Monthly Archive for May, 2003

A committee of Charlottesville citizens has saved the Charlottesville Independence Day celebration for the second time in the past few years. After concern was raised last week over the lack of a celebration, Tom Powell, real estate agent Ray Caddell, and WINA’s Dann Miller, among others, have formed the Save the Fireworks committee, and they’re making big promises: “This is far in excess of any fireworks show that’s ever been in Charlottesville. It’ll be bigger, badder, more outrageous. We’re going to spend at least 50 percent more than the biggest show that’s ever been here.” They’re even figuring out a plan to make sure that the fireworks happen every year from here on out, and end the annual scramble that has became standard in the past few years. Elizabeth Nelson has the story in today’s Progress.

This January, as passions mounted with the build-up to the Iraq war, the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice marked its 20th anniversary with an unprecedented groundswell of support. But now that the war is winding down, CCPJ’s ranks are thinning again. What’s next for those committed to the movement? And is anybody listening anymore?

By Brian Wimer
bhappi@earthlink.net

This January, as passions mounted with the build-up to the Iraq war, the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice marked its 20th anniversary with an unprecedented groundswell of support. But now that the war is winding down, CCPJ’s ranks are thinning again. What’s next for those committed to the movement? And is anybody listening anymore?

“Buy you and your ten grungy friends a plane ticket to Iraq,” begins the anonymous letter in twenty-point font. “Take a shower, cut your filthy hair, and do something that matters, instead of sitting around banging on your bongos, doing bong hits, rallying against a war that’s come and gone.” The letter is folded and filed. Another challenge for the ranks of the Charlottesville Center of Peace and Justice.

Indeed, Saddam has fallen, and the free world is “safe” again. So what’s with these diehard activists, who still show up dutifully, though in dwindling numbers, outside the Federal building on Ridge-McIntire every Thursday, taking the insults right along with the approving honks? And who do they think they are?

Some call them traitors, cowards or “useful fools,” for giving comfort to the enemy. Some call them hippies, although they’re not. They’re not communists, either. And, contrary to conspiracy theories, CCPJ hasn’t been infiltrated by Iraqi agents or FBI instigators.

They’re Quakers, Jews, pacifists and priests, as well as professors and parents, journalists, students, teachers, and anybody committed to their cause. “CCPJ provides a way for those in our community who care about peace and justice to join with kindred spirits,” says CCPJ steering committee chair Bill Anderson. “If our world is to survive, the individuals in it must come to some realization that they can and do make a difference … Just as the seeds of war and violence can spread misery around the world, peace and justice can also come from each of us.”

For bringing thousands of pro-peace signatures to City Council to justify a municipal resolution in support of continued weapons inspections – to co-hosting a lecture by rabble-rousing, anti-Bush C-VILLE columnist Ted Rall – to populating city lawns with peace signs, you may thank or curse CCPJ.

Twenty years ago, CCPJ began as the Interfaith Peace Coalition, promoting nuclear disarmament. One of IPC’s coups was hosting a talk by Vitaly Churkin, from the Soviet embassy in Washington. Later, with an office in the Prism coffeehouse, the group renamed as the Charlottesville Peace Center. Operating on limited donations, the CPC held rallies, talks and asked the City Council to declare Charlottesville a nuclear-free zone.

Their efforts have been largely dictated by the political tones of the times, addressing issues local and global. CCPJ has held candlelight vigils with Virginians Against the Death Penalty and supported the living wage campaign with the Virginia Organizing Project. They co-hosted rice and bean supper fundraisers for Pastors for Peace in Cuba and held talks with a Colombian Witness For Peace – disseminating reports of decapitated union organizers’ heads being used as soccer balls by Coca-Cola-funded paramilitaries, and other items you don’t hear on the Channel 29 News.

Over the years, the Center has had its share of detractors. Anderson identifies them as “People who are themselves misinformed, who do not understand that peace making is everyone’s responsibility … the very thing that makes democracy stronger, and the world safer.”

CCPJ member and UVA Victorian Literature Professor Herbert Tucker finds opposition all around: “On the right, reactionaries who confuse patriotism with apologetics for the ruling order and defense of the status quo; on the left, radicals who demand solutions at once to problems it will take generations to solve.”

But they also have won many hearts, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places. Local Army Recruiting Station Commander, Staff Sergeant Tom Hamilton has great respect for CCPJ, despite their recent presentations at local high schools about students’ Selective Service conscientious-objector options. “Organizations on the other side of the fence, I think it’s great they’re there. It kind of puts things in check and balance. Without any of them, you have one side running the fence. That’s dictatorship.”

Even Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo seems grateful to have CCPJ coordinating demonstrations. “When we look (at what happened) around the country, we had a relatively peaceful, conscientious group here.” We are all participants in democracy, says Longo. “I believe that it’s the responsibility of every American to assure a sense of peace and justice and to carry that out in a way that’s peaceful an doesn’t jeopardize public safety or property rights.”

Congressman Virgil Goode, on the other hand, credits our liberties to the muscle of our massive military. While effusive in praise for troops, he has little to say about CCPJ. “Organizations like CCPJ and anti-war rallies have freedoms and constitutional protections in this nation, unlike in Iraq,” Goode says. Ironically, on April 25th, a Charlottesville judge ruled that protestors, who had been charged with trespassing in Goode’s office on the day war broke out, had no right to read statements during the trial.

Chief Longo admits that his officers, too, were displeased with what CCPJ was promoting. “We are a paramilitary organization,” Longo says. “Our officers served in foreign conflicts. When you give that much of yourself, you may be upset when others are not in agreement with what you were fighting for.”

Now that the war is over (except for the shooting), both sides are taking a breath of relief – if only to prepare for the battles to come.

“The war is nowhere near over … The real war is just beginning,” says Charlottesville City Councilman Blake Caravati. “We’ll be fighting this war and its aftermath for decades.”

He elaborates: “For me, clearly President Bush has spoken to the country with a high level of moral seriousness. He has prosecuted this military incursion with great professionalism and success. For that he is to be complimented. But logical consistency and intellectual honesty are better tests of moral seriousness and purpose. It is not enough in our country for the words to be eloquent or even sincere. If, they are just crafted for the moment at hand and have not been thought through, the pretense of moral seriousness becomes an insult to all citizens. History will tell the true story but at this moment the combination of a failed diplomatic effort, misdirected reasoning for the incursion, and a disjointed plan for the future of Iraq sets us up for very bad kharma in the future at home and abroad.”

Councilman Lynch agrees, questioning Bush’s potentially premature declarations of “Victory.” In this, he sees a new role for CCPJ. “There’s a lot more to do now then there was before the war. Before the war, pundits of either stripe were fond of saying that the war would be the easy part. The hard part would be building the peace. Strangely, we don’t hear too much about that these days, as the President’s attention lurches towards domestic matters … the unfinished business of looting whatever pension funds are still solvent, cutting the safety net, lowering taxes on the inherited money set, and enriching criminally negligent CEOs. So we need the peace activists to remind the country that the point of this adventure was long term peace in the middle east, as opposed to say, dollar-twenty a gallon gasoline.”

No, the debate is not over for some. Lynch adds, “I would encourage anyone who still thinks the Iraq war was about WMD, to check out www.newamericancentury.org and then think long and hard about whether it was a good idea to entrust American blood and treasure to this crew.”

CCPJ is doing just that and more, already ramping up for their next campaign. “Anti-Bush, 24/7,” says CCPJ member Ben Walter. A change in agenda? Not really. More of a change in focus. Whereas political apathy had shrunk CCPJ’s membership to a handful during the 90’s, a newfound civic activism has almost quadrupled their numbers, broadening their outreach to over 900 newsletter subscribers – much of it due to the events following 9/11: mass arrests, military tribunals, public surveillance, Administration secrecy and now the creeping doctrine of pre-emptive war. “George Bush scares the bejezus out of me,” says member Frank Jannisson.

During their May 4th meeting, they discussed thwarting the USA PATRIOT Act, which was passed in 2001 as part of the Bush administration’s “War on Terrorism.” According it CCPJ, it violates civil rights, by giving sweeping new powers to both domestic law enforcement and international intelligence agencies, changing 15 different longstanding legal statutes, loosening restrictions on wiretaps, search warrants, pen/trap orders and subpoenas.

Among the more controversial passages of this 342 page document is Section 215, which expands the FBI’s power to spy on American citizens. The ACLU summarizes it by saying, “Without a warrant and without showing probable cause … the FBI could spy on a person because they don’t like the books she reads, or because they don’t like the web sites she visits. They could spy on her because she wrote a letter to the editor that criticized government policy.” That would include just about all of CCPJ’s members.

Reportedly in the works is Patriot Act II – the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, which allegedly terminates state law enforcement consent decrees, creates DNA databases and prohibits disclosure of detainees being interrogated on charges of terrorism.

CCPJ’s Bob Hoffman has already spoken with the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library regarding Patriot Act regulations. The new federal mandate requires libraries to give borrowing records to authorities without notifying patrons. Hoffman advised the library to educate patrons with signs at the lending desk.

Again, CCPJ will also be taking it to top by taking it the streets. Questioning the Patriot Act will be another challenge for the City Council, potentially to be addressed across party lines. Both liberals and libertarians have a high regard for civil liberties. Although it’s debatable whether the City Council has jurisdiction on federal legislation, you might expect a resolution to be at least contemplated by local politicos.

“To question is our duty. It’s the American thing to do,” says Caravati, who defends people’s right to voice their condemnation of the Bush administration’s “dismal diplomatic failure.” He quotes Teddy Roosevelt, who wrote during the first World War, “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Mayor Maurice Cox seems to agree. “You can’t underestimate the benefit of having groups that mobilize citizens to influence their legislators,” says Cox, with regard to CCPJ’s mobilization of the city’s anti-unilateral-war resolution. “The supporters of our resolution and the millions of others who supported like resolutions sent an overwhelming message that Americans have a responsibility to question our government.”

Former State Delegate Reverend Peter Way, who spoke at a pro-troops rally in the thick of war, has a somewhat different assessment: “The City Council of Charlottesville are pigs,” he says. “They’ll do anything to promote liberalism.”

But what CCPJ seems to be pushing for, despite the time, the place or the subject matter, is public debate – something local Republicans, with a minority in the City Council, have been demanding, as well. They both, on some level, want a forum in which to be heard. And they aren’t alone.

You don’t have to be a party member or a protestor to want to affect politics. You can just be a patriot. Staff Sergeant Hamilton, who dutifully recruits 4 to 8 young men and women every month to protect our nation and its values, says that town hall meetings and the resolutions that result are what makes him glad to live in Charlottesville. “That’s part of a democracy … The local city government was trying to give their points of view to their congressmen and representatives from the city of Charlottesville. That’s the right way to do it, in my mind. If each town would do that … then it might help them form a better solution to represent the people of Virginia.”

Speaking of representation, let’s not forget what’s coming up in 2004. CCPJ may have lost the war, but there’s another political battle on the horizon, as battalions of baby-kissing candidates fan across the country and county, drumming up votes.

“I hope that the new peace activists will be more constructively engaged in electoral politics,” says Lynch. “Like it or not, the American electoral system encourages a two party system. The activists of the right realize this and they have been hard at work for years to infuse a program of trickle-down economics and moral Puritanism into the Republican party. Too many activists on the left would rather talk to each other – and vote only for “ideologically pure” candidates – rather than working to get their ideas into the mainstream of the Democratic party. We need to work together if we dont want American policy in the hands of a bunch of Troglodytes.

“It scares me that people like that have those feelings,” says Revered Way. Sergeant Hamilton offers a more inclusive observation, “It takes all kinds to make the world go around.”

SIDEBAR 1
CCPJ perceives peace, creativity and culture as going hand in hand with a good deal of introspection. Their means of protest and proactive discord have not been limited to banners and bullhorns.

Local music teacher, CCPJ member Betty Gross, will soon be seen on the Downtown Mall playing her viola, singing America the Beautiful and The Star Spangled Banner to call attention to the injustices against people of Middle Eastern origin, perpetrated in the name of “Homeland Security.”

In March, to coincide with 998 readings in 59 countries and all 50 states, CCPJ co-sponsored a reading of Aristophanes’ anti-war Greek comedy Lysistrata in which Athenian and Laconian women end the Peloponnesian War by withholding sex from their hawkish husbands.

For its annual commemoration of Hiroshima/Nagasaki Day, CCPJ taught children to fold paper cranes on the Downtown Mall, while reading the story of Sadako, a Hiroshima girl who died of leukemia. Japanese legend says if you make one thousand paper cranes you’ll be blessed with good fortune. Sadako made 600 before she died. Her friends completed the rest. Every day, Japanese children leave piles of paper cranes at Sadako’s monument.

Now, CCPJ has added a 9/11 Commemoration to their yearly roster. Hiroshima and 9/11, a controversial juxtaposition, to say the least. Well, CCPJ promotes peace by provoking thought.

SIDEBAR 2
“I can’t stand whining,” says Army Staff Sergeant Hamilton. “What’s your solution? Solve the problem.”

In terms of “liberation,” dictators have been toppled a myriad of ways. Marcos was exiled by popular uprising. Somoza was ousted by revolution, as was the Shah of Iran. Portugal’s fascist Salazar-Caetano regime was deposed in a bloodless coup. Pinochet stepped down. Franco died. Apartheid was whittled away by divestment, global disapproval and song.

In terms of terrorism, it has been argued that the global threat can only be fought legitimately by a cooperative, universal coalition. Councilman Caravati sees America’s current xenophobia doing great damage to any such possibility – as does its disrespect of international conventions and treaties. Respect for international law and human rights obligations are antithetical to terrorism.

Poverty plays a role, too. In a recent UN wire report, South African President Thabo Mbeki claims that millions “co-existing side-by-side with islands of enormous wealth and prosperity … necessarily breeds a deep sense of injustice, social alienation, despair and a willingness to sacrifice their lives among those who feel they have nothing to loose and everything to gain.” One solution: Japan recently pledged $50 million to the UN “Guns to Plows” demobilization initiative in Afghanistan.

CCPJ’s Helena Cobban, a writer for the Christian Science Monitor and member of the prestigious, London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, spent several years in war-torn Lebanon. She sees parallels between the violence she experienced then and the wars being perpetrated today. An avowed pacifist, Cobban says any effective solution starts with asking two questions:

“1. How can we work to have our country build the capabilities for serious, effective, nonviolent responses to the crises it might face in the future?”

“2. How can we continue to explore and share information about the facts of Americans’ interdependence with the peoples of the rest of the world–even in a public climate that is increasingly triumphalist, and in a way that is respectful of and sensitive to the feelings of our neighbors, friends and legislators?”

War is quick. Answers take time, as do peaceful solutions. If CCPJ keeps it up for another 20 years, maybe they’ll find the peace and justice they’re working for.

SIDEBAR 3
“You don’t have any right to speak when it’s not relevant.” So said Judge William Barkley at Charlottesville’s City Court the morning of April 25th. Nine individuals were arraigned on charges of trespassing at Rep. Virgil Goode’s office last March, the day the US began bombing Baghdad.

“For many months I expressed my opposition to a war against Iraq…” began defendant Michele Mattioli. “Objection … irrelevant,” interrupted the prosecution. “Sustained … I’m not going to hear why she did this,” repeated Judge Barkley.

Defendant Tim S up­ler attempted to quote a 1946 declaration of the Nuremberg Tribunal, headed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, that individuals have “duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state.” S up­ler’s statement defines this as a “duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

Which crimes? Last November, 315 prominent American law professors signed a statement condemning a US war against Iraq as “an unlawful act, in defiance of America’s treaty obligations, and a violation of US and international law.”

The judge says, “Irrelevant.” So, what is relevant, now that the war is over? It is over, isn’t it?