Not Ready for Prime Time: Peaceniks

The anti-globalization movement may be history, but the antiwar movement has a future. And yet the anti-antiwar movement has a bright outlook too.

This became clear on Saturday as I stood amid a thousand or so protesters milling around in front of the World Bank headquarters in Washington, just a block from the White House. I had been here in April 2000, when a crowd perhaps 50 times the size had gathered to “spank the bank” for promoting capitalist globalization. That was a mostly lighthearted assemblage, protesting and celebrating everything from Starbucks to sea turtles. But now that Osama bin Laden, running his own multinational terror empire from Afghanistan, has shown the world another kind of globalization, this dwindled straggle of protesters seemed fewer, angrier, more bitter.

To be sure, a few merry pranksters dotted the crowd, proudly arrayed in silly, showy costumes. One man, for instance, wore a fake red nose and a gargoyle mask on the back of his head. His name? “Supreme Vermin.” I asked him what, if anything, had changed on Sept. 11. “Good question. No comment,” he said. Then he added: “Look man, I’m a clown.”

Others were more serious, such as Karly Whittaker, 25, a University of Iowa student. I asked her the same question: What changed on Sept. 11? “It brought home to me the fragility of our situation,” she answered. And so what to do? “Let’s not fight the wrong war. Let’s get to the root causes. Let’s evaluate sanctions on Iraq, our support for Israel and for military dictatorships around the world.”

Another 25-year-old, Chris Shephard, a schoolteacher in Tampa, sounded similar themes: “We can’t turn tragedy into war.” We must also, he said, “directly address the crimes of the U.S.” He was sorry about the 6,000 people killed in New York City, but wanted to talk more about the “1 million Iraqis killed by sanctions.” Then he directed me to the anarchists: “They have some really beautiful and peaceful things to say.”

So I figured I’d learn some beauty and peace from the anarchists. After all, they were right there and hard to miss--50 of them, dressed all in black, their faces mostly masked, many with metal studded into their flesh as well as on their clothes. I went up to one and introduced myself. “The corporate media lies. Can’t help you.” I made two more interview attempts and was rebuffed.

So maybe they weren’t so beautiful, after all, unless one likes the look of, say, bandits and the Nazi SS. As for peaceful, I’m not so sure about that, either; one wore a leather jacket--so much for peace toward cows--with the words “Destroy Society.”

These anarchists didn’t destroy anything, however, maybe because the cops were right there. And far more than the anarchists, the police, dressed in full body armor, were ready for a rumble. Indeed, as I looked around, I realized that the cops had us surrounded; there were that many of them. Then, without any notice, one wall of them started marching forward, shouting and thrusting their batons. All of us--demonstrators, street people, journalists, even the black-clad anarchists--quailed before the thick blue line as it herded us down H Street.

So goodbye, anti-globalism; hello, antiwar. It was always a bit of a stretch to argue, as the earlier anti-globalist protesters did, that Third World peoples should be left alone by World Bankers--which is to say, that the men of Afghanistan should be left alone with nothing except perhaps their harsh sexism and martial zealotry.

But the antiwar sentiment that has now supplanted the anti-globalization spirit is likely to have legs. To be sure, their numbers will shrink, but those who remain in “the movement” likely will be sharper and more concentrated, like coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.

The big question, of course, is how their opponents, the anti-antiwar majority, will react. The tough readiness of the D.C. police was one early indicator. And perhaps Americans can be forgiven if, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, they aren’t quite ready to relate to a “peace” movement that barely bothers to acknowledge their losses.