A sense of the larger picture is growing among US citizens, notably,
though not only, among a young generation, along with a revulsion
against official and corporate contempt for the will and welfare of
ordinary citizens, for the value of human life itself. The antiwar
movement of this century is a movement to reclaim democracy and to push
it further. It has no token national leaders; it is various in its
formations and organizing principles, often originating and working
locally, yet in touch with other groups. It is connected through free
giveaway papers like the San Francisco-based, nationally distributed
War Times, through Internet sites and e-mail correspondence,
through teach-ins, vigils, strikes, newsletters, cell phones, radio,
cartoon strips, art and bumper stickers, benefits and much else.
Links between militarization, racism, economic and gender inequity,
perversion of the criminal justice system and the electoral system are
made not because of laundry-list sectarian opportunism but because, more
and more, the actual connections are being laid bare by the activities
of the current Administration and its corporate family. The origins of
this antiwar movement and all it implies lie in the extremism of a
long-unresponsive government, a stumbling and incoherent empire, most of
whose citizens don't want an empire at such cost, if they want one at
all.
To be "antiwar" is not a simple position. It means disentangling the
strands that connect the weapons industry with the lack of will for
diplomacy and coherent foreign policy. It means understanding what the
militarization of a society costs, economically and socially and in
terms of civil liberties, the propaganda of violence as both heroism and
efficient solution. It means probing the official versions to reveal how
and why we are being driven toward aggression. To be "antiwar" is to be
for public debate and knowledge, the foundations of democratic polity.
A new growth in public consciousness and political intelligence
challenges an autocratic government from within and is seen as dangerous
to vested interests. Like every past movement for humanization, for the
amelioration of suffering, this antiwar movement will be attacked not
only by the right but by onetime liberals who fear the costs of real
peace and justice more than they dislike the costs of empire. Regime
Change Begins at Home: Vote, said one bumper sticker during the last
election. Regime change is a very large order indeed, and will involve a
long process of public education and self-education, of demanding and
rewarding courage in elected officials and of political work beyond the
ballot. Demonstrations are the tip of the iceberg in this process.
Making clear how issues are connected has been the great work of the
progressive movements of the past forty years. Keeping issues separate,
silencing those who try to connect them, has been the great strategy of
media and of presidential power. The fear of socialism, even of the word
itself, suggests how our social imaginations have been abridged and
hampered. For the question of the future is, ineluctably, After regime
change, what? What are we for? What do we want to see happen? And how do
we want to make it happen?
Adrienne Rich is a poet and activist. Her most recent books are Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations and Fox (poems), both from Norton.
Copyright © 2002 The Nation
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