Nov.-Dec. 2001:
Drums of War, Voices for Peace
Pacifism in a Time of National Pain
Roots of Conflict
What’s Next for Global Justice?
Pentagon’s Blank Check
Our One-Dimensional Media
Countering Military Recruiting
The Constitution in Turmoil
A Nonmilitary Response
New Yorkers Against War

Homepages:
War Resisters League
The Nonviolent Activist

NYC: “Not In Our Name”

photos by Ed Hedemann

ew York City has always been a major hub for U.S. protests, but this was different: New York was one of the two places in the country that had actually been attacked, the place where the dead numbered in the thousands. And as the antiwar coalitions formed, New Yorkers knew that large numbers protesting here would probably pierce the peace-news blackout.

The coalition that planned the first large-scale demonstration was so new it had no name yet. It met for the first time September 16, only five days after the attacks, under the auspices of the city’s longtime progressive school, the Brecht Forum. It called its action—named “New York-Not In Our Name”—for three weeks later: a rally and march on October 7 from the city’s historic Union Square to the U.S. Army recruiting station in Times Square.

October 7, of course, turned out to be the day the bombs started falling in Afghanistan. It was also the day three Nobel peace prize winners—Ireland’s Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Guatemala’s Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Argentina’s Adolfo Pérez Esquivel—were scheduled to be in the city to deliver the Nobel laureates’ plea for peace.

The presence of Maguire and Esquivel (below; Rigoberta Menchú’s plane was delayed)—and the terrible news from Afghanistan—no doubt drew even more people to the event. Maguire and Esquivel led a crowd of 10,000 marching to a new-born peace anthem, folk singer Pat Humphries’ “Peace, Salaam, Shalom.”

It was a phenomenon even the New York Times could not ignore. A half-page article the next day was headlined, “In three languages, urgently chanting for peace.”