The Patriotic Minority (Long Island, NY peace activists) Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - DavidMcR@aol.com Newsday (Long Island) - December 19, 2001 http://www.newsday.com/features/ny-p2cover2514651dec19.story In the Minority With polls showing that 90 percent of Americans support the war, peace advocates are struggling to be heard By Donald P. Myers STAFF WRITER ON THE MORNING of Sept. 11, Colleen Kelly's curly haired brother Bill, a 30-year-old Manhattan financial services worker, was eating breakfast at a business meeting on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center. "Billy worked uptown," his sister said. "He was at Windows on the World by chance." William Hill Kelly Jr. was killed with more than 3,000 others in the terror attacks on the Twin Towers. For the loss of her brother, Colleen Kelly wants justice, not revenge. "I want the people who did this to my brother apprehended and held accountable," said Kelly, 39, a nurse practitioner from the Bronx. "I want justice as much as anybody else. But personally, I adamantly oppose bombing innocents as a solution." Public opinion polls show that 90 percent of Americans support the U.S. military action in Afghanistan, which led to the Taliban's rapid collapse. Almost three in four Americans want to widen the war on terrorism by sending U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, according to a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll. Colleen Kelly is among the minority of voices opposing the Bush administration's military response to the Sept. 11 attacks on the the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The dissenting voices, the 10 percenters, call for peace, not payback. "There is no scale on which my family can begin to measure our loss, nor are there words to adequately express our sorrow," said Kelly, a mother of three. "My family is quite clear, however, that we would never want another family, whether Afghan or American, to feel the way we do now." In the three months since the terror attacks, the small and scattered group of peace advocates has been shouted down or dismissed by some as bleeding hearts or unpatriotic misfits. Kelly and other dissenters believe that fighting violence with more violence is immoral. "What bothers me is that there has been no serious quest for alternatives other than the bombings," Kelly said. "Our country sees no other way because we have been presented with no other way. We need to start talking about what is being done in the name of those whose lives were lost on Sept. 11." Because the war began with a direct attack on the United States, the peace community has struggled to arrive at the right response to the terror attacks. "I've never seen the peace movement split like this," said Robert Lepley, 52, executive director of the Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives, an umbrella organization of social-justice groups ranging from Pax Christi Long Island to the Interfaith Nutrition Network. "There is general agreement against the bombing, especially for humanitarian and moral reasons - civilians being killed and threatened with starvation," Lepley said. "There's a lot of difference of opinion on everything else, differences on how to deal with the terrorists, differences on how far to talk about U.S. foreign policy being among the root causes of this situation - the American people don't want to hear it." The peace advocates may be politically out of step, but they believe they have more than 10 percent of the voices in America - and they object to being demonized as unpatriotic. "It's a very noble form of patriotism to question what your government is doing in our name, to stand in the public square and enter into the debate," Lepley said. "In the current anti-terrorism legislation, the definition of terrorism would include domestic political organizations that engage in civil disobedience. That's frightening. The civil rights movement was built on civil disobedience." The peace advocates mourn those who were killed on Sept.11 and grieve for their families. They condemn the attacks as crimes against humanity, not as acts of war, and they support nonviolent economic and political alternatives to counter terrorism. They say suspected terrorists should be tried in international courts or in the American criminal justice system, not by secret U.S. military tribunals proposed by President George W. Bush. They say the United States must address the underlying causes of terrorism by rethinking foreign policies that they believe help create poverty and hopelessness in the developing world. Murray Polner, 74, of Great Neck, chairman of the Jewish Peace Fellowship, sees great danger in a war widened beyond Afghanistan. "There are people in Washington who want to begin an immediate attack on Iraq. These are very dangerous people," said Polner, biographer of Daniel and Philip Berrigan, two of the pre-eminent peace activists of the 20th century. "It's one thing to go after Osama bin Laden and his crowd, but the real question is whether we can stop the war from being expanded everywhere under the guise of terrorism." Most Americans broadly support steps taken by the Bush administration to investigate and prosecute suspected terrorists and express little concern that these measures could violate the rights of U.S. citizens or others caught up in the investigations, according to a Washington Post/ABC News survey. Since Sept. 11, peace advocates have staged small anti-war demonstrations, marches and candlelight vigils. Almost 700,000 people have signed an anti-war petition on the Web site www.9-11peace.org, its organizers claim. Colleen Kelly and a few others who lost family members in the attacks spoke earlier this month at the end of a small peace march from Washington, D.C., to New York. The dissenters marched with a motto: "Our grief is not a cry for war." The terror attacks reminded many people of Pearl Harbor, another attack in another war 60 years ago, when Americans were called upon to sacrifice, conserve and share. Many of today's peace advocates question what kind of culture America has become, with its leaders now urging them to shop, spend and consume. The videotape of Osama bin Laden released last week by the Pentagon, although chilling, is not legal proof that bin Laden was the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, Lepley said: "I don't think the requirements for justice are met by an amateur video. Justice is a legal process that consists of an investigation, apprehension and a trial." The fall of the Taliban did not end the suffering, Lepley said: "There's this sentiment now that this is a real victory for the people of Afghanistan now that the Taliban is gone, and I hope that it is. However, the U.S. bombing may simply lead to a long and bloody civil war." Lepley believes America should practice in its foreign policy what it preaches at home: "Some of the values that good American parents teach their children are sharing, taking turns, fairness, compassion, resolving conflicts without fighting. Yet the policies of the U.S. government often contradict those parental values, especially in supporting right-wing repressive regimes that perpetuate violence on their people." The anti-war movement has had a hard time uniting its scattered voices, but Polner said dissent could grow if the war on terrorism is widened, American civil liberties are threatened or more GIs come home in body bags. "The voices are muted now, but they won't be if the war is expanded," Polner said. "If the oil spigot is turned off or reduced, if Americans die in large numbers, if there are more terrorist attacks on this country, then you will see a rise in dissent." Today's 10 percenters include Virginia Rodriguez, 18, and Andy Farrell, 20, who helped organize a student group called Radicals Against War at SUNY Stony Brook; Margaret Melkonian, 54, a peace advocate from Uniondale; Larry Darcey, 72, of Sag Harbor, a retired New York City police lieutenant; Linda Longmire, 52, a Hofstra University political science professor; and Michael Hardin, 44, of Floral Park, a theologian, writer and musician. With American flags flying everywhere, many of the dissenting voices have chosen to keep quiet. Not Rodriguez, a Stony Brook freshman from Minneapolis: "The American flag is not a symbol I embrace. The flag is supposed to stand for liberty and freedom. It doesn't. It represents tyranny and repression." According to a recent survey by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, 79 percent of college students nationwide support the U.S. war on terrorism in Afghanistan - and beyond. Rodriguez and Farrell, a sophomore from Huntington, are among the vocal minority on campus. They helped organize an anti-war rally five weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. Peace demonstrations at some other American campuses have led to noisy confrontations, but the Stony Brook rally was mostly quiet. Rodriguez carried a sign that said "Down With U.S. Imperialism Now." "The truth is, I do love America, but you have to be able to criticize what you love," Rodriguez said. "The U.S. government has been slaughtering innocent civilians in the name of 'freedom' for decades. U.S. foreign policy is soaked with the blood of the poor and the powerless." The United Nations' World Food Program, which battles global hunger, estimates that 7.5 million people in Afghanistan are in danger of starving or freezing to death this winter. Rodriguez said most of the humanitarian-aid organizations were forced out of the country because of the American bombing. "What makes me the angriest," Rodriguez said, "is that the Bush administration is exploiting the American people's empathy and compassion to further a foreign policy of violence - basically taking grief and turning it into hate." Farrell has dyed his hair pink, so he's used to being treated like a misfit. "I am unpatriotic. I think patriotism is divisive," he said. "Why is it that people don't see the patriotism and religious fanaticism of their supposed enemies as having anything to do with the words 'God bless America'? God bless America, but don't bother to bless any of those heathens in the Middle East. That mindset, on both sides, is exactly what caused Sept. 11." Hofstra professor Linda Longmire, hoping that the 10 percenters may help bring social justice to a world torn by violence and suffering, quotes anthropologist Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Bucking the pro-military mood of the nation, Longmire and 10,000 others marched last month outside the Fort Benning military post in Georgia, the site of the Army's former School of the Americas. Protesters blame the school for training Latin American soldiers who carried out human rights abuses in their countries. The Army closed the school a year ago, and the Department of Defense reopened it with a new name. With the United States at war and Americans riding a patriotic wave, Longmire said it was more important than ever to look more critically and creatively at the plight of the world's poorest and most desperate people. "The seeds are being sown now for the next generation of problems by our failure to look at the consequences of our policies," Longmire said. "These destructive consequences blow back and affect us because we've not thought through the long-term implications of which governments we support." The ultimate metaphor in the war on terrorism is dropping bombs - and - food on Afghanistan, Longmire said: "The surreal nature of it all - is startling 'We're feeding you so we can bomb you.' This is all so - very clearly about oil, controlling the oil pipeline. Until we recognize and are smarter about the consequences of our ill-advised policies, we won't have the security that people understandably crave." The nation's 260 Roman Catholic bishops, at their semiannual general assembly in Washington last month, declared that the United States has a moral right to wage war against terrorists. At the same time, the bishops said the nation must be more generous in fighting poverty around the world. Theologian Michael Hardin, a former priest who left the ministry in 1994, said the Bush administration and the Catholic Church have had to face a moral dilemma to justify the war in Afghanistan: the peace tradition of the church, which supports dropping food, vs. the "just war" theory, which justifies dropping bombs. When President Bush talks about seeking justice for the terror attacks, he really means revenge, Hardin said: "Our foreign policy now is a justification of our anger. We can only justify our anger when we can rhetorically place God on our side. We're doing the same thing bin Laden did - it's just that we've got bigger guns." After Sept. 11, Hardin wrote a song titled "At the Gate," which begins by calling Ground Zero "a rubble heap of hate," and ends with words of faith: I do believe in peace, and I do believe in hope And I do believe we'll find the strength within. I do believe in love, and I do believe in life And I do believe that evil will not win. Hardin makes a distinction between the nonviolent peace movement and the anti-war movement, which he said often used rhetorical and physical violence, as happened during the Vietnam war protests. "I hope that our capacity for peacemaking is greater than our drive for revenge," Hardin said. "I hope the fires of the '60s get relit again, but in a positive and constructive way." With dissenting voices reduced to a whisper in wartime, peace advocates have been struggling for a consensus in community meetings and in churches, synagogues and mosques. Margaret Melkonian, UN representative to the Hague Appeal for Peace, a nongovernmental organization working for a global civil society, doesn't believe the polls that show overwhelming support for U.S. military action in Afghanistan or other countries such as Iraq, Somalia, Sudan or Yemen. "The peace and social-justice movement is not dead. It's vibrant and effective and alive," Melkonian said. "Since Sept. 11, with all the pain and grief of that day, we've seen such terrible evil, and the response of enormous love, strangers taking care of strangers. We can see the goodness in human beings, and that's what we should be working to call forth always - not killing more innocent people." Melkonian is proud to be a bleeding heart: "If we're going to have a 21st century and survive, we'd better start listening to other voices. The voices are out there - if we'll just listen." Larry Darcey, who retired as a lieutenant after 30 years as a New York cop, has been in the peace and justice movement longer than that. "My motivation is my six kids and 16 grandchildren," he said. "What kind of legacy are we leaving for the next generation? Half the world's population, 3 billion people, are making $2 a day or less. The polls don't show all the suffering. In this war, there's a high price tag on American bodies, but a lesser price tag on all the others, which happen to be the bodies of the poor." With flags flying everywhere - on cars, on clothes, on jewelry, in ads - Darcey felt like a misfit. "Because I didn't support this war, I thought my symbol for peace should be a cross," he said. "I thought a cross would be more appropriate than a flag." Darcey put up a little wooden cross in his front yard in Sag Harbor. It lasted two days. "Sure enough, somebody broke it during the night. I was surprised to see that happen," he said. "I guess the cross upsets some people." Calling for peace these days isn't easy, especially for some of the families of people killed on Sept. 11. Colleen Kelly struggles with her stance against the bombing in Afghanistan, especially after the quick collapse of the Taliban and the search for bin Laden and other leaders of the al-Qaida network. "As much as I'm personally opposed to the bombing, there's a part of me - as a person who's just as conflicted as everybody else about this stuff - that recognizes that the bombing did have an effect," said Kelly, who lives in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx. "I struggle with this enormously." Kelly's family - her parents, her three sisters and their families - ranges from pacifist to U.S. Marine. Some in the family support the U.S. military action, although Kelly does not. She admits, however, that her brother probably would disagree with her. "I feel pretty sure that Billy would have been for the bombing - for the greater good," Kelly said. Bill Kelly was single, lived in Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan and worked for Bloomberg L.P. After he was killed on Sept. 11, his mother, JoAnne Kelly of Long Beach Island, N.J., received an envelope from her best friend, a woman who had been a neighbor in Pennsylvania, where the Kellys lived when Bill was a boy. "The envelope was full of these beautiful brown locks of hair," Colleen Kelly said. "My mother had cut my brother's hair when he was 5 years old. Billy had thick, brown, curly hair. My mom's best friend's husband is bald. His nickname is Pal. My mom had sent that envelope to him and wrote on the front: 'Eat your heart out, Pal.' Pal's wife had saved that envelope for 25 years." Bill Kelly's body - like those of many of the victims of the terror - attacks has not been recovered in the ruins at Ground Zero. "For my - mom, it was a huge concern about finding his body," his sister said, "so those locks of hair were a blessing. It was immensely meaningful to have part of her son - still." At a time when most Americans are calling for payback, Colleen Kelly soldiers on as a 10 percenter, calling for peace. "It's a matter of faith," she said. Bill Kelly was a favorite uncle to his seven nieces and nephews. Two months after he was killed, one of his three sisters adopted her second child. "The family has a brand new baby," Colleen Kelly said. "We're sure she was sent to us by Uncle Billy. Her name is Faith." Copyright © 2001, Newsday, Inc. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytmid-12.20.01-06:27:34-7649