Profiles in Protest

By Romesh Ratnesar

A former fourth-grade teacher who sews quilts for peace, a 24-year-old who is the closest thing to a professional pacifist, a Gulf War veteran who is trying to rally his brethren against Gulf War II--these are the new faces of the peace movement, a motley collection of activists who would seem to have little chance of changing popular sentiment but have started to make their voices heard all the same. Some protests have been hard to miss, like the Oct. 26 march on Washington that drew 100,000 people. But for months the antiwar movement has been churning in smaller, less clamorous ways. In Dallas antiwar protesters wore yellow ribbons and read poetry at the city's cultural festival; in Miami a dozen people wave NO WAR signs on U.S. 1 every Friday during rush hour. This week several peace groups plan to stage protests in at least 15 states--but don't expect the spectacle of Vietnam War--era rallies. "You can't burn a flag here," says Anne Marie Weiss-Armush, a longtime Dallas peace activist. "Here people are very image conscious, and the image of peace protesters is very weird."

For folks like Weiss-Armush, that's a challenge. At a time when most Americans view the war on terrorism as self-defense and close to two-thirds support a military campaign to remove Saddam Hussein, members of the antiwar movement have to be careful to avoid drifting even further outside the mainstream. "There are a lot of people who may say they are against the war but are in no mood to be politically demonstrative about it," says Columbia University sociology and journalism professor Todd Gitlin, a 1960s student-protest leader. "And so you can't simply argue that the U.S. poisons everything it touches. The left-wing sectarian style is an impediment to moving it to a larger public."

While no amount of protest is likely to have much effect on whether the Administration decides to go to war, the movement could still push legislators to speak out if the fighting goes badly. Activists say they are slowly building a diverse constituency of dissent, one that includes labor unions, the National Council of Churches and Gulf War veterans' groups. Interviews by Time across the U.S. show that a wide variety of Americans have joined the antiwar campaign. Here are some of their stories:

The Debater Santiago Leon, 57

Tall and slender, distinguished by a thoughtful reserve and slightly unkempt gray hair, Santiago Leon walks and talks more like a New England college professor than a Miami rabble rouser. In 1990 he gave up his career as a lawyer because selling insurance sounded more exciting. And yet, throughout his life, Leon has been drawn to protest. In the '80s, he led the Dade County Citizens for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze. This fall, with fellow members of the Coral Gables Congregational Church and other like-minded people, he helped launch Concerned People Opposed to War in Iraq. Leon prefers intellectual debate to raucous protest. In September Leon's church brought together Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders to debate religious philosophies toward war, and he has since helped convene teach-ins at local colleges. "My preference is not really for massive demonstrations," he says. "They have a limited use in terms of persuading people who are not already persuaded."

Leon supported the Clinton Administration's interventions in the Balkans and the U.S. war in Afghanistan, though he says he is "not 100% [certain] it was the right thing to do." On the issue of Iraq, he sides with critics of Bush who say a war will distract from the more immediate priority of defending the country from terror attacks. "The idea is to get people to think about things on a factual level," he says. "Would a war in Iraq actually contribute to national security or not? What should we be doing to make ourselves safer?" Leon recognizes that the peace movement is battling from behind and that evidence of Iraqi mischief could yet turn some activists into reluctant supporters of war. "What if the Iraqis are not in compliance with the Security Council resolution?" he says. "It is going to be interesting to see what we all continue to agree on."

The Convert Judith Meeker, 48

Like many Americans, Judith Meeker felt her life change as soon as she heard about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But she never guessed that one year later it would lead her to spend two rainy days fasting in front of the White House in protest against the President's threat to attack Iraq. Meeker worries about terrorism, and she thinks anti-American anger will only increase if the U.S. tries to remove Saddam with military force. "I've been wondering for months how we went from al-Qaeda to Iraq," she says. "I don't disagree that Saddam has done horrible things, but we need to look at the things we've done also."

For Meeker, the war on terrorism has awakened a dormant activist spirit. She protested against the Vietnam War and marched against apartheid, but in recent years she has devoted her energies to raising her four children and teaching fourth grade in Brentwood, Tenn. After Sept. 11, disturbed by anti-Muslim sentiments voiced by her students, she assigned her class to make a quilt to send to the children of Afghanistan. The idea was so popular that Meeker quit her teaching job and founded Quilts for Peace, a nonprofit group that has sent 50 quilts to war zones around the world.

Meeker's new vocation brought her into contact with relief workers in Iraq, who told her of the dismal conditions of Iraqi civilians under the weight of U.N. sanctions. She believes that Western policies have exacerbated the suffering. Her opposition to war with Iraq has taken her to protests in Washington, Nashville and Macon, Ga. Last month she joined women from across the U.S. in their vigil in Washington's Lafayette Park. For two days they subsisted only on coffee and took cover from the cold and rain under flimsy plastic tarps. Meeker says she intends to return to fast again.

The Professor David Fox, 33

It came to David Fox in a rush one day last summer. The University of Minnesota paleontologist had become so irritated with all the White House talk about a pre-emptive war that he decided to type a manifesto decrying it. He figured the campus paper would publish his four-page, single-spaced letter, which he first e-mailed to a few colleagues to get a few signatures. Within days he had 230. When the petition grew too large for the paper's letters section, Fox and his friends paid $900 to publish the letter as an ad. Soon the 1,000-word essay started circulating on academic e-mail lists at universities like Harvard and M.I.T. It eventually became a website NoAttackIraq.org with more than 31,000 signatures, half of them from academics from around the world.

Fox is an unlikely leader of the campus crusade. As a professor in the department of geology and geophysics, he spends most of his time studying rock fossils to discern the habitats of ancient mammals. Fox was active in campaigns against U.S. policies in Latin America, but he supported the Gulf War and U.S. intervention in the Balkans. Fox subscribes to several oft-recited criticisms of a military campaign against Saddam. He believes a war with Iraq would kill Iraqi civilians, produce a new generation of anti-American terrorists and destabilize the Middle East. "These are very likely consequences of war," he says. "This is not the way to achieve a more just society in Iraq." And yet, while he supports "aggressive" U.N. weapons inspections, Fox--like many others in the antiwar camp--doesn't know how the U.S. can remove Saddam without resorting to force. Unlike others, he is willing to admit it. "I don't have a good answer," he says.

The Professional Rebecca Elswit, 24

Rebecca Elswit was born to be radical. "I've had the fire in my belly since I was 3 years old," she says. Rebecca's parents raised her to be politically conscious (her mother is a professor, her dad a lawyer). In high school and college, she campaigned for women's rights before turning her attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last summer she waded into the intifadeh, living in the occupied territories and engaging in "loving and nonviolent action against the Israeli government."

Elswit lives near scruffy MacArthur Park in downtown Los Angeles. She fits the profile of the eager young progressive: her tastes run to mountain climbing, experimental art and the Buddhist religious scholar Thich Nhat Nanh. But she's no flake. Elswit is the closest thing to a professional antiwar activist, holding down jobs at two peace-advocacy groups. In between breakfast meetings with religious leaders and other opponents of the war, she is coordinating a civil-disobedience event planned for this week in Los Angeles that will include a candle-light vigil on Hollywood Boulevard. Elswit and other young antiwar activists spread the word and enlist recruits through the websites and e-mail lists launched during the anti-globalization movement of the late '90s. "The dialogue is happening at a much faster pace than in the past," she says. "There's so much happening against the war, I could attend events every day of the week. But I try to limit my attendance to events once or twice a week, or else I'd burn out."

The Veteran Charles Sheehan-Miles, 31

During the last days of the first Gulf War, a 19-year-old tank crewman named Charles Sheehan-Miles found himself face to face with the enemy in the southern Iraqi desert. Assigned to stop Iraqi forces from fleeing to Baghdad, his division had found a fuel truck filled with Iraqi troops. The Americans blasted the truck with cannon fire; when those still alive tried to run rather than be taken prisoner, Sheehan-Miles and his platoon mates shot and killed them. "What we did was militarily right," Sheehan-Miles says now. "But I had to live with myself after that. It was really a turning point."

After returning from the front, Sheehan-Miles left the Army and helped start the Gulf War Resource Center in Silver Spring, Md., one of the first groups to call attention to the plight of Gulf War veterans who have suffered from illnesses since returning home.

Sheehan-Miles also became a critic of U.N. sanctions against Iraq. And since Bush began talking about another war, Sheehan-Miles has tried to organize opposition to it among fellow Gulf War vets. He says he will reluctantly support a war if it comes, but he is embarrassed that the Administration has been so aggressive in pushing for it. "The Administration seems to be grabbing for a reason," he says. "My biggest concern is that we seem to think...everybody in Iraq will wave a U.S. flag and say thanks for liberating us. But we've encouraged more hostility [in Iraq] than we're aware of."

Some of the antiwar vets plan to attend rallies in Washington this week, hoping to bring more Gulf War veterans to the cause. But like the rest of the antiwar activists, Sheehan-Miles has plenty of persuading to do. In late September, he set up an antiwar website veteransforcommonsense.org and sent out e-mail messages to all the veterans he knew, encouraging them to sign a statement that calls on the White House to get U.N. Security Council authorization before mounting an invasion. So far, about 300 vets have signed on. --Reported by Perry Bacon Jr./Washington, Sarah Sturmon Dale/Minneapolis, Jeanne DeQuine/Miami, Elisabeth Kauffman/Nashville and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Perry Bacon Jr./Washington, Sarah Sturmon Dale/Minneapolis, Jeanne DeQuine/Miami, Elisabeth Kauffman/Nashville and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles