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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- Valuable links to anti-war websites in Britian, North America and elsewhere in the world are available at:<http://www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/subsection/0,12809,884056,00.html> __________ Chicago Trubune Marcg 22, 2003 <http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-0303220203mar22,1,2683025.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed> Activists use Internet to rally forces, spread word By Sean D. Hamill and Oscar Avila, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporters Celeste Garrett, David Heinzmann, Rudolph Bush, Liam Ford and Shia Kapos contributed to this report. The rapid, passionate response of well-organized protesters to the war in Iraq surprised police in Chicago and at least 54 other cities. But the rallies and marches were in the planning for months, and activist groups credited much of their ability to turn out large, committed crowds to a group called Iraq Pledge of Resistance, run through the Internet and headquartered in the Maryland basement of its lone administrator's home. Since October, pledge coordinator Gordon Clark has been using three phone lines and one computer to form a coalition of national groups behind a "peace pledge" written by an organization affiliated with the Quakers. Each of those groups then reached down to local activists in 55 cities to turn out the crowds in the rallies. "We like to say that the Iraq Pledge of Resistance is nationally coordinated but it's locally organized," Clark said. The payoff was simultaneous protests and acts of civil disobedience across the country through Friday, leading to thousands of arrests--often the goal of the demonstrators. On the day after protesters shut down Lake Shore Drive, Chicago police on Friday donned full riot gear as the start of another 5 p.m. rally approached. Police vowed to prevent another shutdown of the drive, and protesters and police agreed to a march route through the Loop. By 8:30 p.m., the crowd estimated at 5,000 had dispersed after only a handful of arrests. The second-day protests were smaller and tamer in other cities, as well. Hundreds of anti-war protesters took to the streets in downtown San Francisco, stopping traffic during morning and afternoon rush hours. In Washington, D.C., about 50 protesters clad in bloodied garments and carrying dismembered dolls chanted anti-war slogans just north of the White House. Police arrested 21 others who lay down in the street, blocking traffic. Many of those arrested across the nation were following through on the goal of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance. The campaign, as organizers call it, has been under way since December 2001 when the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, and the Fellowship of Coordination, an interfaith group, created the Peace Pledge. Clark volunteered to use his 20 years of activism and contacts to persuade local groups to accept non-violent civil disobedience. Clark's skill, said Peter Lems, an organizer with the AFSC, was to bring groups together from causes as disparate as eliminating nuclear weapons, helping women and ending economic sanctions in Iraq. "We didn't want people to see this as just a petition," Lems said. "We wanted it to also be a chance to get involved with a local group and do something." The effort blended grass-roots campaigning--showing up at dozens of farmers markets with pledges to sign in return for a contact number or e-mail, for example--with the use of the Internet. "I've been through Vietnam and Central American protests," said Ron Kunde, 53, a coordinator with Not in Our Name-Chicago, which helped organize rallies here with the Iraq Peace Pledge. "But we're way ahead of those engagements because we have the Internet." Organizing the coalition was an accomplishment in itself, said Joe Morton, retired professor and founder of the Peace Studies Program at Goucher College in Baltimore. "The persons who are the ones likely to be the anti-war activists are often free spirits and less likely to be subject to regiment," he said. "That's a weakness if your point is to mobilize lots of people. That's another way in which the recent actions have been rather unusual. People have formed quite effective organizations." The result, said Morton and Mitchell Hall, an expert on the anti-war movement from Central Michigan University, is the greatest resurgence in the movement since the Vietnam War. On Friday, thousands of protesters were packed shoulder to shoulder in Federal Plaza, ringed by Chicago police officers in full riot gear. Police tightly controlled the gathering from early afternoon, dissuading the spontaneous movements that led to 543 arrests the night before. Instead, protest leaders worked out a circuitous marching route from the plaza at Dearborn and Adams Streets, down Dearborn Street, along Wacker Drive and back to the plaza via Clark Street. The route was designed to pass Boeing Co. headquarters, 100 N. Riverside Plaza, which peace groups had said they would target because the company has contracts with the military. The massive crowd walked slowly and peacefully along the route, spreading across entire streets and winding more than six city blocks. Officers dressed in blue helmets and black body armor, batons drawn, walked in single file on either side of the crowd, denying entrance or exit from the group. Throughout the march and in Federal Plaza, protest leaders called on demonstrators not to provoke the police and to avoid arrest. The march was just one of many protests in Chicago on Friday, some of which did lead to arrests. Sixty-nine people were arrested, most for trespassing, while trying to block sidewalks around the Kluczynski Federal Building, 230 S. Dearborn St. "Let's give one more cheer for the people in the paddy wagons, patriots for peace!" said Dave Martin, 46, one of the organizers of the protest. "We are here today, as always, to impede the business of war!" In a contrast to the lively rallies in the Loop, about 50 persons solemnly inaugurated a memorial to military and civilian victims of the war. Under a tent next to St. James Episcopal Cathedral, 65 E. Huron St., organizers from several denominations erected three symbolic coffins for the war victims. "During a time when death is all around us, we act in a godly way when we celebrate the lives of the innocent," said Rabbi Rebecca Lillian. As Friday's protests were unfolding, hundreds arrested Thursday were getting out of jail. Cheers greeted each of the protesters Friday as they walked out of Grand-Central Area police headquarters at 5555 W. Grand Ave., where the women from the crowd had been held overnight. They came out one by one, their hair matted, their shoes flopping without shoelaces, which are prohibited in jail. The 217 women were released without being charged or after paying a $100 fine and facing charges of misdemeanor mob action or reckless conduct. They ranged from teenagers to women in their 60s. Many were students and most held jobs, from receptionists to social workers to refinishing technicians. For Chandra Clar, a 32-year-old North Side receptionist, it was her first protest and first arrest. "I don't feel like voting makes much of a difference but I still felt I had to do something," she said. Katrina Rawls, a 23-year-old Columbia College student from Chicago, said she would think twice before protesting again. She said police arrested her and some friends as they tried to leave Thursday night's demonstration. She was released Friday without being charged. "I was never read my rights. I was herded with everybody else like cattle. I haven't slept or eaten for 24 hours," she said. A number of those who were arrested said they had been mistreated by police while in custody. People said they were held in sweltering buses for up to six hours, denied water or access to toilets, and not given medical treatment for bruises and wrists lacerated by the plastic hand restraints. Police said nobody was intentionally mistreated, but that they would make no apologies for the unpleasantness of being arrested. "It takes time to process 543 people," police spokesman David Bayless said. "We needed someplace to keep them while they were being screened." Copyright � 2003, Chicago Tribune portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news, discussion and debate service of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to provide varied material of interest to people on the left. Post : mail to '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subscribe : mail to '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Unsubscribe : mail to '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web address : <http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/portside> Digest mode : visit Web site Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http://archive.jab.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http://archive.jab.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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