Antiwar activism grows in Triangle--Strategy meeting also planned in Charlotte
Posted on Sat, Mar. 29, 2003 DIANE SUCHETKA Staff Writer
CARY - Eight war protestors, including a UNC Chapel Hill professor, are awaiting trial in Raleigh for refusing to leave U.S. Sen. John Edwards presidential campaign headquarters last month.
A Siler City peace activist is serving six months in prison for splattering blood on doors to the Pentagon.
Hundreds of students have walked out of classes at UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University and thousands of protestors have gathered at the state Capitol in Raleigh.
Charlotte may have more residents than any other city in North Carolina, but the stronghold of North Carolina's peace movement is in the Triangle.
N.C. activists say their numbers have shot up since the United States began bombing Iraq. And they expect their movement to continue to grow whether the war ends quickly or not.
They'll talk about that growth, among other things, at a statewide strategy session in Charlotte today.
About 75 peace activists are expected in Charlotte for the 10 a.m. meeting, at Wedgewood Baptist Church. They'll break at noon to attend an anti-war rally at Independence Park, at East Seventh Street and Hawthorne Lane.
One reason Triangle peace activists feel certain their political action will continue even if the war doesn't is that people are joining the movement there for secondary reasons.
Men and women, many of them minorities, are speaking out against the war because they're worried about the erosion of civil rights they see in the Patriot Act, says Rañia Masri, a human-rights advocate who oversees peace research and education at the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham.
Among other things, the act allows the government to detain any foreigner the attorney general says is endangering national security.
Other activists are coming out because they're concerned about the billions of dollars in tax money the war could take away from social programs, education and health care.
"People are connecting this war with many other issues," says Masri, who serves on the national board of the grassroots group Peace Action. "And when we have a peace movement that's connecting all these issues, it's a peace movement that's not going to go away. We're going to continue to organize and continue to grow until these issues are resolved."
Those secondary issues are making the movement more diverse too, says Patrick O'Neill, one of the eight protestors arrested in Raleigh and co-founder of North Carolinians for Alternatives to War.
That diversity is evident in Charlotte's war protests, too. After-work gatherings at Marshall Park include Latinos, Asians and African Americans; children as young as 10 and adults in their 80s. Taken together, those working for peace, O'Neill says, represent a large cross-section of the American public. He points to religious leaders from many mainstream denominations who have made statements against a U.S. attack of Iraq. To the dozens of U.S. cities and counties that have passed resolutions opposing the war. And to the labor unions that have taken a stance against a U.S. attack of Iraq.
At the same time, public support for the war remains strong. At least seven in 10 back the effort now that U.S. troops are fighting in Iraq, according to a CBS News poll.
Back in the Triangle, 70-year-old Cary peace activist Bill Towe says interest has risen since the bombs began falling. Now, the coordinator of N.C. Peace Action, the state affiliate of the Washington-based group once known as SANE, is getting 100 to 150 e-mails a day, at least twice as many as before the war began.
He hears from people who are concerned about U.S. foreign policy in general; about America's involvement in Columbia, Israel, Korea, the Philippines, Venezuela. "When the Vietnam war ended, there was a decline in the peace movement," says Towe, a political activist for more than 40 years. "Now with all these issues it won't dissipate like it did in the past."
There are reasons the peace movement is stronger in the Raleigh area than in Charlotte.
Charlotte is a more-conservative banking town, with a smaller concentration of college students. It has less of a history of activism, fewer labor unions and political action groups, experts say
Charlotte also has what Tom Hanchett, staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South, calls a culture of civility.
"Protesting anything is just not seen as civil in this part of the South," Hanchett says. "Here the civility tends to put a lid on any kind of protest."
Diane Suchetka: (704) 358-5073; suchetka@charlotteobserver.com.