Shelter Under the Anti-war Umbrella

By David Solnit, AlterNet. Posted February 18, 2005.

As the atrocities of the occupation of Iraq continue to mount, at the same time, the war at home has been taking billions from schools, healthcare, Social Security, wages and benefits and our communities and transferring them to corporations, the wealthy and war. But where are the outraged thousands in the streets? Where did all of us anti-warriors go? What will it take?

The world seems to be waiting for those of us in the U.S. – and millions of us here are ready – to really stand up to the Bush administration and the bipartisan policies of empire. But it's hard to mobilize against the war and occupation when there is no clear logic to where our efforts are headed. What will another march or even nonviolent direct action add up to? How will we actually stop the war and occupation? Where is a strategy that could work?

The anti-war movement needs a strategy of how we are going to stop the war and occupation of Iraq.

The solution is written in last month's mountain road blockades and the citywide shutdown of El Alto, Bolivia that kicked out water privatizing transnational corporation Suez from devastating their water system. It's also in our own re-written history. It's called people power.

In 2003 we tried almost everything to stop the invasion of Iraq, and in 2004 we tried to un-elect the invader. Both times, incredible groundswells of grassroots activism from most nearly every sector of society hit the streets and doorsteps of America and won important, less visible victories, but failed on both counts.

We have clearly and massively exhausted the established channels of change; political pressure, lobbying and elections have not worked. It's time for a different approach.

People power is an assertion of real democracy. It can assert the democratic will of communities and movements to change the things that matter when the established so-called democratic channels turn out be little more than public relations for elite rule. Every successful movement in U.S. history, from the workers and civil rights movement to today's farmworker-led Taco Bell boycott, and every dictator toppled in recent history have relied on people power methods.

A people power strategy that identifies the key pillars that support the Iraq war and occupation and wages a determined campaign to weaken and eventually remove those pillars can stop the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq. It can also take a major step in weakening the systemic pillars of empire at the root of so many problems in our communities and in the world. Do we have the guts and imagination?

Power to the People

Author and activist trainer George Lakey describes the people power strategy employed in former Yugoslavia, in his article "Strategy for a Living Revolution." He explains the group Otpur's (Serbian for "resistance") effort to oust Slobodan Milosevic by toppling the "pillars" that were supporting him:

One pillar of support for Milosevic was his police. Otpur systematically undermined that pillar. They took photos of their wounded. They enlarged the photos, put them on signs, and carried the signs in front of the houses of the police who hurt them. They talked to the cop's neighbors about it, took the signs to the schools of the police officers' children and talked with the children about it. After a year of this, police were plainly reluctant to beat Otpur activists even when ordered to do so, because they didn't want the negative reactions of their family, friends, and neighbors. When the movement ripened into a full-fledged insurgency in Belgrade, many police were sent out of the city by their commanders while other police simply watched the crowds take over the Parliament building.

In the lead up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as the world protested and pressured the warmongers to stop, some parts of the anti-war movements began to turn towards a people-power approach. In Ireland, a campaign of protest and direct action at Shannon Air Force Base successfully stopped it from being used as a major refueling stop for troop and supply flights on their way to Iraq. In Britain some dockworkers refused to load supplies for the U.S. war. In Italy activists blocked trains moving supplies for the war. In Turkey, mass protests forced the government to refuse to let the nation be used as a staging base for the invasion, which U.S. war planners had taken for granted.

In San Francisco, Direct Action to Stop the War called for a next-day shutdown of the city's financial district if the U.S. invaded Iraq. The well-publicized goals of the shutdown said in part, "We will impose real economic, social and political costs and stop business as usual until the war stops ... with the express intention of deterring a war in Iraq and future wars." A diverse San Francisco Bay Area anti-war movement united around this common framework. On March 19, 2003 the U.S. began its invasion. The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted San Francisco police officer Drew Cohen as saying, "They succeeded this morning – they shut the city down. They're highly organized but they are totally spontaneous. The protesters are always one step ahead of us. "

David Solnit is part of the People Powered Strategy Project, an alliance of anti-war organizations who are bringing a "Proposal for a People Power Strategy to End the Iraq War and Occupation" to the Feb. 18-21 United for Peace and Justice Assembly. He is grateful to the People Powered Strategy Group for help with this article. David was an organizer of the 1999 anti-WTO shut down in Seattle and the 2003 anti-war shut down of San Francisco. He is the editor of Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World (City Lights).

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