Activists for peace trying hard to be heard

By Jameson O’Neal

The Gazette

Mary Campbell is a soft-spoken woman with a lifelong instinct for defusing conflict and avoiding confrontation.

But recently, she felt her quiet pleas for peace on earth were lost in the din of the presidential candidates’ strident claims to be the more relentless terrorist hunter.

So on Oct. 15, Campbell raised her voice by crossing a security barricade set up in downtown Cedar Rapids for a rally by President Bush, deliberately getting arrested to protest what she and her allies called Bush’s militarism and efforts to suppress dissent by stoking fear.

“It was really radical for me,” said Campbell, 56, of Bertram. “I wanted to provoke people into wondering why an ordinary person would step out of character and do something so extreme.”

Campbell and two cohorts, Charlotte Martin, 41, of Cedar Rapids, and Maggie Swanson, 33, of Marion, pleaded guilty Monday to interference with official acts. They say they’re happy to pay the price — court costs and community service — but worry that their message was garbled by superficial news coverage.

While creative nonviolence — what Mahatma Gandhi termed satyagraha — proved powerful in the liberation of India, the civil rights movement and the elimination of apartheid, most Americans dismiss it as quaint or naive in a time transformed by a shocking mass murder.

When Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said he could fight a “more thoughtful, more sensitive war on terror,” he was roundly ridiculed, a reminder — if anyone needed one three years after 9/11 — that seeking to understand terrorists is widely deemed fruitless, even soft-headed.

But those who seek to change the world through nonviolent means insist understanding is essential to peacemaking.

Judith Pedersen-Benn, co-chair of Women for Peace Iowa, said world citizens must rise to the challenge of listening to those who at first appear unfathomably evil.

“Gandhi firmly believed that each side has some part of the truth, and only when you have the whole truth can you begin to find the right solution,” Pedersen-Benn said.

She said peacemaking requires inner transformation.

“You have to confront your capacity for greed and hatred,” Pedersen-Benn said. “You have to face the shadow side of life.” Peace activists say their movement is one of strength, not acquiescence.

“People tend to think peace is passive,” Pedersen-Benn said. “Peace is an active thing. It takes courage. You have to stand up to power.”

Far from advocating unqualified forgiveness, activists say terrorists must be caught and prosecuted in a manner that civilized countries agree is just. That, of course, requires patience and diplomacy – a tall order for an enraged and heavily armed people.

“If a hammer is your only tool, everything looks like a nail,” said Maureen McCue, president of the Iowa chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “The world is a fragile place, and it needs different approaches. It needs more humane approaches that address health and well-being and human rights, that acknowledge the need for all of us to work together.”

This story was originally published in The Gazette of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, on Oct. 29, 2004.