal was coming from. That freed them to act at any hour on any day, to go to prison for long periods of time, to have their whole lives be about resisting war, whether it was an active war in Vietnam or the preparations for the next war.

Q:
So, forgive me, but I have to ask: Given that you grew up learning how to create that amazing kind of activist life, with such intense dedication and personal sacrifice, why aren’t you living like that now
?

A:
I guess I wanted to put on the suit of a professional and see what that felt like. Once you do that, it’s hard to move out of that again. I’m still in touch with communities that resist, but I personally live in real tension and contradiction, and that’s very uncomfortable.

Q:
It’s not like you became a corporate CEO. You do important research on militarism, building on the connections that you first made as a young child. You and your institute put out critical information about war profiteering and the impact of militarism
.

A:
A lot of people say that research is very important and we need more people who can provide good information. People are very kind in validating the work I do, but having this conversation about the shortcomings of our movement is uncomfortable, because I know I could be doing so much more.

Q:
Me, too. After our four-month vigil in front of the White House, after leaving my kids, my husband, and spending time in cold, lonely jail cells when we got arrested, I couldn’t wait to go back to my comfortable life. And I see so many people who think they are good activists because they respond to an e-mail alert or sign an online petition. Do you think the computer age and eactivism have given people an easy out
?

A:
Yes. That stuff is not bad, but it’s not going to change anything all by itself. Every time you press a button on your computer to respond to some action alert, you feel you’ve done something and perhaps it relieves you of the need to do more. The other problem is that everyone is giving money to MoveOn and other groups that run ads in newspapers and on TV, but that money is moving in the wrong direction. The idea that we would spend $800,000 of people’s hard-earned $15 and $20 donations for a thirty-second spot during the Super Bowl—as MoveOn was planning to do—is just nuts. The money should be moving the other way, to community organizers. If large numbers of people started supporting organizers in local communities, people who are actually working full time as peace and justice activists, then we would have a real impact.

Let’s remember, human connections and relationships are what make change happen. At the end of the day, it’s who we are and how we educate, treat, help, and inspire each other that will put an end to war.

Q:
Speaking of education, would you say that educating the public about militarism and the scourge of nuclear weapons is one of the most critical things we can do
?

A:
We certainly need to do a better job educating people about this massive military machine that doesn’t sleep and is churning out weapons constantly, whether the nation is in active conflict or not. When you have all these weapons, you will find opportunities to use them. When Bush went to war in Afghanistan in October of 2001, everything was basically in place, including a huge standing army. The United States spends more than $1 billion a day just on maintaining this military complex, excluding the “extra costs” of military ventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

We could cut at least $100 billion from the military budget without jeopardizing our security. For example, there are three new fighter-plane programs that are redundancies of the existing fighter-plane programs—the F-16s and F-18s—that will cost U.S. taxpayers about $200 billion. We need to demand that funds earmarked for unnecessary weapons programs go to vital human services instead.

As a movement, we should also do a better job working with members of Congress when the military budget comes up every year and some congresspeople start questioning particular weapons systems. And, of course, we need to get better at talking to Middle America about the bread-and-butter issues, about how all this wasted money is coming out of their pockets—and is not making them more secure. We have people in this country working two or three jobs to make $25,000 or $30,000 a year to support their families. We have to show them that one of the reasons they’re struggling is that so much of the wealth of this country is going into this cult of militarism.

Q:
Do you have any concrete examples of campaigns that have done a good job making these connections
?

A:
We have this tendency to think only about national campaigns or programs. I think we need to take our lead from local initiatives. There is a group in Brooklyn called Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, furee. They are mostly women on public assistance who have organized poor people in Brooklyn to get access to the types of assistance that are available. They lobby state officials like Hillary Clinton. In 2003, they took a bus to Bush’s ranch in Crawford on this poor people’s march. The idea was to bring Bush a manifesto about what he should be doing for poor people in this country instead of making wars overseas. Of course, they got stopped miles from Bush’s ranch, but they came back making these connections between their daily lives and U.S. foreign policy.

Antiwar activists need to be involved in those sorts of local initiatives. We don’t need to lead those efforts, but we need to be participants. It keeps you going between crises, because you’re connected to real communities. These people live near each other; they know each other’s families; they are involved with each other as friends and neighbors. Being part of that for me, as a single person, has been incredibly important.

Q:
When you are out speaking on campuses, what’s the most important message you try to convey to students
?

A:
I tell them that there is no reason for Americans to be poor. There is no reason for students to incur tens of thousands of dollars in debt to go to college. There is no reason that a whole class of Americans should be homeless. We have the resources, and we have the obligation to share them with each other and the rest of the world. But we can’t do that if we continue to spend over $400 billion a year on the military.

I also encourage them to become activists. I let them know that although our efforts may not bring instant success, there are still rewards: a meaningful life, the community and friendship we find on the vigil lines, in the paddy wagons, and even in the long meetings. The communities we build among ourselves are an antidote to despair and selfishness. They hold us accountable and challenge us to be more radical. And, surely, at this time in our history, we have to nurture more radical activism.

“Activism is my rent for living on this planet.”

—Alice Walker

THE PATIENCE

TO WIN

EISHA MASON

Eisha Mason is the executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Nonviolence. She has worked with teens for more than twenty years and coauthored the
64 Ways to Practice Nonviolence
curriculum and resource guide. She is also the cofounder and director of the community outreach ministries of the Agape International Center of Truth.

If we listen uncritically to the mass media, we may believe that we in the peace movement have endured one defeat after another in the past few years. That is, however, far from the truth! A successful movement is so much more than a series of protests. It is more than a single campaign. Our individual and collective efforts to stop the war in Iraq became a catalyst for building the necessary framework of a movement capable of winning true peace and justice for our society and the world. We have much to celebrate and much to build upon as we face the challenges ahead of us.

In his reflections on the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The ultimate tragedy of Birmingham was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people.” Let us, therefore, celebrate that we were not silent. At a time when it was so easy to be cowed by media hysteria and an administration that called us “traitors” and “collaborators with the enemy,” we dared to question authority and think for ourselves. When it was easier to keep silent in family gatherings or in the lunchroom at work, when neighbors may have turned away from us, when we sometimes thought we were all alone, we chose to stand in truth. When we were pumped an intravenous diet of fear each day, we chose to be true to our own consciences.

We created public debate
. Even though we were all but shut out of the mainstream media, we created forums in which other voices representing intelligence communities, the government, progressive media, and peace and justice organizations could share information that corporate media could not or would not report. We countered the myth that this war was justified and that it would make us safer.

We united globally
. Just as our spirits soared when we learned of the millions of people worldwide demonstrating for peace, for justice, and for international law, so did our global brothers and sisters take heart when they learned of our efforts in the United States. Our voices and actions might not have been covered effectively at home, but we were accurately reported abroad. Never before have ten million voices made a single cry: “Peace Now!”

We organized an infrastructure
. In neighborhood peace and justice groups, we established our local communication networks and agreed on the principles by which we would operate. We came up with a process for decision making and conflict resolution, with methods of outreach, and with effective ways of working together and raising funds.

We connected the dots
. We began to grasp the relationships between global trade policies and civil and economic policies in America. We came together with other populations in our communities, populations we did not previously take the time to know—and because of this, our movement broadened and deepened in numbers, in diversity, in resources, and in strength. Today, our togetherness continues, and many of us are supporting striking or locked-out workers, immigrants, and marginalized children and families in our communities.

We chose love
. We have grown in love and compassion, because we learned that our anger alone would not sustain us. We have grown in our capacity to take responsibility for our own lives and for creating the world we want. We have grown in courage: the courage to occupy street corners with placards, the courage to march, the courage to say, “Peace and justice for all,” and the courage not to retaliate when others call us names. We have discovered that our passion for what we love is so much greater than our fear.

We became leaders
. Many of us never talked politics before, never spoke to our neighbors before, never organized a committee, never called an elected official, never sought out alternative news sources, never took action. Yet today we can assert that we have stepped into leadership.

We made peace the way
. We have succeeded in maintaining our movement as a nonviolent one. In our marches, we are demonstrating what democracy and peace look like, and our movement is growing because of it.

We have succeeded in all of these ways, but we must do more. The victory we seek will not come today or tomorrow. Cesar Chavez knew all about that when he spoke of the “patience to win.” It was sixteen years after the Gandhi Salt March that India finally won its independence. The civil rights movement did not begin with Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her bus seat—it had evolved through the sacrifices of community leaders and ordinary people who had worked for years to create the right conditions for Parks’s historic moment. Our success will rest on no one campaign but on our cumulative, ongoing efforts—and we must be prepared for the ebb and flow that is a natural part of this work.

One of the signature moments in the long, hard struggle of the civil rights movement was the five-day march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. Having arrived with twenty-five thousand other marchers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the frustrations of so many dedicated activists:

I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody’s asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?” Somebody’s asking, “When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?” Somebody’s asking, “How long will justice be crucified?”

I come to say to you: however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again. How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow. How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

King said, “The battle is in our hands.” This is why we are here, on earth, at this time, in this nation. This is not the first time nor the last time that people will struggle for peace, but this is
our
time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for: housewives, students, bus drivers, schoolteachers, librarians, welfare mothers, the unemployed, artists, and activists. Let us all look ahead: resolved, reenergized, and rededicated to creating a world that is just, and a world that thrives in peace.