The War Resisters League recently conducted a Listening Process, asking 90 grassroots organizers from across the county to reflect on the state of antiwar organizing in the United States. The spring/summer issue of WIN was a special issue featuring their reflections and insights. Readers reacted via mail, email and on weblogs. Here’s what some of you said.
The missing link
I’ve been going through the current issue of WIN, assessing your assessment, so to speak, of antiwar/peace organizing and activism. In an issue devoted to thinking about ways to broaden and diversify the antiwar movement, the most obvious and essential potential ally is all but totally overlooked: Christian churches.
In the entire issue, only one person (Becca Rast of Lancaster SDS) spoke of her own church connection. She went on to say, “Religion has become taboo to many groups, when really it’s an important space to work in because they already have a supportive community that all know each other....” Leave it to a high-school student, I guess, to hit the nail on the head.
There is a small, small handful of passing references elsewhere in the issue. The most interesting reference, I thought, was the one made by Rami El-Amine of CJA. He cited Latin American (Roman Catholic) liberation theology and the role of (mostly Protestant) Black churches in the civil rights movement, and suggested that Islam might have a parallel role in Middle East liberation movements.
The introduction to this section [“How do we build a more multiracial and cross-class antiwar movement?”] notes that “Some interviewees discussed organizing challenges and opportunities specific to certain demographics like Arabs and Muslims, Latino immigrants, rural working-class whites, and African-Americans.” How in the name of, well, reason, does the next sentence not include the words “mosques, Catholic churches, evangelical churches, Pentecostal churches, Methodist churches, Baptist churches”?!
Obviously it would be something of a stretch for WRL and its secular-pacifist allies as they now exist to reach out to Christian progressives and pacifists. We speak a different language and see a different basis for pacifism and social-justice work. We speak and think in terms of the teaching of Jesus and discipleship. We are likely to maintain that the foundations of persistent war, violence, and injustice are not organizational, informational, political, or theoretical, but spiritual. Yet several of the people interviewed for WIN talked about the need to respect and make space for just this kind of linguistic and conceptual difference in forging alliances. Why not apply that to churches?
David Rensberger
Decatur, Georgia
Listening
The War Resisters League has just released a thoughtful report on the state of the antiwar movement after a “Listening Process” of interviewing 90 organizers across the country.
The primary question they want to answer is, why is the antiwar movement currently so anemic and apparently powerless, especially considering that most of the populace opposes the war?
They conclude, as I have, that the antiwar movement too often marginalizes itself, either through believing it is still a voice crying in the wilderness or through trying to out-Left each other and thus alienating the middle they claim to want to attract.
The country is moving to the Left. Sharply. The antiwar movement needs to move towards this and most important, listen to what people in the center are saying. Because you can’t have a mass movement until people in the political center are part of it. This also means many Left groups will need to resolve their conflicting motives. Are they organizing to end the war or using the antiwar movement primarily as a way to recruit for their group? The latter approach is self-defeating because the center will never want to be part of a hard Left group, and by only appealing to the hard Left, such groups limit their reach and influence.
The election of Obama, whether he’s liberal or not, presents an opportunity to the Left, as expectations for change will be huge. We need to be more optimistic and to genuinely reach to the center and listen to what they are saying.
Bob Morris
San Francisco Bay Area
Politics in the Zeros blog
Why do we have war instead of peace?
It’s a big question, I know, but I’m inspired to ask big questions by the recent release of a War Resister’s League report, “Where to from here?” which attempts to asses the state of the peace movement based on interviews with 90 peace and justice organizers.
Why do we have war instead of peace? Because making war is the job of very many people and making peace is the job of very few people. The U.S. has about 1.5 million active-duty military personnel, and another 2.2 million are employed in manufacturing the equipment and weapons needed to fight wars. And, of course, those weapons manufacturers employ thousands of lobbyists to represent their interests. On the peace side of the scale, add up all the half-time and even quarter-time jobs in all the peace organizations in the country, and you’d get... a thousand people, perhaps? United for Peace and Justice, the nation’s largest peace coalition, employs about a half-dozen people on staff.
The fundamental source of this imbalance is that the benefits of war-making are direct and easy to identify, while the benefits of peace are diffused among the entire population. The company that makes billions selling helicopter gunships is highly motivated to allocate a few percent of that income to a crew of lobbyists to ensure the contracts keep coming, while the parent whose child isn’t killed in the war that doesn’t happen never thinks to write a check to a peace movement that prevented the war from happening (assuming for the sake of argument that a peace movement could actually prevent a war from happening).
Must it be always this way? If our society was capable of a rational allocation of resources, certainly not. The Iraq war has been estimated to cost our country at least three trillion dollars before it ends. Could a million paid peace organizers, placed in a million communities in our country, have organized enough opposition to defeat the congressional vote that sent us into that war? If we paid those million peace organizers a million dollars each for their work, we’d still have saved $2 trillion. That’s a bargain, by anyone’s standard.
I have a different idea. It’s a crazy idea, but I ask you to hear me out. Read the rest at: http://wisconsinpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com/2008/08/steve-burns-why-do-we-have-war-instead.html
Steve Burns
Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, Madison, WI
Ralph DiGia: ¡Presente!
In our last issue, we published a tribute to our dear late colleague Ralph DiGia (1914-2008), WWII conscientious objector, lifelong radical pacifist, and staff member of the WRL National Office for more than 50 years. Ralph’s many friends had so many wonderful memories to add that we’re including a sample of their comments below.
[Ralph] was a wonderful character. I think his last War Resisters’ International meeting was the Council in Steinkimmen in 1999, and I remember first meeting [him] at my very first Triennial, back in 1972 (before most of you were born!). He was one of those people who make you think—what a fantastic network the WRI is that you can meet people like that.
[He was] full of life, able to see the humor in situations, and—like Gandhi—he understood the importance of keeping good financial records!
Howard Clark
Chair, War Resisters’ International
Ralph is one of the first persons I knew in the nonviolence movements, and he has always been an inspiration to me.
Way back about 1943 or 1944, my first husband and I had moved to Washington. Somehow we got connected to a group (probably mostly WRL folks) who were planning an “End the War Now” demonstration at the Capitol on the anniversary date of the U.S. entry into World War I (April 6, I think it was). People in Washington were quite upset about the plan; Dorothy Detzer, the Washington representative of WILPF, said it would “ruin” all her hard work with congressional representatives and senators. But [pacifist and labor organizer] A.J. [Muste], Ralph, I think [WWII CO] Dave Dellinger, and others decided to go ahead anyway. …. (Of course, at that time it was illegal to demonstrate at the Capitol, so we were all prepared to go to jail.) … That is my first memory of Ralph. … I will never forget Ralph. He was the person who called to tell me I was getting the Peace Award in 1971 … and for me, he was the personification of WRL.
Marjorie Swann Edwin
Santa Cruz, CA
My heart is heavy [at] the news of the passing of Ralph DiGia, a light of peace, justice and nonviolence, a war resister to WWII, jailed then and many times later for his principles … counselor and supporter of youth who sought to live by the principles of justice, freedom, and equality; a light of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War resistance; [and a] man with the big heart and irresistible smile. …
Today in New York, we are visited by the rain tears of the lovers and the angels and the crying wind of their sighs. Muzaffer Effendi would say that when a friend of Allah passes from this world the angels and lovers shed tears, and the clouds and the earth weep and moan.
Shaikha Fariha
Al Farah Mosque, New York, NY
I first met [Ralph] when I literally stumbled across him in the middle of a march. This must have been spring 2002, as tens of thousands filed off the mall and down Constitution Avenue (I think). …. I’m walking along, and I see this guy who, though we’d never met, I immediately recognized. I’d seen photos. I knew about the shock of hair, the stoop, the distinctive stature of this guy who had the guts to be a CO during WWII. In the middle of this crush of humanity, he was handing out those day-glo WRL diamond-shaped tags.
I stopped to talk to him, and … [w]hen it came up that my new job was at the College of Staten Island, he looked up at me, a little pity in his eyes, and shook his head as he said “Tough borough. Tough, tough borough.”… But then he smiled and patted me on the back. And even though he didn’t know me, he said—and I remember this distinctly—”Well, all the better that you’re the one out there teaching them. Maybe they’ll really learn something.” Boy, did I feel great.
He was a giant. [T]he historian in me feels like WRL might want to take the lead in getting a street named for him or something. I mean if Joey Ramone can get one, Ralph DiGia sure as hell should have one.
Michael S. Foley
Witness Against Torture
Staten Island, New York
We at the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, Massachusetts, feel a deep sense of sadness over the passing of our dear friend, mentor, and comrade, Ralph DiGia. Like so many others, we just loved Ralph and will truly miss him. As a conscientious objector during the Vietnam era, he was for me in many ways a mentor, a model of personal integrity, humility, and commitment, an example of what we are all capable of, if only we are willing to give our all to that which we hold dear.
To Ralph, of course, it meant standing up and saying no over a lifetime to that which is destructive and evil, and yes to that which affirms and blesses. Ralph might have objected to my use of the term “blessed” but that is how I feel having known him: blessed.
I well remember Ralph’s final words when leaving the Peace Abbey in 1995 having received the Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award with Howard Zinn: With a twinkle in his eye, bent over from decades of nonstop work against war, and with a nod of disapproval in his voice, he responded to my affectionate parting words, “God bless you, Ralph,” with “Watch your language!”
Lewis M. Randa, Director
The Peace Abbey, Sherborn, MA
Ralph practiced nonviolence in all his public and private relations. His passing creates a huge hole in the movement. We were fortunate to have him as a house guest when the authors of A Few Small Candles had a reunion here at the time the book was published. Along with the other authors Ralph spoke briefly at a symposium hosted by [Wilmington] College, which was taped by C-SPAN and broadcast on Book TV. That tape is now available on DVD from C-SPAN Archives under the title A Few Small Candles.
… When I took him out to show him some of my favorite birding spots, when we returned he realized he had lost his glasses. Over his protest I insisted we retrace our steps and quickly found the glasses on a trail we had visited. His reaction was “Larry, you placed them there.” Typical Ralph, one of the most lovable of our movement giants—if not the most lovable.
Larry Gara
Wilmington, Ohio
Editor, A Few Small Candles
I look[ed] through my digital photo file to find Ralph on his last demonstration and found so many photos of times past: …almost painful photos showing a group of folks on [former WRL staff member] Karl Bissinger’s roof, all but Karl now gone. We are ephemeral, present for the moment and then stashed in a drawer or a digital file—negatives, prints, memories. And there is Ralph … from January 26, 2007, in Washington, D.C. Ralph had wanted to go to this UFPJ demonstration in Washington, sensing it might be his last, and would I go with him? Of course.
We took the train down, found the rally point and marched—very slowly, Ralph’s back bent almost double with age—the full length of the march on that bright day, not as cold as January was supposed to be. … At the end of the day, as we headed for Union Station, I was tired because I had to walk so slowly, keeping pace with Ralph’s slower 90 years. What an honor to walk those miles with Ralph, and how many of us would have kept the faith at that age?
David McReynolds
40-year WRL Staff Member
New York, New York
It was like a double whammy losing Ralph on February 1. That’s early in tax season and just when [war tax resister] Ed Hedemann and I were working on the “Where Your Income Taxes Really Go” flyer. It’s also just when baseball season is starting up. Players are heading to spring training and tickets are on sale. Normally, Ralph and I would have been talking about how many pie charts to print and whether we would be able to get tickets for opening day at Shea. One April day we might be handing out pie charts at the IRS office in Manhattan and the next headed to a baseball game in Queens. Ralph enjoyed every moment of each (even if the Mets were losing, he loved to be at the ballpark). Ralph took leafleting seriously and handed out thousands of pie charts over the years. His persistence was noted by an IRS security employee who made a special effort to come out and greet Ralph’s arrival each year, and they’d have a good chat before returning to their respective posts. Being with Ralph was always seriously good fun.
Ruth Benn
Former WRL Staff Member
Brooklyn, NY
