VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, [3], 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 07:50:33 12/25/02 Wed
Author: Weird_Engima
Author Host/IP: 209.252.119.12
Subject: Mass civil disobedience planned for day U.S. launches attack on Iraq

Anti-war movement building up forces, too
Mass civil disobedience planned for day U.S. launches attack on Iraq
MARTHA MENDOZA
Associated Press

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - If a major war breaks out in Iraq, the first thing the Rev. Stuart Fitch plans to do is pray for everyone from Saddam Hussein to President Bush. Then he'll preach to his congregation.

And then, perhaps, the 78-year-old Episcopalian clergyman will get himself arrested.

"There will be plenty of people going to jail that day," said Fitch, who wears his stiff pastoral collar beneath a powder-blue shirt. "I'm thinking about joining them."

While the Pentagon has spent the past year training troops, building facilities and stockpiling weapons to launch a war against Iraq, the peace movement has been coordinating "emergency response plans" to disrupt domestic military activity, tie up commerce and get out their anti-war message.

Rally meeting places are posted, march routes set, protest signs painted, acts of nonviolent civil disobedience choreographed.

Activists in more than a dozen cities have announced where and when to meet on the first day of war -- what they call "The Day Of." In Dallas, they plan speeches at City Hall; in San Francisco, they plan to block traffic in the business district; in St. Louis they will hold a candlelight vigil downtown; in Seattle they plan to march at the federal building. In New York City, organizers hope to crowd Times Square with protesters.

Bill Towe, coordinator for N.C. Peace Action, said there are no specific plans to engage in civil disobedience if and when war begins. There will be plenty of activity in the upcoming weeks, however.

"We're going to stop the damn war," Towe said before pausing. "We'll try hard."

Hundreds of anti-war activists from North Carolina will attend an anti-war rally Jan. 18 in Washington to encourage the U.S. government to "end the cycle of violence," he said.

Activists are also planning civil disobedience near government buildings across the state on Jan. 21 -- Martin Luther King Jr.'s federal holiday -- and a submission of more than 900 petitions to Sen. John Edwards' office, he said.

Some Bush administration supporters think the demonstrations could be harmful to U.S. interests.

"They encourage the enemy," said Michael Ledeen, a foreign policy expert at Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. "The Iraqis will look at it and say, `Ah ha! The people are not with the American government on this.' "

The long buildup to the war "is doing wonders for organizing," according to Scott Lynch, a spokesman for Peace Action, the largest anti-war activism group in the United States, which claims 85,000 members in 100 chapters around the country.

The yearlong prep time also has brought a broad array of people to the movement, Lynch said.

"Our community now entails a much more moderate and wider swath of America. It's not the fringe and it's not the old lefties and it's not the kids with purple hair and nose rings," he said.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff Writer Rob Moore contributed to this article.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.