NEW YORK -- There were no chants, no riot police, no puppets. Participants left their "Greeks for Peace" signs at home. But in a paneled meeting hall in Astoria, Queens, last Wednesday night, 75 people engaged in a form of protest that's coming to define the new face of the New York peace movement -- community organizing.
That's the goal anyway. First, groups like Astorians for Peace, Peace Williamsburg in north Brooklyn, and dozens of others citywide need to convince people that the war didn't end -- or rather, peace didn't begin -- with the fall of Baghdad. Then they must link events abroad with ongoing problems in their neighborhoods, where a little bit of organization, they say, can make a big difference. At a time when peaceniks across New York are wondering whether the mass demonstrations this spring made any difference at all, that sense of purpose is important.
On Wednesday night, demonstrators sat in rows of metal folding chairs listening to speakers who, flanked by cardboard doves and pink and white balloons, talked about the ongoing effects of the war here in the city. The crowd, even in this, the most diverse county in the United States, was mostly white. Some munched on the biscotti and sipped the coffee provided by the event's organizers, but those who'd sneaked in steins of Spaten lager from the adjoining taproom were probably best prepared to hear the depressing litany of world events surrounding Operation Iraqi Freedom.
You know things are bad when someone, in this case Cyrus Mehta, chair of the Immigration Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association, says, "I'm only going to focus on section 412" of the 12,000-page U.S. Patriot Act, the sweeping legislation passed just 45 days after the Sept. 11 attacks. The law chipped away all Americans' civil rights in the guise of fighting terrorism, but was particularly scary for Arab-American immigrants, who were targeted en masse. Section 412 allows the government to indefinitely hold detainees without pressing charges, as has happened at Guantanamo Bay. Now, with the proposed Patriot II Act, those and other temporary provisions, expressly forbidden in the Constitution, could become permanent. American citizens suspected of unpatriotic activities could "simply disappear," according to the "New York Times Magazine" -- words that evoke the Central American military juntas of the 1980s.
John Kim, president of the New York chapter of Veterans for Peace, put the supposed end of the war against Iraq into perspective. Fifty years ago, the Korean War "ended," too, but there are still 40,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea because no peace treaty was signed with North Korea. And still the region is unstable, with North Korea threatening to restart its nuclear program, if it hasn't done so already.
Then there is the cost. In the days leading up to the war, George W. Bush asked Congress for a "down payment" of $80 billion to get things going over there in the Iraqi desert. Congress duly forked over the cash, even though the administration provided no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or links to al-Qaeda -- the stated reasons for the U.S. invasion. Now, City Council member Charles Barron of Brooklyn pointed out, states are facing a combined deficit of $74 billion, but the spirit of giving has evaporated. George Bush and his congressional clones, in fact, continue to insist on pushing through a $550 billion tax cut that would help only the richest Americans (read: campaign contributors). Not even Hillary Clinton, who supported the war -- despite the fact that the majority of her constituents did not -- can abide by that.
Clinton is fighting federal cuts to education and health care, worthy causes to be sure. But nowhere in a recent constituent e-mail does she link the war's price tag ($100 billion and counting) to the "spiraling deficits" and the budget axe that threatens to hack away at "the priorities that matter for New Yorkers." She is merely diving for crumbs.
Barron, unlike either of our senators, is willing to connect the dots between global empire building and local austerity. Sporting a Nehru jacket and a graying Afro, he was incredibly entertaining and sharp at Wednesday's meeting. Of course, he knows it and is planning to run against Bloomberg for mayor of New York City ("No jive in 2005"). But community groups like Astorians for Peace and the national networks that join them -- United for Peace and Justice, the Green Party and move on.org, among others -- are trying to do something more than just rally the troops behind another candidate, or even against a war. They're trying to repair the fabric of a democracy that's in tatters.
Debbie Riga, 45, a second-generation Cypriot who witnessed firsthand the Turkish invasion of Greece in the summer of 1974, said she founded Astorians for Peace because she knows local organizing works. On moving back to Astoria after a decade in Manhattan, she found that little had changed since her childhood. The fishmonger and the Italian deli she'd missed were still there, as were neighbors who'd leave fresh-picked peaches and figs on her doorstep while she was at work. The problems were also the same. Garbage would be regularly strewn across riverfront Astoria Park, and motorcyclists would roar down the narrow, tree-lined side streets, setting off car alarms and menacing kids.
"I thought, I don't need to put up with this anymore," she said. Three years ago, she formed the Astoria Renaissance Committee. The ad hoc group held a couple of meetings, inviting their local City Council reps, and "before you knew it, change started to happen," Riga says. They got their speed bumps and chipped in for the $13 silver-painted trash cans that now dot Astoria Park.
With Astorians for Peace, Riga hopes to do voter registration in Astoria's mostly African American housing projects, to transport the elderly to polling places on Election Day, and to put pressure on local representatives, including Astoria's City Council rep Peter Vallone (son of the failed gubernatorial candidate), to pass a statement against Patriot II. Peace Williamsburg has held fundraisers to help keep their local fire station open -- one of dozens threatened by city budget cuts.
To combat political apathy, "I don't need to put up with this anymore" is as good a place as any to start. Just ask Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. Last year, people thought the Harvard-trained lawyer was crazy when he tried to fight the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's proposed subway fare hikes. In a rough budget year, they seemed inevitable. But on May 15, a state Supreme Court judge ruled that, in fact, Russianoff was right. The MTA's "fictitious" operating deficit, Justice York wrote, "had a chilling effect on the public, discouraging an open and complete discussion of the proposals and foreclosing the presentation of creative alternatives." York ordered the MTA to roll back the fares.
As we plunge headlong toward Reagan-era deficits, toward a world in which U.S. citizens risk their lives abroad and can be "disappeared" at home, we should consider what other fictions are having a chilling effect on public debate, and the creative alternatives to them.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | May 20 2003 |