The antiwar movement prepares to escalate
The day the war starts, organizers vow to shut down financial districts -- and even infiltrate a key U.S. Air Force base.
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By Michelle Goldberg
March 14, 2003 | If bombs start falling on Iraq, peace activists say, expect insurgency at home.
Demonstrators are planning to shut down San Francisco's Financial District, to gather by the thousands in New York's Times Square and stage sit-ins in Washington, D.C. Others are ready to try to breach security at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California, where much of the military targeting operations will be done for an Iraq bombing campaign. They're going not just to protest, but to interfere. "We have the possibility of disrupting operations that feed directly into the Iraq war in a limited but very real way," says Peter Lumsdaine, coordinator of the Military Globalization Project, the group that's organizing the Vandenberg action.
Until now, most of the big antiwar demonstrations, especially in the United States, have been peaceful, preplanned, law-abiding events. Permits have been secured, routes mapped, and stages set up. The next phase in the antiwar movement is likely to be far more spontaneous and chaotic. Frustrated by a government they say is ignoring their voice, galvanized by the imminence of war, activists are moving from protest to direct action. "My sense is that if the war breaks out, things will escalate," says L.A. Kauffman, a staff organizer with United for Peace and Justice, a major antiwar coalition. "You'll see a lot more street blockades and building blockades. You'll see the normal course of business disrupted by protests in a way that hasn't happened so far."
Already, activists are ramping up their tactics. On Friday, March 14, a loose network of people called Direct Action to Stop the War are going to try to shut down the Pacific Stock Exchange in downtown San Francisco, kicking off a campaign of civil disobedience that organizer Patrick Reinsborough says is meant "to show the Bush administration and their corporate backers that if they won't stop the war, a nonviolent grassroots uprising will physically unplug the war machine."