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500 anti-war protestors gather in Oakland

Monday, March 17, 2003

By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

As time runs out, peace activists, too, are planning for war.

Sandy Balos of Erie flashes a peace sign to anti-war protesters yesterday along Negley Avenue in Shadyside. Balos was in Pittsburgh visiting family. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

When Tim Vining, executive director of the Thomas Merton Center, stepped to the microphone during yesterday's anti-war rally at Flagstaff Hill, Oakland, he wasn't aware that just an hour before, President Bush had announced that diplomacy had only 24 more hours to force Iraq to disarm.

He didn't need to know the specifics. He has watched as thousands of people the world over have protested an attack on Iraq. He listened to the president's news conference, during which Bush dismissed the anti-war protests as "irrelevant."

None of that deterred him.

"We need to become relevant," Vining said. "Are we ready to resist with more tactics, more energy than we've seen so far?"

A loud roar from the crowd -- about 500 people, a mishmash including veteran peace activists, college students, anarchists with their faces half-covered and parents with toddlers in tow -- showed that Vining wasn't the only person who believed their views still matter, even with war likely days away.

"I think this war was a foregone conclusion," said Joanne Goodall, of Regent Square, who has attended many recent demonstrations. "But I still feel I have to express my right to protest. I don't believe this is a just war. I don't believe in preemptive strikes."

She believes that Bush's lack of diplomatic skills has created "a false crisis of time" that has pushed the United States closer to war than it needs to be.

	Chatham College junior Holly Hickling, of Crafton, surveys a Peace Picnic yesterday on Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park planned by the Pittsburgh Organizing Group and attended by about 500 anti-war protestors. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

No one in the crowd acted as if these weekend protests were part of a last-ditch effort. They responded to the energy of the organizers, who think of them more as opening salvos. More protests -- more intense, more frequent -- are on the way.

Although many of their actions, such as the 2-hour, 15-minute march through Oakland and Shadyside that followed the rally, appear to be completely spontaneous, the local anti-war groups carefully prepare for their actions.

The first shots of war won't deter this crowd. Members of PAPPY, a group of high school students against the war, will speak tonight at a Pittsburgh Public Schools board meeting to try to convince board members to sign a peace resolution. Plans are already in place for a demonstration on the sidewalk outside the federal building the day the war begins.

Calling the protesters "irrelevant" has, if anything, strengthened their resolve.

"There's a bigger call to increase disruptiveness," said Alex Bradley, one of the leaders of the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, called POG. "A number of people think an escalation is key."

Vining agreed.

"When people are not having the feeling that they are listened to, that's when they rise up," he said.

POG, which has organized many of the local actions along with the Merton center, opened yesterday's events with a Picnic for Peace. But the group kept its name away from publicity for the event because it wanted to attract a wide variety of people with anti-war sentiments, even those who don't necessarily share POG's political views.

"We want to create a culture of resistance," Bradley said. "And we want to show the inter-connectedness of communities."

Overall, the group on Flagstaff Hill wasn't much different than the typical warm, spring Sunday afternoon crowd. Like most anti-war protests, this one attracted a variety of people:

A middle-aged man standing apart from the crowd, who gave his name only as "Dan," said he had never before protested anything in his life. He explained himself with five words: "I'm fed up with this."

Tom Rehm of Butler, who noted that the peace movement isn't all that out of the mainstream if 150 people showed up in his town, of all places, for a rally, and three companions discussed how even if the demonstrations don't change Bush's mind, maybe they will give other American citizens something to think about.

Valentina Barsom, of Squirrel Hill, a native Ukrainian who came to the United States in 1952, said she hasn't been sleeping well lately. A survivor of World War II, she spent part of her childhood in a German camp for displaced persons.

"I know what war is all about," she said. "I know what it is to live in fear. I came to this country because it embraced peace and justice. I was proud of my adopted country because it always seemed to be on the side of justice. And now it's all been turned upside-down."

After the rally, about 300 people marched through the streets of Oakland and Shadyside, stopping only to rally in two-minute intervals at major intersections such as Fifth and Negley avenues or to make side trips into The Gap, Banana Republic and Starbucks.

"No sweatshops, no war," the protesters changed.

Police monitored the march at a discreet distance, several blocks or a parallel street away. A couple of squad cars and an ambulance trailed the marchers; directly in front of the first car, five protesters carried a banner that read: "Police for peace."

Aside from a handful of testy motorists, the only confrontation with passersby came at Carnegie Mellon University's Delta Upsilon fraternity on Forbes Avenue, where brothers displayed signs that read: "Nuke Paris," "More Bombs, Cheap Gas" and "Remember 9/11?"

The marchers encountered far more motorists and passersby who extended the peace sign or honked in support.

Such support bolstered the protesters' spirits.

"I'd like to think that at some point people will start questioning the credibility of statements coming out of the administration," Bradley said. "How many times do they have to say something and then have it disproved before people are questioning it at the beginning?"