Anti-War Groups Fear Loss of Momentum

[thedrifter]

Apr 11, 3:17 PM EDT

Anti-War Groups Fear Loss of Momentum

By JEFF DONN
Associated Press Writer


Anti-war groups are quickly reshaping their tactics for a postwar era, but they fear the huge movement they forged over the last several months will inevitably lose steam as the fighting winds down in Iraq.

"Everybody has paused for a moment," said Mary Ellen McNish, head of the American Friends Service Committee, a branch of the pacifist Quaker church. "We're trying to make sure we're doing the right thing at the right time."

With near unanimity, anti-war organizers say they will carry through with demonstrations already arranged for the next few weeks, including a march to the White House and a rally in San Francisco on Saturday.

International Answer, which is organizing the events, will retool its message as "occupation isn't liberation," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a member of the group's steering committee.

"We believe that the U.S. must withdraw from the Middle East," she said. The group draws support from the Free Palestine Alliance, some communists and socialists, as well as clergy, unions, academics and others.

Backers of the war haven't fallen silent yet either. On Saturday, conservative groups expect to mount their own rally on the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol, once the scene of many Vietnam War protests.

As U.S. forces took control of Baghdad this week, anti-war activists said they were pleased the war they couldn't stop may be nearing its end. Privately, they also began a heavy round of e-mails, phone calls and meetings to take stock of their own strategy to preserve at least some of the momentum of the largest peace movement since Vietnam.

The Rev. Bob Edgar, co-chairman of Win Without War and general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said organizers were hashing out "whether Win Without War should continue and what it should do."

Tom Andrews, Win Without War's national director, said he believes the large coalition, which formed last fall to stop the war on Iraq, will survive with a wider agenda.

United for Peace and Justice, another big newcomer to the peace movement, may start focusing more heavily on smaller regional events than on mass protests, spokesman Jason Kafoury said.

Sociologist Eric Swank of Morehead State University in Kentucky, who is studying the peace movement, said it has already begun to ebb.

"There's a perception that the war has been fast in the last week or so, and that Baghdad has been conquered, and the American public can move on to another issue," he said.

"It's just a basic reality," acknowledged Gordon Clark, national coordinator of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance. "When there's a crisis in front of them, people react more."

For now, anti-war leaders say they will refocus on supporting a dominant U.N. role in rebuilding Iraq and greater American cooperation with that body. Many groups say they must stay active to guard against any Bush administration plan to attack Syria or Iran next, though Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted as saying that won't happen.

"The message that we're concentrating on now is that Iraq needs to be for the Iraqis and, as soon as possible, the United States should withdraw," said Sister Alice Gerdeman, a Roman Catholic nun who coordinates the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center in Cincinnati.

Edgar suggested that perhaps his group should rename itself Win Without Wars.

"It's easier to organize people to stop a war than it is once the war is winding down. The good thing is you have a base," he said. "Even if the base shrinks a bit, we believe there's a good opportunity to use the leverage we have."

Some groups are retooling their messages to denounce what they view as excessive American militarism and to push for U.S. nuclear disarmament, promote domestic issues like better schools and health care, and organize to expel Bush and war-backing congressmen in next year's elections.

Peace Action expects to place newspaper ads this month with two other groups encouraging sympathizers to vote their convictions next year. "It may not be 100,000 people in the streets, but it's necessary to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again," said Peace Action spokesman Scott Lynch.

Many organizers claim credit for delaying the war and forcing Bush to consult with Congress and the United Nations. However, they said their most abiding accomplishment could be a much broader base of support for peace and social justice causes - if they can rechannel the anti-war energy of recent months.

The broader agendas could make it harder to work together in a movement that has embraced pacifists and veterans, radicals and middle Americans, with only occasional bickering.

Will it unravel without an American war as a unifying target?

"I think if we don't pay careful attention and listen to each other, that might happen, but my experience with the coalition is that won't happen," said McNish, of American Friends Service Committee.

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On the Net:

http://www.winwithoutwarus.org

http://www.unitedforpeace.org



Sempers,

Roger

[reconeil]

NOW!!!!!!!!....after so much subversive time spent, a Quaker Protest Leader states: "We're trying to make sure we are doing the right thing at the right time".

WOW(!),...I think it absolutely amazing that such a naive fool can have so many other fools following her, whom also apparently hope the worst occurs for both America and The Iraqi People.

Think "She" would be better suited living in Germany. After all, nowadays Germany doesn't persecute such types anymore.
Well, I think not anyway.

Neil