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Antiwar Effort Emphasizes Civility Over Confrontation: March 29, 2003
Antiwar Effort Emphasizes Civility Over Confrontation: March 29, 2003
Antiwar Effort Emphasizes Civility Over Confrontation: March 29, 2003
The Debate
Civil Disobedience Is Toned Down
Within two days, Mr. Pariser said, online donors pledged $400,000, and the group bought
several newspaper advertisements, a radio commercial, and ultimately, several television
spots. One, in which a scene of a small girl plucking daisy petals morphs into military
images and a mushroom cloud, borrowed heavily from the “daisy” commercial that
Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign used against Barry Goldwater in 1964 to stir fears about
nuclear Armageddon.
When the war started last week, United for Peace and Justice and Win Without War were
split over civil disobedience, the tool that many in the antiwar movement had been saving
for the start of hostilities.
United for Peace said it supported nonviolent civil disobedience, while Win Without War
said it did not. But as the general shift in strategy swept the peace movement over last
weekend, United for Peace and Justice scaled back its advocacy of civil disobedience. Its
Web site now encourages those against the war to light a candle for peace, to wear a
black armband, to display a yellow ribbon.
Smaller regional groups seemed to take the cue, trading sit- ins for bike rides for peace.
In New York, antiwar groups called for mass civil disobedience on Thursday. There were
more than 200 arrests but most protesters remained orderly. They specifically fixed on
Rockefeller Center, because it is the home of General Electric, its NBC subsidiary and
The Associated Press.
Organizers say news media companies and companies like G.E. will profit from the war,
whether from high ratings, newspaper sales, military contracts or payments to rebuild
Iraq after the war.
The most notable example of the new tone came in San Francisco, which had emerged
early on as a hotbed of the antiwar movement.
Last week, the goal of the San Francisco umbrella organization, Direct Action to Stop the
War, had been to disrupt the city’s everyday life. Twenty intersections and thoroughfares
were picked as places to stop traffic, with demonstrators sitting on the asphalt and
refusing to budge.
More than 2,300 people were arrested in three days, the largest number of arrests in such
a short time period in decades, the police said.
The civil disobedience achieved its main goal of attracting attention around the world.
But it also annoyed a good number of San Franciscans, most notably Mayor Willie L.
Brown Jr., a Democrat who is sympathetic to the antiwar cause. At one point he urged the
demonstrators to leave San Francisco and converge on Crawford, Tex., where President
Bush has a ranch.
So at a meeting Sunday night at San Francisco’s St. Boniface Church, some of Direct
Action’s most active supporters, joined by members from many other groups, including
United For Peace and Justice, decided to accommodate the mood of a city — and country
— at war.
“We agreed to a change in tactics,” said Renee Sharp, who when not protesting the war
works as an analyst for an environmental advocacy group in Oakland.
“We no longer need to disrupt business as usual; we’ve made that point. Our goal isn’t to
make life difficult for everybody living here.”
The shift was swift.
At a training session for protesters early Monday morning near the San Francisco
waterfront, a young woman in a knit cap took the microphone. As had been the routine at
other gatherings, she led the crowd of 300 or so in a recitation. “Repeat after me,” she
said. “I do not want to answer questions. I want to talk with my lawyer.”
But the script then deviated markedly from that of the weeks before. After people pored
over a poster board map and got their assignments — most were told to block entrances
to the Transamerica Pyramid building — they were sent marching in a fairly obedient
form of disobedience.
They headed down the sidewalk alongside the streets that last week they had mobbed.
This time they were in neat double file led by a Franciscan priest holding two church
candles. The procession was so orderly, a large group of police officers having breakfast
outside a nearby bagel shop did not even budge as it passed.