A new peace movement.

The February protest at Ohio State against the U.S. plans to bomb Iraq not only caught the Clinton Administration off guard. It caught the media, and even some veteran peace activists, by surprise as well.

When protesters packed the St. John Arena to confront Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen, and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on February 18 before an international TV audience, they seemed to come out of nowhere.

"Bombing will not settle the score, Bombing is an act of war," they chanted. They stood up to the Clinton team and asked tough questions about the hypocrisy of U.S. policy the officials couldn't answer.

When Albright said to the crowd, "We need your support," the protesters shouted back, "You can't have it!"

The Ohio State event reenergized peace activists across the country. But it was not an isolated incident. Nor was it the first. On other campuses and in other communities, protests sprang up to block U.S. aggression against Iraq.

Within weeks. the outlines of a new anti-war movement began to appear. Some of the protesters were seasoned activists. Many were newcomers. Appalled by the prospect of a U.S. bombing raid, sickened by news of civilian casualties since the 1991 Gulf War, people who had never been politically active before began to organize teach-ins, vigils, demonstrations, and information campaigns -- and prepared for civil disobedience. They might not have been striving for systematic political change, but they insisted that U.S. policy toward Iraq is wrong.

Ohio State was a well-planned event, with local and national groups participating. "Basically, there were sixteen to twenty groups -- mostly students -- involved in organizing it," says Sultane Salim, a senior at Ohio State and president of the Muslim Student Association. "We met at noon on the day of the event and protested at the gates of the campus until 1 p.m., when we moved outside the St. John Arena. Some protesters went inside because they wanted to participate."

For Salim, the Iraq protest was a pivotal event. "I have never before done political work in quite this way. I have been a part of the Association for years, but never organized a rally, a protest, or anything similar. Usually, we just send out letters to Senators, that sort of thing. This time, we were out, visible, in full force."

Why now? "The idea of a military attack on Iraq -- which basically would just kill citizens with no valid policy objective. no methodology -- made me mad," says Salim. "We would just be punishing a civilian population for what its government is doing -- and that is against every international law. The callousness of the Administration motivated me."

Jon Strange is a substitute teacher in the Columbus public schools. "My housemate. who belongs to a group called Anti-Racist Action, told me about an impromptu meeting the night before the event," says Strange, who opposed the 1991 Gulf War when he was in high school. "Some grad students were there, one professor, and some community members. We drew up a flier: Questions you won't get to ask at the Town Hall Meeting.

But Strange did get to ask one. He was the person who stood up to Albright and asked: "Why bomb Iraq when other countries have committed similar violations? For example, Turkey has bombed Kurdish citizens. Saudi Arabia has tortured political and religious dissidents. Why does the U.S. apply different standards of justice to these countries?"

When Albright failed to give a satisfactory response, Strange said: "You're not answering my question, Madame Albright."

Strange got his turn at the microphone as the result of a bargain with CNN. Because his group, the Columbus Coalition for a Democratic Foreign Policy, was making so much noise during Albright's speech, a CNN producer begged the protesters to be quiet and offered them one questioner in exchange for lowering their voices. They agreed and Strange stepped to the mike.

Though the Ohio State forum received the most coverage, there were many more signs of dissent.

Students at the University of South Carolina-Columbia on the 19th were more polite than in Columbus, but they still grilled Albright. On February 20, about 150 protesters at the University of Minnesota shouted down U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson. A member of the Progressive Student Organization -- Jennifer Udelhofen -- overturned a bag of ashes on the floor.

Michael Klare heads the program in Peace and World Security Studies for the Five College Consortium -- Smith, Mount Holyoke, Amherst, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Hampshire. On February 16, Klare and other academics held a teach-in about the Iraq crisis at Smith College. Klare was expecting the normal turnout for such events -- about thirty students. He was stunned when more than 300 students, arrived.

"The brazenness of the American government seems to be the main cause of this changing public attitude," says Klare. Seeing the United States act like a bully and threaten to kill civilians incited people to protest, he says.

Mary Catherine Jones is a sophomore at Smith College. On February 21, she organized another 300-person rally -- her first major political act. She credits her friend Maya Schreiber, a senior at Smith, with motivating her. Shreiber, in turn, took her inspiration from Ohio State.

"The fact that the students were on the front page, and their voices were really respected, was inspiring. That night, I decided to do something," says Schreiber. She had never before done activist work. "I didn't do anything when the Persian Gulf War broke out. I was in high school, and I have regretted how apathetic I was."

Yin Mei Lim, also a Smith student, attended the February 21 march. "This is my first political involvement. My motivation -- apart from all the intellectual arguments about why it is a stupid thing to do -- stems from my fundamental belief that war is wrong, and that instigating one is unforgivable."

Lim helped to form an ad hoc coalition with the five regional colleges. They had their first meeting on February 23. "We will screen videos, host panel discussions, and so forth. Even though the U.N. and Iraq have made a deal, there are still sanctions to protest, and the possibility that Hussein will not keep up his end."

Aurora Wood, a senior at Smith, also became active in February. "I went to the teach-in and educated myself about Iraq. The questions had festered in my mind for a while, but it wasn't until the teach-in that they became powerful for me," she says. "That night, I contacted the president of the student government association because I felt like we needed to mobilize immediately." They organized a meeting; about forty students came, including Jones and Schreiber.

"I have done very little activist work before now," says Wood. "I guess the immediacy of issues of war strike a chord -- the complete violence of it and complete disregard for human life."

"Students want to do something but don't know what," says Katie Hughes, a senior at Goucher College near Baltimore. Hughes's opposition to the Iraqi sanctions and possible military strike is her first activist experience. She and fifty other Goucher students participated in an anti-war, anti-sanctions fast in late February.

Some activists have engaged in mild forms of civil disobedience. More than 150 Madisonians, some from the University of Wisconsin, stopped traffic at rush hour on February 12 for about forty minutes and passed out leaflets to stranded motorists.

The University of Michigan hosted a teach-in on February 12, which included screening a documentary on the effect of sanctions. "Students wept as disease-stricken children flashed across the screen," the Michigan Daily said. Similar teach-ins have sprung up across the country.

High-schoolers as well as college kids joined the protests. Sixteen-year-old Robert Lawson attends high school in Ohio -- and attended the event at St. John Arena. Lawson sensed a lot of "frustrated emotion" while at the rally. "Many people in attendance felt like they did not have a voice or a say in the actions of their country."

Rainy Demerson, a senior at a San Jose high school, says that her first political act was becoming vegetarian as a fifth grader. She got involved in protests against U.S. policy toward Iraq because "bombs don't know who to kill."

Many of this new crop of protesters shy away from overtly political arguments. As one University of Michigan-Ann Arbor student declared during a recent anti-war-in-Iraq rally: "This is a humanitarian issue, not a political one."

Brad Simpson, a graduate student at Northwestern, says that's a common sentiment. "The core of the response is that it just feels wrong," he says. Northwestern held an interfaith prayer service and teach-in on February 16.

Simpson has made at least one convert -- his mother. "She's come 180 degrees," he says. "She recognizes now that what we are doing is so abominable."

Simpson is a member of Voices in the Wilderness, a group that engages in civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance against sanctions. It sends delegations to iraq to act as witnesses and to deliver humanitarian assistance.

"When I went to Iraq in December of '96, I met two children -- Noora and Mohammed -- who were suffering from a treatable form of leukemia," Simpson says. "They were dying because they couldn't get the medicine. A delegation went back last March with anti-cancer medicine, wanting to help those two, but Noora and Mohammed were dead. I have never been so angry in my entire life. These children, who had meant nothing to me beforehand, had become a part of me by sheer circumstance of US. brutality, and then they were dead."

Arab Americans played a part in many protests. "Until the middle of February, Harvard student activism on Iraq happened primarily through the Society of Arab Students," says senior Amahl Bishara. "One of the reasons is that Arab Americans are used to doing activism on Palestine, so they already have a force and a coherence prepared for a situation like this. The happy surprise is that more mainstream American groups are getting involved in protesting the actions in Iraq. Too often there is a separation between issues of justice in the Arab world and other issues on the progressive slate."

The increased presence of new faces at Tucson rallies has heartened local activist Geri Armsby. "Since the beginning of February, we have had three consecutive demonstrations," Armsby says. "At first, we just had the old-timers out there, about fifty of them who have responded to other social issues, like Chiapas. At the second rally, there were about seventy people, and at the third, more than one hundred. Members of Tucson's Arab community came to the latter two demonstrations -- people who do not necessarily do other political work with us."

Erik Gustafson, one of the first Gulf War vets to come out against against sanctions, was in Chicago for a week of protests in late February. "For the first time, I'm seeing large turnouts by the Muslim community," he says. "On February 27, there were 1,000 people at the Daley Center. A lot of the leadership for that rally came from the Muslim Students Association at the University of Chicago."

"This was pretty massive," says Tammie Ismail, president of the association. "We really got people active."

Ali Abunimah is a member of the Arab American Action Network in Chicago. "Something reawakened in this city during the Iraq crisis," he says. "Everyone was there. Arabs, Muslims, the old left, the new left, faith-based people, queer activists. The breadth was something."

"There's more of an interest in people collaborating with other groups," says Bob Bossie, a staff person at the Eighth Day Center for Justice, a Chicago-based coalition of twenty-eight congregations of Catholic priests, brothers, and nuns. Bossie attended the Daley Center demonstration and recalls one of the chants: "Christians, Muslims, Jews unite. Killing children is not right."

"The impact of Columbus, Ohio, cannot be overstated," adds Bossie, who saw attendance at rallies rise dramatically in February. "The Administration got caught with its pants down, and the protests inspired a lot of people, which proves that it doesn't take a million people to make a difference."

Other religious coalitions are speaking up against U.S. policy toward Iraq. The Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Coalition of Los Angeles was born during the Gulf War. Since then, a core group of twenty to twenty-five people has been meeting regularly to talk, hold informational sessions, and support protests. "We are very comfortable together at this point," says the group's organizer, Salim Al-Marayati.

National peace groups helped organize some of the protests. Peace Action, the successor to the anti-nuclear group SANE-Freeze, sent its executive director, Gordon Clark, to the town meeting at Ohio State, along with members from its local chapter. And it helped put together rallies on campuses and in communities around the country.

Ramsey Clark's International Action Center helped pull together the National Emergency Coalition to Stop the War Against Iraq, a coalition of 200 organizations, which organized mass rallies that took place on February 28 in San Francisco and New York. In San Francisco, 2,500 people took to the streets, and 5,000 rallied in Times Square to demand an end to war threats and sanctions.

"People are getting more active," says Jon Strange in Columbus, Ohio. Erik Gustafson agrees: "I was giving talks on Iraq in the summer to twenty people. Now the turnouts are ranging from sixty to 300. I'm seeing a lot of new faces."