field notes:

3.27.2003

You can find more great pictures of the people of Iraq here.
If you're looking for coverage of the war from non-embedded journalistic sources, I've compiled a few links. Later, I'll post them and others in the column to the right:
Iraq Peace Team

Electronic Iraq

Iraq Body Count

Iraq Journal

Where Is Raed? A good question now, since he hasn't posted in a couple of days. Hopefully, he will get service back, and is okay and we'll hear more from him soon. But for now, you can read his coverage of life in Baghdad through the 24th.

Godspeed Raed, and everybody else who finds themselves in Iraq today.

posted by Lisa Thompson on 8:30 AM link | comments []

3.26.2003

The Meaning of Protest

One hopes that todays anti-war protests will help to change public opinion and influence policy. Is it possible to change the minds of those who believe in the inevitability of war? If they will be swayed by voices in the streets, protestors need to be mindful of the messages they're sending with their daily protest.

Both Nixon and Johnson acknowledged in their respective biographies that Vietnam-era protestors did influence their thinking over time, and those protests also caused a slow-bleed change in public opinion. It's vital that voices for peace be heard so that the middle-ground of American expression isn't dominated by the pro-war view.

With the television on, the predominant voices speak in favor of the status quo. Mainstream broadcast journalists report the war as if it's just another White House briefing: with slick graphics and catchy slogans behind them, talking heads discuss munitions like Super Bowl stats and repeat the words of generals as if they were facts. They never question, when watching hour after hour of bombs falling, how those bombs will affect civilians on the ground.

It's only when the television cameras turn to the protestors in the streets that any alternative voice is broadcast. That in itself marginalizes the peace point-of-view. But at least then it can be heard...and seen, and this is the reason that protests must go on.

The latest polls by Gallup show 76% of Americans in favor of this war. Most Americans believe that once our troops are in battle we should rally behind them, and that to do otherwise is demoralizing for them and a deeply unpatriotic act. I'm sure that many respondents to this poll had that in mind and yet I question this tenet.

Isn't blindly supporting what you feel to be wrong the most unpatriotic act? We have an obligation as well as the right to voice our opposition to war of all things: bombs, once dropped, are irretrievable, the damage done, irrevocable.

Last week, as war began, protests called 'direct actions' occurred in the streets of San Francisco. Traffic was blocked, people chained themselves to one another, mass vomits and defecations were held. Other 'direct actions' continue to be held on a smaller scale. I question the value of this kind of protest. It neither takes into account the cost of such action, nor the message it sends. If the point of this kind of protest is to 'disrupt the normal course of events', the message that is received by those confronted with blocked streets or whose livelihoods are affected is that their priorities are unimportant and their needs unconsidered, the long-term message received by the general population is a deeply felt fiscal impact on social services - a cost paid by cities, not by the federal government who launched the war in the first place. As one protestor being interviewed on television put it, "These effects are unintended." Well, think about it. How is this kind of direct action effective as a message when it disrupts so much without thought to real consequences? You can't separate the message from the delivery. These actions may be imaginative but they are also destructive.

But the greatest cost of this type of protest is the lost opportunity to send peaceful images across the airwaves. During a 'direct action', the images being broadcast are eerily war-like: uniformed police chase flag-waving youngsters down streets, police in riot-gear mimics chemical-warfare-readied forces, and protesters spread-eagle on the street, surrendered like P.O.W.'s. If people believe that war is inevitable, then warlike images coming from a "peace" march reinforce those views. Run alongside images from the war, there is little visceral difference.

Contrast this with last Saturday's peaceful demonstration also held in San Francisco. The message, and the images, sent are that a law-abiding cross-section of people (like the viewers) stand for peace. Their peaceable action embodies the principles of peace and so the message and the method are in harmony. Can peaceful means and international bodies be expected to diplomatically resolve conflicts in the world if those who stand against war cannot thoughtfully express their views?

Am I saying that we should confine our demonstrations and protest to days when permits have been gotten? Should we still our voices? No. I believe that imaginative protest and 'direct action' can proceed in many ways that are effective, thoughtful and full of life but that intend no harm. In order to convince and influence others, we must show some respect-no one will be influenced by protests which call into question their ability to think for themselves.

There are other ways to make our voices heard that are not confined to simple protest 'against war', but are expressions 'for peace'. These are acts of imagination and creativity that come from the vital heart of each of us. It is incumbent upon us to express our humanity in meaningful acts of art using poetry and prayer, beauty, rhythm and song not only now while bombs are dropping, not only when war is imminent, but always. How else to make peace a greater force than war, love greater than hate, humanity greater than commerce, than to express those values in our daily lives-a practice of peace. Embedded in this poetic form of protest are the means to a vital expression of peace and life long after the bombs stop.

posted by Lisa Thompson on 8:26 PM link | comments []