by Grace Paley
Environmental organizations were doing their important work globally and in village toxic dumps. The Central American networks were dealing with decades of exported U.S. repression and war. Feminist groups—radical, socialist, academic, or traditional—were facing the backlashes that often follow success—the anti-abortion moralities of the anti-sexual right as well as the wishful pronouncements of patriarchy that feminism was dead. Blacks and other people of color also hoped that the inner-city disasters of homelessness and poverty would be reversed somehow, although racism, as the most severe inherited illness of the United States, was continuing its nasty life. Gay groups struggled with discrimination and the grief of AIDS. Middle Eastern organizations suffered indifference and faced nearly everyone else’s ignorance … at a time when their role was about to become central.
I’ve told you all this to show that radical and social justice organizations had plenty to do. But the experience of Vietnam and the work of decades began to pay off. In general, most of the groups I’ve described saw their connections to one another—were in fact living those connections. Before the coalition (two in some places—three in Seattle, I’ve been told—at first anyway) there was a lot of overlapping. For instance, many women in Central American work were feminists. They listened to the radio and watched television and heard the drone and confidence of prowar male experts—even more tedious than some of their political brothers. It’s hard to believe that fifteen years ago people opposed to nuclear power and anti-nuclear-war activists didn’t understand that they had a common agenda. It took long discussions and a couple of years of political argument and mediation to bring them together. Environmentalists had to learn that war made an ecological mess. Oh? First resistance. Then surprise. Then connection.
* * *
On August 29, 1990, Jeff Patterson refused to join his unit; he sat down on the airstrip in Hawaii. He had enlisted in the Marine Corps straight out of high school in California—for the same reason most youngsters do: educational opportunities, maybe some adventure. His experience during deployments to Okinawa, South Korea, and the Philippines changed his outlook entirely. He said, “I have, as an artillery controller, directed cannons on Oahu, rained burning white phosphorus and tons of high explosives on the big island, and blasted away at the island of Kahoolawe … I can bend no further.” In the next few weeks, others were to join him.
On September 12, 1990, one of the first peace meetings in New York was held at Cooper Union. There were thousands of women and men—the auditorium was full; there were loudspeakers outside. The weather was fine and the plaza around Cooper Union packed with intent listeners. I have been living in white Vermont, and as a true New Yorker I became excited to see once again all the colors of the people of my city. And the numbers! A surprise really. Oh, I thought, this war will never happen.
At the literature table I looked at various flyers and petitions, particularly the flyer and petition issued by the coalition that had put this marvelous meeting together, with its twenty to thirty speakers. I thought it was all right—kind of jargony, but not too terrible. This huge meeting was what mattered.
Still, I did say to the young woman at the lit table: “How come you guys left out the fact that Iraq did go into Kuwait? How come?” She said, “That’s not really important.” “I know what you mean,” I said, “but it happens to be true.”
I did know what she meant, and I read their explanation a couple of weeks later. It insisted that if the American people were told about the invasion of Kuwait, they would “become confused.” It would “obfuscate” the basic facts and actions. Unfortunately, of course, the American people had already been told and continued to be told day and night about this pathetic little country of trillionaires, and so omitting facts became a lie and did get in the way of organizing people unaccustomed to being held to political lines. It was a stubbornness that hurt work in New York more than elsewhere, but people are used to that, and national—I should say local—organizing all around the country against the frighteningly speedy troop and propaganda buildup continued. Reports of their success vary according to the facts and the disposition of the reporter.
Two coalitions finally had to happen in New York. One was the Coalition to Stop Intervention in the Middle East, which, with its strong cadre of the Workers’ World Party, had organized the important New York September 12 meeting; the other became the National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East, with its base in traditional peace and anti-intervention groups. The division was real, a matter of substance, style—and at the same time there were organizations that had simply started to do their anti–Gulf War in one coalition or another—also, it depended on how much they were doing outside the big cities. An example would be Palestinian Aid in the coalition and Palestinian Solidarity in the campaign. The division came to a pointy head over the dates of the major Washington demonstration. The coalition had decided on the nineteenth before a common meeting with the campaign. Reasons for both dates were as good as they were bad. It was good to do it on Martin Luther King’s holiday weekend, because … Yes, I thought. It was bad to plan it for that weekend, because … Yes, I thought. In any event, the vote ran extremely high against the nineteenth.
In late December 1990, the campaign proposed a joint statement supporting both demonstrations. The coalition said no. Many people went to both. The coalition went ahead, had its demonstration on the nineteenth with good representation of people of color—blacks, Hispanics, many Middle Eastern Americans. In San Francisco there were about 150,000 demonstrators. The twenty-sixth brought out about 250,000 people in Washington. The tone and the style of these demonstrations were extraordinary. There were more hand-made, non-organizational signs as well as the big ballooning sky-hiding world hoisted above us all by Greenpeace. The Bread and Puppet marched with its huge puppets, its great music and stilt dancers, and its Vermont cadre of a couple of hundred B. and P. lovers and activist banner carriers. Some of the signs—culled from my head and The Nation: WAR IS GOOD BUSINESS; INVEST YOUR SON OR DAUGHTER; GEORGE BUSH IS HAVING A WARGASM; A KINDER GENTLER BLOODBATH; GIVE ESTROGEN A CHANCE; READ MY APOCALYPSE.
These impressive demonstrations happened later, after the war had started but before the rage and drive of the air war and its murderous preemption of hope taught us to say the word “blitzkrieg” and understand where our civilian and military leaders had gone to school.
* * *
I want to say a little more about the opposition to the inevitable war before January 15, 1991. Interesting fact: 73 percent of American women were opposed to the war in the month before it started. Men were split down the middle.
The New York Times printed a letter on August 22, 1990, from Alex Molnar, whose son, a twenty-one-year-old Marine, had been sent to Saudi Arabia. He concluded his letter (to President Bush): “And I’m afraid that as the pressure mounts, you will wager my son’s life in a gamble to save your political future…” The letter was reprinted many times and created a movement called the Military Families Support Network … which by early March 1991 had chapters in thirty-nine states. MFSN supported the use of economic sanctions, opposed massive deployment of U.S. forces and the entire military offensive. Their emphasis on the support of troops has put off a number of columnists. I myself feel that a slogan like “Support the Troops” has to include the words “by Bringing Them Home Now.”
Actually, in almost every demonstration I’ve been a part of or come upon in another city or town, those last words were there. There’s a kind of critiquing of the events and actions of that hard short period that is not criticism but more like an academic exercise made by people at their desks who are not out on the streets or engaged in the decision-making processes of any noncentralized organization.
Journeys, peace missions to Iraq or journeys of inquiry, have been a part of peace-movement activity from late summer/early autumn 1990, when they began organizing, into February 1991 and the war.
In mid-October a peace delegation organi
zed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation spent two days in Jordan and a week in Iraq. The main purpose of this mission was to bring medicine to Amman and especially to Baghdad. David McReynolds, one of the members of the twenty-person team, returned and reported on the lives of children in Baghdad. I think of one scene he describes: fathers in a small Iraqi village holding their children up to the windows of the Americans’ bus. I did not see this report in our newspapers.
The Gulf Peace Team opened a peace camp on the border of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It remained there for ten days and thousands of sorties of the air war. It was evacuated on January 26, 1991, by the Iraqis. There were eighty-six witnesses living at the camp, many from other countries as well as the United States. They saw the beginning of the environmental destruction by our smart Air Force and the great suffering of the people. I read their reports in the left and pacifist press.
Later—in early February, during the war—Ramsey Clark and a group of well-known photographers and reporters went, including an American Iraqi with family there who was able to bring him into conversation with ordinary civilians and their experiences—beginning with the bombed road from Jordan into Iraq and the destruction of civilian vehicles—food-and-grain trucks. Also the markets, water stations, schools—all the targets, I guess, of our “stupid” bombs.
* * *
To return to prewar actions, statements … On November 14 the National Council of Churches at a conference in Portland, Oregon, condemned U.S. policy in the Gulf: “As Christians … we must witness against weak resignation to the illogical logic of militarism and war.” The National Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote to President Bush: “In this situation, moving beyond the deployment of military forces in an effort to deter Iraq’s aggression to the undertaking of offensive military action could well violate the criteria for a “just war,” especially the principles of proportionality and last resort.”
These strong leadership statements stood, but the churches themselves fell into an awful quietness as the war began. I am reminded here that it’s important to say that the religious fellowships, the Catholic and Jewish, the Protestant peace churches as well, did not retreat. What happened most to churches and congregations sincerely opposed to the war to begin with is what happened to representatives and senators who swore they’d never back down. The sight of a yellow ribbon unnerved them. They fell before it, just as tyrants and Satans had once fallen before the cross placed before their terrified eyes.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, hundreds of meetings, vigils, sit-ins, teach-ins were occurring. By early March 1991, over 3,500 actions had taken place and over 4,000 arrests had been made. In our valley (between New Hampshire and Vermont) perhaps a dozen small towns held regular vigils. A newspaper advertisement was signed by 1,100 people. Who were they? The women and men who drove in and out of dirt roads were probably 1960s folks, now forty or so, with kids—or not—also Vietnam vets. But the signers were often old budget enemies from town meetings, people seen only at the dump or recycling center—or in church. We were amazed—What? She signed! That one! But this was before the war … Vigils continued through the weeks of the war. We are going back now to the signers. What will we find?
Full-page advertisements were taken out by SaneFreeze and the Ad Hoc Committee, which also organized teach-ins. Communications from other parts of the country tell the same story—sometimes more original. Seven or eight men and women from Oakland traveled the train system singing funny anti-Bush lyrics. They were applauded and cursed. Here are some quotes from Lucy Lippard’s report in Z of artists’ and just plain creative people’s responses to the prospects of war and to the war itself:
Our street theater piece “The Bushes Take You For A Ride” has George and Barbara in a red cardboard car running out of gas and being “serviced” by a soldier/gas pump—GI José. A hose from his red satin heart is administered by a “Plasmaco nursery” representing Petroleum Multinational. When the soldier collapses, the audience is solicited for more volunteers.
Two of Boulder’s most effective cultural groups are satirical. LISP (Ladies in Support of the President) is “an organization of patriotic God-fearing LADIES who deplore nasty war protests” and offer “George is not a Wimp” buttons. An offshoot of the local Queer Cosmos, these men in drag haunt recruitment centers and plead prissily at rallies for “all you homosexuals and commies to please go home.” A long-standing socialist feminist group (with anti-racist “Klarette” performances and a public “Sodomy Patrol” among their past credits) are polling crowds.
GRIT (Gulf Response Information Team, “a very private research group”) are sending the results to the President. Their questions begin straight, sucking people in, and end with outrageous ones, like “In order to support our troops, how many casualties from your family would be acceptable? (a) 1 (b) 2 (c) 3 or more (d) all of them.”
Small groups like GRIT, and individual artists, can be less intimidating and attract less hostility and more dialogue than massive demonstrations, which serve another purpose. For instance, playwright Art Mayers patrolled Maine’s state capitol building, in Arab headdress and gas mask dripping blood, muttering over and over, “the horror of it, the horror of it.” He was eventually arrested for “terrorizing children,” but the charges were dropped.
When I stopped at the office of the War Resisters League to pick up some flyers, they were receiving as many as ninety calls a day asking for military counseling, from reservists as well as active-duty men and women. A high-school kid who had just enlisted was speaking to Peter Jamieson, a Vietnam vet (he’s a counsellor). Michael Marsh, who has organized the work in this office, is down at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, where seven Marine COs are being court-martialed on charges of desertion. I was given a sheet of paper listing fifteen resisters. In Germany there are American soldiers at U.S. bases who are resisting deployment. A Military Counseling Network has been in place since early autumn—the American Friends Service Committee, the War Resisters League, and the Central Committee of Conscientious Objectors were major networkers.
A fine project (which, with more money, could have got under way earlier) was MADRE’s tour of Women of Courage. MADRE, whose major political work had been about Nicaragua, especially the women, their hospitals, and day-care centers, had undertaken to send about twenty women from different Middle Eastern countries on tour through the United States and Canada. While one group spoke in New England, others were in Toronto—and in California cities. Women from Iraq, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, and Israel were in the group, I heard. Each city or two visited had to add an American mother whose son or daughter was in the desert.
* * *
In going over material I’d gathered for this chapter, I found something I’d written to a friend I work and think with at the very beginning of January 1991:
Another thing I worry about: Resistance to this war is great. So—if we do go to war, it will take a lot of hardworking repression to keep that anger in check or turn it around. We better watch out for it. It will only start with the suppression of information from the front and continue by hiding our regional and town actions from one another till we think we or our villages or our families are alone.
This is exactly what happened: the pools. According to the Fund for Free Expression, of the 1,400 journalists in the Persian Gulf only 192—including technicians and photographers—were placed in press pools with combat forces. Journalists “apprehended or threatened with detention or detained include E. Schmitt and Kifner of The New York Times, Gughliotti of The Washington Post, King and Bayles of the Associated Press … These are people who did try to break free of government censors…” “A French TV crew was forced at gunpoint by U.S. marines to give up videotape it had shot of U.S. wounded in the battle to retake the Saudi town of Khafji.”
Almost overnight, once the war started, the silence began. Having lived for sixty-eight years, a surprising number of them in some political consciousness, I must report that I’ve never experi
enced the kind of repression that set in once the air war started. It was not like the McCarthy period—that is, there were no personal direct attacks on well-known people of that kind. It was as though a great damp blanket had been laid over our country with little pinholes for American flags to stick up into the public air.
Here is another paragraph from the February 27, 1991, report of the Fund for Free Expression:
There have been several instances of retaliation against journalists who have questioned the propriety of the war. After he wrote approvingly of an antiwar march, San Francisco Examiner associate editor and columnist Warren Hinckle was put on a partially paid three-month leave. “I take the position that I was censored,” Hinckle says. The editor of the Kutztown, Pennsylvania, Patriot was fired after he wrote an editorial calling for peace. Village Voice national affairs editor Dan Bischoff was canceled as a guest on the CBS news “Nightwatch” program. The Pentagon refused to provide anyone to appear on the program if the Voice was to be represented among the participants. The program’s producer recalls a Pentagon representative as objecting on the grounds that “if someone from The Village Voice is on, that raises the possibility that there will be a discussion of the merits” of the lawsuit filed by the Voice and other media organizations challenging the Pentagon press restrictions. The Public Broadcasting System postponed a rebroadcast of a Bill Moyers “Frontline” program on the Iran–Contra affair because, according to an internal PBS memo, the program’s raising of “serious questions about then–Vice President Bush’s involvement and actions” make it “journalistically inappropriate” during the war against Iraq, because “the program could be viewed as overtly political by attempting to undermine the President’s credibility.”
