tool name

Saturday, Dec. 08, 2007

Local peace movement is just that: Local and small

Even before the war in Iraq began, a small group of peace demonstrators began gathering every Friday afternoon on M Street. These days, the group draws more peace signs than middle fingers.

But that wasn't always the case.

"It took a lot more courage to come out here in the beginning," says retired educator Tom Grave, carrying a sign that reads, "No war. No empire. No occupation."

"Things have changed a lot out here," adds another demonstrator, 57-year-old Kyle Stockard.

As America prepared for war in late 2002 and early 2003, Grave, Stockard and dozens of other Mercedians took to the street to denounce plans for war. About a dozen of them still show up at the corner of M and 22nd streets every Friday afternoon with signs ("War Is Not the Answer") and American flags.

From that corner, they say they've witnessed a gradual popular shift toward disillusionment with the Iraq war. In the weeks after the war began, people used to gather across the street to counter-protest. That doesn't happen anymore.

Now the demonstrators are met mostly by honks and peace signs -- even money. A few months ago, a man passing by stopped and handed Grave $100. He told the group he felt badly that he never joined them. They used the money to buy new signs.

"I guess we'll have to find something else to protest," Grave joked on a recent Friday. "We're getting too mainstream."

What a difference a generation makes.

In Merced, the peace movement is undoubtedly small. But it is here, and it has emerged much as it has across America: alive but far less visible than during the Vietnam era, far more diversified in its approach and, recently, more and more aligned with the opinions of most Americans.

"The number of people who think we should be moving out of Iraq is significant," said David Walls, an emeritus professor of sociology at Sonoma State University who has studied social movements for four decades. "The (public) concern is definitely there. And the energy is there. But it's manifesting itself very differently."

Massive anti-war protests in Vietnam era

The movement against the Vietnam War gained national prominence in 1965, six years after U.S. involvement in the war began. In October 1967 more than 100,000 people -- about 600 of them were subsequently arrested -- gathered for the March on the Pentagon.

By 1969, the anti-war movement had gained enough strength to stage the biggest peace demonstration in the nation's history. An estimated 300,000 protesters jammed Pennsylvania Avenue and poured onto the National Mall in October of that year. In May 1970, five years before the last American troops left Vietnam, National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University in Ohio and two students at Jackson State University during protests of the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

In Merced, however, the tone was far more subdued. Though plenty of people here opposed the war, most traveled to larger cities, such as Fresno and San Francisco, to voice those objections by joining larger demonstrations.

"There was really very little here," recalled Merced City Councilman Jim Sanders, 60. He was a senior at Merced High School in 1965 when a group of his classmates staged an anti-war walkout. "I think we set one trash can on fire. The police didn't even show up," said Sanders. "That's all I really recall ... The anti-war feelings were definitely here, but most people protested out of town."

Though several large anti-war demonstrations have been staged in the U.S. over the last five years, none has paralleled the scale of the national movement that raged in the years before the American withdrawal from Vietnam. But that doesn't mean people now are apathetic, experts say.

Today's protests smaller, more localized

Instead, Walls suggests, the massive demonstrations that defined the Vietnam anti-war movement have been replaced this decade by smaller, local efforts aimed at pressuring individual congressional leaders to withdraw troops and war funding. "I think there's the sense that the demonstrations aren't having an effect on the Bush White House," said Walls. "He doesn't consider the people marching to be a part of his constituency anyway. People have realized that, and it's reflected in the ways their tactics have changed."

Now, Walls says, local demonstrations, such as the weekly M Street gatherings, are preferred. Letters to local newspapers and congressional leaders have become more common, as have informational campaigns. Internet organizing has also emerged as an important tactic of the new movement.

And as the 2008 congressional and presidential elections grow closer, efforts to ensure the success of Democrats and "peace" candidates -- such as fundraising, donating time and money and working to increase turnout among certain voter groups -- will become the most important form of protest.

By mid-2005, more than half of Americans said they believed the fight in Iraq had made them less safe, according to a Washinton Post-ABC News poll.

More recent polls say as many as two-thirds of Americans think the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq.

The shift is visible at the corner of M and 22nd. "We get a lot fewer middle fingers now," says Grave.

Most Fridays, between 10 and 20 people turn out to demonstrate. Sometimes they draw as many as 40, other times as few as three or four. Unless it's raining, they stay an hour, beginning at 4:30 p.m.

On a few occasions they've walked letters and petitions to Rep. Dennis Cardoza's office down the street.

Who's in today's peace movement?

Most people there are middle-aged. A few are in their 80s and 90s, including one man who sat in a lawn chair one recent Friday holding a sign that read, "Good soldier, bad war." Sometimes a few college students show up.

"My schedule gets pretty busy, but I come as often as I can," said Kenneth Mackie, 52, a local attorney. "In my opinion, this war is one huge international war crime. We went into it on pretext, and the secondary concern now is that we're hearing the same drum beat that we did before all this started, only now it's for Iran."

A similar group gathers in Mariposa every Wednesday.

Ask Byerly Woodward if she thinks the demonstrations make a difference, and she says she's not sure. "It makes me feel a little better to come here, because at least I'm doing something," said the 64-year-old. "That's why I come, and I'll keep coming until I die, or until the war ends."

She says she also writes letters to editors at local newspapers expressing opposition to the war. "I protest when I can and I try to influence my congressman, but that's not all that easy."

Among the most apparent differences between this anti-war movement and the Vietnam era, experts agree, is activism -- or the lack of it -- on college campuses. At local schools, things have been markedly quiet, and many who attend the M Street demonstration say that's disappointing.

Simon Weffer, a UC Merced professor who studies social movements, attributes the quiet there to both the age of the campus -- it's only in its third academic year -- and to the lack of an active military draft.

"The stakes to young people on college campuses are so low right now," Weffer said. "For the most part, the people truly leading the anti-war movement are people who think they'll be affected by it."

UC Merced hardly a radical hotbed

Patrick Benjamin, a 25-year-old senior at UC Merced, described the anti-war movement at the campus as "small but here." Benjamin helped organize the university's first student protest last October, calling for American troop withdrawal from Iraq. About 35 people came, but only a handful of them were actually UC Merced students.

At the time, Benjamin said he hoped to see UC Merced become as politically active as its sister campus in Berkeley. So far, that hasn't happened. There haven't been any more protests on campus, but Benjamin said students have participated in off-campus demonstrations, including protests that drew tens of thousands across the country on Oct. 27. "A few students went to San Francisco for it," he said. "I went to the one in Los Angeles. I think students should be speaking out. If we don't, nothing's going to change."

UC Merced's Amnesty International chapter has held a few anti-war events, Benjamin said, including screenings of documentaries with anti-war themes.

At Merced College, things aren't much livelier. Students For Social Justice, a group of about 20 students, recently began twice-monthly documentary screenings, though the group's focus -- and the movies -- extend beyond ending the war in Iraq.

"The students work on a variety of social justice issues," said Keith Law, a Merced College instructor who helped launch the group. "We're still trying to get off the ground ... It's hard to keep it going here because students pass through so quickly, because we're only a two-year institution."

Jason Flores, a 25-year-old Merced resident, has organized a few bus trips from Merced to Bay Area anti-war events. "There's not a lot going on, and what is going on seems to be concentrated among older people," said Flores, who attends CSU Stanislaus. "It would be nice to see more young people doing things."

Six people from Merced rode with Flores on the most recent trip he organized to San Francisco. They picked up about 20 more in Turlock and Modesto.

Most Mercedians who consider themselves active in the peace movement will readily admit their numbers are small. But they also know that the end they're asking for is one many more hope to see.

Those who show up at the corner of M and 22nd on Friday afternoons -- week in and week out -- are proud they've taken a stand for peace.

They wouldn't go so far as the Roman statesman Cicero, who declared that an unjust peace is better than a just war.

No. All they are saying, as John Lennon sang, is give peace a chance.

Reporter Corinne Reilly can be reached at 209-385-2477 orcreilly@mercedsun-star.com.

What do you think about the war?

Your thoughts and views mean and matter a lot to us at the Sun-Star. We ask you to share what you think and feel about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with us -- and the entire community. Post your comments to Sunspot via the Sun-Star Web site:www.mercedsunstar.com/thewarcomestomerced

Merced residents gather each Friday at Courthouse Park to protest the war in Iraq. This video was taken in November 2006.