“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” — Leo Tolstoy
Twenty years ago, in November, 1998, a small group of people began meeting at the American Friends Service Committee office in Florence. Frances Crowe and her friend and fellow Quaker Ruth Hawkins organized the meeting to talk about the crisis in Iraq.
Like countless others, I was moved to action and found myself at that meeting because Frances approached me and asked me to get involved. She spotted me at the Transfer Station one day. “Claudia,” she said, “do you know what’s happening to children in Iraq?” Thousands are dying every month as a result of U.S.-supported UN sanctions.” She handed me a postcard, a hallmark of her activism, and invited me to a talk about Iraq that evening. I didn’t know about the sanctions. I think it’s safe to say very few people did, in 1998; we only knew about and worried about Saddam Hussein.
“It sounds terrible,” I said declining her invitation. I already had more than I could do keeping up with my commitments on the Northampton School Committee. But the die was cast. Iraqi children, like the proverbial grains of sand in an oyster shell, began agitating my conscience. When I ran into Frances again some weeks later, she told me she and five others were facing charges for an act of civil disobedience. “Maybe you could come to the trial,” she suggested, “and write something for the Gazette.” It was summer. I had time and agreed to her proposal.
Frances and five others were charged with trespassing on the property of the Raytheon Corporation, one of the largest arms dealers in the U.S. The group’s defense was “necessity.” They submitted to the facts but argued this “crime” was necessary to prevent a much worse crime — crimes against humanity — against men, women and children in Iraq. They mounted a vigorous defense over two days, based on volumes of statistics, analysis and firsthand testimony supporting their claim that Iraqis were already experiencing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. They didn’t win the case, but by the time it was over, I was — as the Quakers say — under the weight of this issue. I became part of an organizing committee that fall.
We created the Northampton Committee to Lift the Sanctions on Iraq as a long-term strategy for education and advocacy. We met every Friday afternoon to share resources and information. We organized educational events, speakers and protest marches; we sat in at congressional offices and stood at the gate at Westover. We networked with national anti-war/sanctions groups. And, in what we thought would be a short-term strategy, we decided to stand in vigil and leaflet in front of the courthouse in Northampton for one hour every Saturday, from 11 a.m. to noon.
Surely, we thought, when people understand the magnitude of this crisis, they will join, not just in working against the sanctions and war in Iraq but in working against all war and the war machine — the military, industrial, congressional and corporate media complex — that makes it possible.
Of course, that didn’t happen. It was extremely difficult to get people — elected officials or fellow citizens — to respond to human suffering in Iraq. Yes, there were huge protests before the 2003 invasion, and there was an outcry at the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib, but in general people were concerned about Saddam Hussein, not ordinary Iraqis. And when Hussein was captured and put to death, when Iraq began sliding into sectarian violence and internal warfare, many people shook their heads and wondered without empathy or any sense of responsibility what it would take for “those people” to put their country straight again.
I left the vigil in 2006, searching for a new strategy. Others stayed on and continue standing to this very day. It has been 20 years; 1,040 weeks. Some 100 flyers might be handed out each week — that’s 104,000 flyers into the hands of just as many people. Surely, many — we will never know how many — have been inspired and have taken action.
I think about my own experience: Frances, the postcard, the trial, the Northampton Committee, the vigil … and I wonder at my lack of faith, my skepticism about the strategy of a vigil or a demonstration — one that lasts one hour or 20 years. Why these lingering doubts in the face of my own experience? What do I want to accomplish? What am I hoping for?
Nothing short of an end to war. What do we want? PEACE. When do we want it? NOW.
We need patience, I tell myself, thinking of Tolstoy, and time. Another world is possible.
Claudia Lefko is a longtime educator and advocate for children. She left the vigil to focus her efforts on a pediatric oncology unit at Children’s Welfare Teaching Hospital in Medical City, Baghdad.