This article is part of the "Waging Peace" series, covering the movement that is emerging across America to oppose war on Iraq.
   --The Editors

Even as it weathers political growing pains, the movement needs resources. What that means is not necessarily money, says John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-wing Washington think tank, "but a broad range of organizations to decide this is a priority and shift their own resources to it."

There are signs this has begun, among both individuals and institutions. Bob Wing, for example, a lifelong racial justice activist in California, says he began rethinking his priorities "one second after I learned about the crash into the World Trade Center" and has become a full-time antiwar pamphleteer, launching the bilingual tabloid War Times--which now has a circulation of 120,000. The Rev. Peter Laarman, who had focused in recent years on building labor solidarity within his congregation at New York City's historic Judson Memorial Church, has turned his attentions to organizing clergy against the war, orchestrating their mass arrest at a December sit-in at the UN. The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) has redirected half of its staff to Iraq work; Peace Action is raising funds to hire regional antiwar organizers across the country; and Global Exchange has devoted staff time to building United for Peace. Global Exchange's Medea Benjamin, meanwhile, helped to launch Code Pink, which uses a gendered spin on militarism and unilateralism, as well as a daily White House vigil, to attract feminist troops to the antiwar movement.

More mainstream organizations also appear to be extending their antiwar commitments. NOW adopted a fairly radical-sounding resolution in June, condemning "the opportunistic use of fighting terrorism as an excuse for massive imperial expansion," and the group has asked its 500 chapters to turn out women for the Code Pink vigil each week until March. Greenpeace USA head John Passacantando, who wrote an open letter to George Bush opposing the war, says his group plans to build an antiwar message into its new international campaign targeting ExxonMobil, "considered," he says, "to be in the front position to benefit from regime change in Iraq." The NAACP followed up its October antiwar resolution by calling on all its campus chapters to host town hall meetings about the war. An AFL-CIO official says he's trying to get antiwar locals and labor councils together for a national meeting. And the victory of antiwar sectors of the Democratic Party in the contest for minority leadership of the House has reopened the possibility that the party will take to the bully pulpit.

Student activism is picking up steam, as several proven networks expand their mission to join forces against the war. The Student Environmental Action Coalition launched a Militarism and the Environment campaign in August; United Students Against Sweatshops is in discussion about targeting weapons manufacturers; and each is a member of the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition (NYSPC), which already has the capacity to reach some 200,000 students and is planning a national student walkout for next spring. And this is not your father's student antiwar movement. Erica Smiley, the Washington, DC, youth leader, who is in the Black Radical Congress and on the NYSPC steering committee, says the coalition has "all kinds of historically underrepresented youth at the table"; this is reflected in its focus on "the war at home," meaning the lack of jobs and affordable education that is forcing many kids to consider joining the military. NYSPC also plans to develop a web chat room where young soldiers can anonymously express dissent.

The religious mobilization has been the deepest and broadest to date. Despite near silence in the organized Jewish community and a feeling of Patriot-era vulnerability among Muslim congregations, courageous clergy members issued an interfaith call in November for fasting and reflection on the dangers of this war, published simultaneously in Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim papers. The United Methodists sent out an antiwar educational packet to its congregations across the country. And the National Council of Churches is in the midst of "A Season for Peacemaking," which included the civil disobedience Laarman coordinated at the UN, an action built around the inviting concept of "common humanity." "We don't think the moderate middle really accepts the premise of pre-emptive war, but they're being herded along," says Laarman. "Our role as religious leaders is to unherd them."

Cavanagh, who is a United for Peace co-initiator, sees a three-pronged strategy ahead. First, he says, "what came through in September and October is that there are millions of Americans who have a ton of questions. So this is a time when education has a lot of traction." Second, it's critical to be visible, "to keep the peace movement on the front pages" as the Administration attempts to discredit the weapons-inspection process. And third, the movement needs to promote the voices of unlikely dissenters, such as the many former intelligence officers who are raising red flags, which will "raise the nervousness quotient" among the American public. He argues that even postelection, public opinion still looms large for a White House fixed on 2004.

But some of the most decisive factors are out of the activists' hands. "Most of the opposition is to a unilateral, pre-emptive war," says Cavanagh. "If there's a clear-cut provocation by Iraq and strong international backing, all of that evaporates." The more likely scenario, according to IPS experts, is a feeble excuse for war, trumped up by the Administration, and lukewarm international backing, with a couple of abstentions or even no votes on the UN Security Council. That result would provide a real challenge for the antiwar movement: to quickly educate against what Wing calls "the big-time propaganda machine that will fall into place" and win the public debate about what constitutes a legitimate war. But the movement would likely be aided by broad popular opposition in Europe and the Muslim world.

It would be a moment fraught with danger--of escalating anti-American terrorism, especially--but also opportunity. "There is a hope of this war being disrupted as it goes along," says expatriate journalist Mike Marqusee, who helped to organize London's 400,000-strong antiwar demonstration in September, "and we in the European peace movement want to do whatever we can to strengthen American voices of dissent." Medea Benjamin predicts that January's World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, attended by some 50,000 last year, will forge a large-scale, international merger of the antiwar and global justice movements--and give a shot in the arm to the US movement. "There's a real wave of ferment in the world," says Tom Hayden. "And it seems directly in response to the cresting of the conservative movement in America. There was an unexplainable worldwide social movement in 1968 as well, and it's back, like a second earthquake, on exactly the same fault line. Stay tuned."

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