Threat of War
-- Behind the News
Behind the protest: a lifelong organizer
By LAURA LONGHINE
The police said 100,000. The organizers said 900,000. The real
number of protesters at New York’s antiwar rally Feb. 15 probably lies
somewhere in between. With many protesters shuffled away from the action on
First Avenue, counting was difficult. But it was clear that Leslie Cagan,
coordinator of the rally, had succeeded in her goal “to put massive
numbers of people on the streets of New York City.”
Despite allegations of police aggression and a few arrests, in
general the demonstration was, as Cagan put it, “fabulous.”
“It sent a signal that there’s a very, very broad
opposition. It sent a signal that people were not deterred. People are going to
find a way to have their voices heard,” she said.
Cagan is a co-chairwoman of United for Peace and Justice, an
umbrella organization formed in October to coordinate antiwar protests. From
the eighth floor of an anonymous, down-at-the-heels high rise on West 42nd
Street, she and her co-workers are trying to stop the war before it starts.
They spent months preparing for February’s protest,
marshalling stars like singer/songwriter Patti Smith and Bishop Desmond Tutu
and blanketing the city with flyers in a host of languages including Arabic and
Chinese. Now they will turn their attention to lobbying and supporting other
protests throughout the country.
“I’m not blindly optimistic, but I’m hopeful,”
Cagan, 55, said. Wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and no makeup, she spoke from her
“office,” a small cubicle in the corner of a sparsely appointed
conference room. “I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything quite
like this. There’s no war yet and there’s a massive antiwar
movement.”
Hundreds of city organizations came together for the rally,
including an array of religious groups. Cagan specifically praised the
involvement of New York’s Forum of Concerned Religious Leaders, which
staged its own demonstration in December at the United Nations.
“There’s a lot going on in a number of different
faith-based organizations,” Cagan said, adding that antiwar activism has
emerged from the Protestant, Catholic and Muslim communities, as well as from
the “more progressive” sections of the Jewish community.
United for Peace and Justice counts on such broad-based support to
make an impact.
Although President Bush declared that he would not be swayed by
the worldwide protests, Cagan considers this acknowledgement a victory of
sorts. “He wouldn’t be saying anything if he was really ignoring
us,” she said.
“I would hope that we still live in something resembling a
democracy,” she said. “I would hope that the people in power would
try to take heed.”
Both of Cagan’s parents were activists, advocating for
desegregation and attending “ban the bomb” demonstrations to protest
atomic weapons testing in the 1950s. Little surprise, then, that when Cagan hit
New York University in the ’60s she became an activist in her own right,
serving on the student committee of the National Mobilization Committee to End
the War in Vietnam.
“I spent most of my last two years organizing and not going
to class,” she said. She graduated with a degree in art history in 1968
and thought about graduate school “for about 20 minutes.” The thought
did not hold much appeal.
“There it was, 1968 and the world was on fire,” she
said. “I’d sort of been bitten by the political activist bug.”
Thirty-five years later the bug, and its inherent optimism, is
still with her. Even as the Bush administration continues its “countdown
to Iraq,” Cagan does not believe war is a foregone conclusion.
“I believe very little is inevitable,” she said.
“It will be inevitable if we just sit back and wring our hands.” That
is why the demonstrations are so important. “There’s nobody whose
voice should be silent on this,” she said.
“Demos” -- protest demonstrations -- have become
Cagan’s life’s work. She has organized for a variety of causes, from
women’s rights to gay rights to nuclear disarmament. Along the way, she
has become an expert on the logistics of protest -- how to mobilize and turn
out large numbers of people, how to bring attention to a cause. In St. Louis in
the early ’70s, she and a group of antiwar protesters boarded a
decommissioned Navy minesweeper used as a museum. “Our plan was to sail it
down the Mississippi,” she said. “We never got out of the dock, but
we got tremendous press.”
Though she protested the war in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War,
Cagan is not a pacifist. “It’s not an ideological position for
me,” she said. “I believe that people have a right to self-defense. I
hope that if I had been in the Spanish Civil War I would have had the courage
to fight back.”
She does not believe the Bush administration has justified war in
Iraq. “It’s all about controlling oil distribution, controlling
resources,” she said. “And the constant need for the United States to
assert itself as the global power. It’s about empire.”
Though the New York rally is past, work continues for United for
Peace and Justice. Its representatives were scheduled to attend a New York City
Council hearing on police conduct during the rally. They supported a
“Virtual March on Washington” on Feb. 26, which encouraged people
throughout the country to storm government faxes and phones with messages of
protest, and a Student Strike Day on March 5, when students were encouraged to
walk out of classes in protest.
“This movement is very real and we’re going to keep
organizing and protesting,” Cagan said.
After a long day of trying to save the world, Cagan unwinds the
same way most Americans do, in front of the TV. “I love ‘Law and
Order,’ ” Cagan said. “And ‘ER’ and ‘Judging
Amy.’ ” But television is more than just a way to let her hair down.
Always the organizer, she wants to know what the masses are watching. “You
have to be able to talk to people, know what messages they’re getting and
how they’re getting them.”
If war does come, Cagan will keep fighting. “Just because a
war starts doesn’t mean we were wrong. It just means we need to redouble
our efforts.” After a lifetime of political protest, how does Cagan
maintain such efforts, without burning out?
“Well that I don’t know,” she says. “It’s
one of the great mysteries of life. I don’t even drink coffee.”
Laura Longhine is a free-lance writer and a graduate student at
Columbia University School of Journalism, New York City.
National Catholic Reporter, March 14,
2003
|
