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CounterPunch
March 22,
2003
The Grassroots Go Global
The Rise of
a New Anti-War Movement
By CINDY MILSTEIN
The global day of antiwar protests on February
15 was remarkable for several reasons.
First and foremost, of course, was the
fact that some 12 million people came out in over 600 cities
spanning every continent to express their outrage at a potential
preemptive strike on Iraq. So enormous and unprecedented were
these demonstrations that even the New York Times was
forced to admit, no doubt grudgingly, of "a new power in
the streets."
Then too, the face of that new power
defied categorization. There was no single agent of social change,
no all-encompassing political ideology. It was difficult to typecast
dissent based on color, age, gender, class, and so on. Those
who rallied together on that Saturday in February mirrored the
rich diversity of humanity itself.
Most noteworthy of all, though, was the
democratic impulse that reemerged on this particular day of activism.
In the reactionary months since 9-11, especially in the United
States, resistance has been marked by a clampdown of its own.
The period of a transparent politics-from-below that interlinked
a multiplicity of uprisings from the Zapatistas to Genoa in a
global movement against capitalism seemed to disappear with New
York's twin towers. Certainly, the nonhierarchical forms of organization
that defined the "anti-globalization" movement lingered
-- from consultas and spokescouncils to a do-it-yourself infrastructure
of media, medics, and legal aid -- but now only among anti-authoritarian
leftists, who had introduced such utopian notions in the first
place. In the post-September 11 culture of fear, liberal social
justice activists and orthodox Marxists alike raced away from
the grassroots practices that had become normative at the mass
direct actions of the recent past.
Yet they didn't run far. Here in the
States, progressive and Marxist-Leninist groups pushed full steam
ahead with an antiwar movement as if -- and this is pivotal --
there was not and never had been an anti-globalization movement,
particularly one structured along egalitarian lines. One could
perhaps applaud them for their willingness to take charge, relying
on the belief that, "well, somebody's got to do it."
How else could tens of thousands descend on Washington, D.C.
or New York City to hinder the present military juggernaut without
the single-minded, centralized coordination of an A.N.S.W.E.R.
(no matter how politically despicable) or a United for Peace
and Justice (no matter how politically docile)?
But that's where F15 proved them wrong.
By making use of inclusive structures
that allowed diverse individuals to collectively reclaim social
and political space, the direct action wing of the anti-globalization
movement had forged a desire for self-organization. Whether one
identified with anarchists and other libertarian radicals who
espoused these prefigurative practices was immaterial. It felt
good to shake off the alienation of everyday life and join together
with others to actively shape a better world, if only temporarily.
Moreover, such experiments in mutual aid and confederated direct
democracy seemed to point beyond themselves, toward forms of
social organization that could daily institutionalize freedom
for everyone. Even after the anti-capitalist movement's promise
seemed to be eclipsed by a draconian "war on terror"
and a top-down antiwar movement in response, the decentralist
sensibility was not forgotten.
Which brings us back to F15. New York
City was the metropolis perhaps most symbolically crucial to
the day the world said no to war. The UN Security Council meetings
in Manhattan had taken on larger-than-life proportions as a contest
of wills between nation-states. The so-called terror alert was
upped to orange, or high, with New York coincidentally named
as a prime target that weekend. And on the island watched over
by the Statue of Liberty, no matter how tarnished, NYC's police
department, with the later backing of federal courts, would not
sanction a permitted march to express political dissent. If there
was ever a time for an activist group to seize the moral high
ground and, permission or no, announce a march route, February
15 was definitely it. But United for Peace and Justice (UPJ)
meekly acquiesced to a relatively small legal rally spot.
In the void created by this failure of
nerve, the eagerness to organize from the bottom-up reappeared.
Tens of thousands of people were emboldened by the participatory
praxis of the seemingly bygone anti-capitalist movement. They
formed themselves into varied blocs intent on feeding into one
big unpermitted march. Unfortunately, because UPJ had dragged
its heels for so long in hopes the authorities would relent,
these autonomous contingents had only a few days to attempt any
sort of federation. And such short notice certainly proved limiting.
Given a bit more time, we could have converged together from
all corners of the city and brought NYC to a near-standstill.
But as it was, in the last couple days before F15, almost hourly
a new bloc would add its name to the list (hosted, to its credit,
on the UPJ website), which eventually totaled 70 feeder marches:
from the Militant Moms Bloc, Housing and Green Space Feeder,
and the NYC People of Color Contingent, to the Educators Feeder,
Queer Anti-War Contingent, and Doctors, Nurses, and Health Care
Workers March. And these feeders did shutdown dozens of streets
for hours on F15, opening up space for everything from free expression
to work stoppages.
Two such moments leap out. When demonstrators
brought stretches of Third Avenue to a halt, a U.S. Postal Service
truck (along with other vehicles) found itself unable to go any
farther. The driver got out and stood back as people clambered
to his van's roof for an impromptu dance. Rather than getting
angry, however, he gladly enjoyed the performance along with
everyone else. Later, when groups of protesters stopped to warm
themselves at a chain sandwich-and-coffee shop, they found a
packed communal café instead. The "employees"
brought vats of steamy soup out, and they and the "patrons"
literally ate freely, while other people passed out antiwar literature,
pulled homemade lunches from their backpacks, or engaged in political
dialogue while sprawled out on the floor.
Such instances of pleasure may seem trivial
when compared to the deadly seriousness of warfare, but they
are part and parcel of what we should be fighting for. Stepping
back from the micro-level of Manhattan to the macro-level of
the world, February 15 again revealed the strength of voluntary
cooperation in league with global solidarity, perhaps on the
largest scale yet in human history. Contrary to what those bent
on directing this antiwar movement would have us believe, F15
proved that it is possible to utilize grassroots organization
and still be highly coordinated. It is also a much more powerful
form of opposition. For starters, police and governments can
easily block the actions of any one single organization, as happened
time and again with regard to UPJ's plans in New York City. It
is much more difficult to hinder the activities of thousands
of independent yet interconnected groups. More significant, though,
F15 stands as persuasive testimony to the capacity of human beings
to craft resistance of their own in concert with differentiated
others. This, in turn, offers a sliver of what freedom might
look like for us all.
It doesn't, however, mean that war against
Iraq will be averted; nor that the U.S. government's designs
at unilateralist, Christian fundamentalist control will be rethought
anytime soon. Sadly, even as I write, a full-out attack looms
likely within a week or so. And just as likely, it will only
be the first of many proactive aggressions in a quest by the
United States, but also others for global domination. The power
of F15 lay not in its ability to stop war but in its potentiality
to again make self-management the norm for contemporary political
struggles. Such a commitment to nonhierarchical social transformation
is absolutely necessary to build an antiwar movement capable
of abolishing those structural relations (such as capitalism,
statecraft, and racism) that make war possible -- an antiwar
movement that models, if only partially, notions of the good
society in the process. Nowhere is this perhaps more important
right now than in the United States, where principles such as
freedom are only trotted out by the government as the flimsiest
of covers for state terror at home and abroad.
This past fall in Washington, D.C., a
day before the World Bank/IMF protests, the police used preemptive
tactics to arrest almost five hundred people milling around a
public park near Freedom Plaza at a low-key "drumbeats against
war" circle. After some thirty-plus hours of handcuffing,
body searches, fingerprinting by the FBI, little food and less
sleep, the traffic-ticket-equivalent charge of "failure
to obey" was dropped. Despite the injustice of jailing those
deemed guilty before being proven innocent, the state's allegation
should, to its everlasting dismay, be picked up and worn as our
movement's badge of honor.
The coming New World Disorder is already
facing delegitimation by those unwilling to blindly follow orders.
Such ethical acts of defiance include librarians refusing to
tell the government who's checked out which books, soldiers resisting
the call to arms, and high school students skipping classes on
March 5 for a civic education of their own. In the hard months
ahead, principled noncompliance will likely continue to escalate,
becoming more broad-based as well as creative.
Yet this same "failure to obey"
shouldn't just be reserved for entities outside an antiwar movement,
as F15 made clear. Be it at the hands of social democratic NGOs
or party-like Marxist-Leninist groups, resistance too will not
be controlled from above. Indeed, we should deliberately expand
on the emancipatory practices of the anti-globalization movement;
we should self-consciously cultivate directly democratic and
confederated forms of organization as a basis of unity that equally
allows for diversity. A successful antiwar movement will be one
that openly disobeys self-appointed authorities -- no matter
who's issuing the commands.
Cindy Milstein
is a board member for the Institute for Anarchist Studies, a
faculty member at the Institute for Social Ecology, and a member
of the Free Society Collective in Vermont. A writer for various
anti-authoritarian periodicals, her recent essays are available
in the online library at www.social-ecology.org/learn/library/.
(March 2003) She can be reached at: cbmilstein@yahoo.com
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