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Dispatch from Fayetteville
New Directions for the Antiwar Movement

By Steve Theberge

t’s no surprise that some of the most cutting-edge voices in today’s antiwar movement are coming straight out of the South, a region of the country that has been hit especially hard by the war on Iraq. One out of every five soldiers in Iraq is from a base in North Carolina, which has seen the lion’s share of the dead and wounded.

So it’s also no surprise—and no coincidence, either—that some of the most vibrant and innovative organizing is rooted in that state. Decades of struggle and work have gone into developing organizing strategies there that emphasize community involvement, accountability and skill building. Indeed, some of the most democratic and radical voices of the left have come out of the rural Southern tradition, from civil rights giant Ella Baker to Myles Horton, one of the founders of the Highlander Folk School. Since the onset of the war on Iraq, a unique sector of the antiwar movement has been growing across the South, the product of a dynamic collaboration between established organizations and newly involved constituencies. These new developments have radically transformed what this work looks, sounds and acts like, setting the tone for the next generation of antiwar activists.

On March 19, almost five thousand veterans, military families, activists and North Carolinians marched through downtown Fayetteville, the home of one of the largest military installations in the country. People came from as far as Spain and Seattle and from Fort Bragg, just down the road. The march was a prime example of this new generation of antiwar activity and, to many, marked a significant turning point for the national antiwar movement. There are lessons to be learned from the Fayetteville demonstration, and we need to ask how those lessons apply to the general landscape of the move ment for peace and justice. It’s also worth specifically examining the surge in counter-military recruitment work over the past six months in light of the Fayetteville protests.

Front and Center
The March 19 march and rally put veterans and military families front and center. Almost all the rally speakers were directly affected by the war in Iraq, and most were either veterans or military family members. In the months leading up to the demonstration, the organizing committee put intense effort into making the weekend a community- and family-focused event. That committee, assembled under the statewide umbrella of North Carolina for Peace and Justice (www.ncpeacejustice.org) included student activists, military families, veterans and labor organizers from across the political spectrum.

Most of the national media neglected to mention it, but the demonstration actually took up the entire weekend, from Friday, March 18 through Sunday, March 20. On Friday night, the Durham, NC-based Hip Hop Against Racist War put on a concert in a community center featuring local and nationally known hip hop acts. Then, on Saturday, thousands came together to walk through the streets of one of the most militarized of U.S cities. Finally, on Sunday, Iraq Veterans Against the War held their founding convention, Military Families Speak Out had a national meeting, and many other people stayed to take part in a Southern Organizers Gathering, building connections between organizers across the Southeast. The organizers’ gathering was an explicit—and successful—attempt to engage with local residents about the war and to bring new voices into the peace movement.

The protests were entirely peaceful, with only one minor incident between the police and a protester. Although about 200 pro-war counter-protesters showed up, it is worth noting that even in the home of one of the largest military bases in the country it was difficult to mobilize much pro-war sentiment. And so on its face, the weekend wasn’t all that much different from the average protest: People marched, sang and sold buttons and t-shirts, while counter- protesters hurled insults over the fence. But the importance of Fayetteville to the contemporary antiwar movement was not found in the signs we carried, nor in the chants we called back and forth. The difference was in the foundation on which the whole weekend was built: the leadership of those in this country who have felt the brunt of this war, a strong grounding in local organizing and an emphasis on community building.

Halfway through the rally, the organizers paused the speeches and turned the spotlight onto the participants. Encouraging people to turn to their neighbors and talk about why they were there, local organizer Bryan Proffitt told the crowd, “We want to emphasize, in the spirit of Southern organizers like Ella Baker and Anne Braden, that you, not the speakers on the stage or the ‘leaders’ of the organizations, are the backbone of any effort we make to stop war.  Without you, there is no resistance.” He went on to add, “We learn valuable lessons when we listen to each other. We need to know what brought you here today.  We need to know what you are enjoying and appreciating.  We need to know what you believe needs to change about the antiwar movement.  Sharing these lessons with one another can only make our resistance more intelligent.”

This emphasis on community involvement and relationship building proved to be highly effective. Sectors of the peace movement that are often disconnected—veterans and anarchists, military families and longtime organizers—were able to sit together and talk, not only about strategy and long-term vision, but also about their lives and their work. This explicit and intentional focus on community building is almost entirely absent from the larger peace movement and transformed what could have been a weekend of endless bus rides and hours in the sun into an energizing and inspiring event.

That at least one part of the contemporary antiwar movement is building its foundation on principles of direct accountability and dialogue with those most affected by the war is a huge step forward. Hopefully, it points toward a national trend of replacing the highly institutionalized kind of antiwar work that we see on the East and West coasts with the more grassroots based style that’s been successful in the South for decades. This may be a slower and less dramatic path, but it means that we are creating a movement that is sustainable, grounded in real experience, rooted in local communities and able to weather the challenges of the long struggle for peace and justice.

Movement Building
The peace movement has grown exponentially in the past two years, and along with that growth has come numerous new organizations and voices for peace. Many people have put “counter-military recruitment” at the center of their efforts, and over the past year, hundreds of small, independent groups have begun working on the issue. At this writing, almost every major national peace and justice organization has a counter-recruitment section or program. Many people are drawing inspiration and a sense of continuity from the movement against the war on Vietnam, examining where the strategic choices made in that era can be applied in a contemporary context. Yet “counter-recruitment” as we understand it—educating and organizing young people to take control of their futures and mobilizing against the presence of recruiters in our schools—is still a relatively new phenomenon. While people have been producing educational materials and working in schools for at least a decade, up until as recently as a year ago, you could not say that a counter-recruitment movement existed.

That has dramatically changed. Across the country, youth activists are conducting workshops, organizations and coalitions are hosting educational sessions for youth and allies, and protests outside of military recruiting stations are on the rise. Without a doubt, counter-recruitment is the hot issue in the antiwar movement, and everyone wants a piece of the action.

But why counter-recruitment, and why now? With so many people disillusioned after the presidential elections, activists are turning to concrete, locally focused work with an emphasis on projects whose results we can see. Counter-military recruitment offers a clear way to be involved in your community, and at the same time, to slow the feeding of the war machine. Counter-recruitment work has attracted everyone from long-time pacifists to recent veterans, from concerned parents to pissed-off high school students.

An examination of military recruitment offers a prismatic view into some of the most pressing issues that plague our society. We are able to see, refracted in the light, the way that recruiters prey on the lack of affordable housing and healthcare and the decrepit state of our educational system. We see how the war for which they are recruiting is the latest step in the forward march of U.S. power across the globe. But most importantly, we are able to see how organizing against militarism and recruitment can be a powerful movement-building tool, a way to build skills and resources within the emerging generation of youth leadership.

The situation is not perfect, of course. With so many different people and perspectives getting involved, the counter- recruitment movement is faced with the same challenges as the antiwar movement as a whole: the need to coordinate effectively on a national level while remaining responsive to local conditions and leadership, the need to build strong and effective coalitions and the need to put on-the-ground organizing work at the front of our agenda.

New Energy
Clearly, all of this new energy and involvement is both a boon and a challenge for the peace movement. We are struggling with what it means, after years of relative obscurity, to be relevant on a mass cultural level again. In many ways, we stand in the midst of a movement adolescence, awkward and not quite sure what to do with our newfound strength. The resources we have available to us, such as established organizations like the War Resisters League, can provide a powerful structure, a historical framework and an effective channel for action, but we need to recognize the new antiwar movement is much larger than the longtime peace movement, and more specifically, that we are not its center of gravity. Organizations with long histories can often rely on staid and limited strategies, whose positive results have been limited. We are not going to end this brutal war if we are not able to adapt ourselves to the new circumstances that we are encountering and the new methods of organizing that these circumstances demand.

The demonstration in Fayetteville offers many lessons for the modern peace movement. It showed us that we need to abandon the feeling of ownership and propriety over “our movement” and open ourselves up to new ideas and innovative tactics. Projecting a sense of entitlement and ownership over these issues dissuades others (including the communities most affected by military recruitment) from a deeper investment and participation in the movement. We have also learned that our failure (for the most part) to distribute our resources and tools beyond our established constituencies has created an atmosphere in which many youth, veterans and people of color feel isolated and separated from national antiwar activities.

While we have taken great strides in confronting the problems that have plagued the peace movement, the public face of the “traditional” peace movement is still white and middle class, even as a vibrant antiwar movement has sprung up communities who don’t fit that narrow image. Why has there not been substantial space in the traditional peace movement for veterans? In what ways have our organizing methods alienated young people (outside the small existing circles of counter-cultural activists) and people of color?

With the doors of the established peace movement all too often appearing closed to newcomers, veterans’ organizations, military families and young people have begun, logically, to set up their own structures, organizations and long-term organizing strategies. The peace movement has conventionally distributed its resources to constituencies the movement thinks will be most receptive. Those perceptions, however, are often outmoded and based on a very limited pool of people. Times have changed, and we need to find a way to support independent and autonomous organizing while also working to change the behavior that has held us back from building a more unified movement.

Centrally, Fayetteville showed us that we need to listen to, follow the suggestions of, and put at the center the perspectives of these new colleagues, while in the same moment sharing our resources and the lessons we have learned over the past decades. It demonstrated that building flexible coalitions based on shared principles and goals (not simply ideological unity) works. Fayetteville reinforced the fact that we need to be able to compromise, let go of the small stuff and focus on the big picture of movement building beyond this war. We saw that the principles and vision of organizations like WRL are essential, but we also need to embrace the fact that the peace movement’s old guard—including WRL—needs to share power and leadership those most deeply affected by the war in this country. We need to embrace veterans and military families as our comrades and fellow travelers and engage with the considerable knowledge, experience and personal investment that they bring to our movement.

Finally, Fayetteville showed us that many of the challenges facing the traditional peace movement are those that we ourselves have created: exclusionary organizing strategies, limited distribution of resources and narrow long-term vision. We have to ask ourselves what it’s really going to take to win: Are we able to become as flexible as our work demands? Can we survive the intense growth that we have sustained over the past few years without collapsing into in-fighting? Can we develop real, principled and mutually beneficial coalitions? We clearly have the skills and tools to make all of this happen; the only question is our willingness—or lack of it—to step ahead into the unknown.

Steve Theberge is WRL’s Youth and Counter-Recruitment Coordinator. Thanks to Andy Cornell, Sonny Suchdev, Heidi Reijm, Clare Bayard and Joseph Phelan, who all gave insightful comments on an earlier draft of this piece.