In late August, I travelled to New York City to do a workshop on the USA PATRIOT Act for an ad hoc conference of the Youth Convergence, part of the Bread Not Bombs movement. The Convergence was held at St. Mark's Church in Manhattan. It was part of tens of thousands of activists, demonstrators, and antiwar adherents of all kinds who gathered in New York to make their views known to the city and the world, during the Republican National Convention.

The workshop was interesting. But even more interesting were threads and observations evident about public reaction to the antiwar movement and the state of the movement's efforts to awaken a wider citizen consciousness about the Iraq quagmire and the Bush Administration's "war on terror."

Some of these threads and observations were made even more obvious at a well-attended afternoon workshop featuring some antiwar figures of the 1960s and 1970s, including SDS (Students for Democratic Society) notable Tom Hayden. It was interesting that although much has been learned, some of the same mistakes are being made. These observations are offered here, simply as a point of departure and discussion.

As an aside, words could never describe the strangeness and tenseness in the atmosphere as overbearing police and security forces covered nearly every inch of Manhattan. Madison Square Garden and Penn Station were transformed into an armed camp, with police and security contingents ringing both facilities, and increased police presence inside. All but two entry/exit points were blocked. Police with dogs were making themselves very visible. Even at the hotel, luggage was sniffed by a bomb-detection dog, and security agents verified reservation and identification of everyone, every time, before allowing entry to the hotel lobby. No one was going to allow anything to even come close to disrupting the Republican National Convention.

As a prelude, a huge Friday evening antiwar bike rally from Columbus Circle down Broadway and to Madison Square Garden, which appeared to have a permit, was at first tolerated by police but then resulted in hundreds of arrests as police claimed that some bike riders violated requirements for the rally and also supposedly assaulted some officers. That was just the beginning of waves of arrests, producing stories of injuries, rights violations, and ridiculous conditions in lockups or holding areas. At least one federal court required the release of many arrestees, criticizing the City and the police department for its conduct. The City obviously was willing to risk any federal court criticism in order to keep the streets clear.

As to the antiwar movement itself, against all odds and despite the massive demonstrations in New York at the Convention, the movement seems to be losing ground with great population of American middle class voters. Current opinion poll figures for President Bush continue to be strong, quite contrary to what would be expected given that Iraq is slowly sinking into civil war as revelations continue about prisoner abuse by US forces as well as the total lack of any evidence or defensible rationale for initiating the war. Although Democratic Party candidate Sen. John Kerry's campaign theme is "a stronger America," the message does not seem to be taking hold. Poll figures show Bush, in the final 60 days of the campaign, a nine to ten-point favorite over Kerry.

Unless something happens in Iraq, domestically, or in the debates to drastically change this picture, Bush will be re-elected. He will take most states in the South, middle South, and Midwest, leaving Kerry with the Northeast, a few Great Lakes States of industrial belt, and perhaps the West Coast. Right now, it looks like Pennsylvania and Ohio for Bush. If so, that will clinch the election even if Kerry takes all other States he is likely to win.

This will mean that once again, the antiwar message has not gotten through. Some of that
has to do with a hard-headed American culture that is woefully ignorant internationally and that will "support our troops" no matter what ridiculous military adventure they have been sent to perform. Some of it also has to do with a media that continues to be "more interested in the sizzle than the steak" and still is on a feeding frenzy over Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and documents concerning Bush's National Guard service. Both stories are non-issues. The media should know better.

There has been progress, of course. Some of the antiwar movement's message was taking hold in the 1970s. Until disco came along. And there was a rejection of the Reagan agenda in the Bush-Clinton election (although if it were constitutionally possible Reagan might have been elected to an unprecedented third term). Until Clinton squandered that opportunity with his disheartening half-truths and hounding and goodness knows what else. So, having taken maybe three steps forward and maybe four steps back, we are back where we started.

Some of this problem is the antiwar movement's own failure to bring the antiwar message home. This is a failure now happening for the fifth major time in 30 years. We have not been able to stop the initiation or the escalation of the following: Vietnam, Reagan's adventurisms in Grenada, Lebanon, and Libya, Reagan's turning up the dial on nuclear terror with MX missiles in the US and cruise missiles in Europe (which nearly led to nuclear war), Bush I's Gulf War, and now Bush II's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To be sure, the movement is facing historical American obstacles even older than Vietnam. Yet after all these years of effort--if "effort" is defined as changing prevailing attitudes about American imperialism and warmaking among the majority of the American voting public--the antiwar movement cannot seem to overcome them.

To the extent that the antiwar movement has erred in these efforts, the errors are too familiar. There is a tendency to rely on the rightness of our own analysis and the correctness of our own antiwar vision. There is a further tendency to support our own analysis with reams of mind-numbing information and review. Article after article, website after website, book after book, pamphlet after leaflet. All of it information and more information. Much of it fueled by anger. Little of it wisdom, outlook, or imagination.

There is a further tendency not to criticize enough, the brutalities committed by the forces
on the other side, in the daily battlefield situation. (At least, we have not repeated our mistake of vilifying the ordinary American combat soldier--who is rightly seen as a victim of the same absurd militarism no less than those who are on the receiving end of American ordnance.) And there is the lack of articulation of a positive vision of the future as opposed to a negative vision of the present.

Articulating a vision for the future means more than simply linking every other item on the progressive agenda to the antiwar movement, regardless of the fact that those connections do exist. If our purpose is to persuade and to transform, we only hamper our efforts when we expect or demand that someone who comes to agree with our antiwar position must agree with everything else.

Finally, there is a lack of interest in true dialogue. We in the antiwar movement are
supposed to be about alternatives and acceptance of others and new approaches--yet I have rarely seen any member of the antiwar movement engage in a patient, careful, respectful, productive dialogue with a person who happens to have an opposite view. It usually devolves very quickly into a shouting match. Which means we have just lost. We will get nowhere fast if we can muster only our anger to bring to these issues.

If the purity of our convictions and the rightness of our analysis and the power of our
presence were enough to change national and cultural attitudes, Bush's "antiterror" poll numbers would be at the bottom of a very deep well. Instead, those numbers are flying high because the country is affected by inertia, confusion, suspicion, fear, patriotism, pride in military, Christian right-ism, and is fed a daily diet of rhetoric and rationalization. An effective response can never be just more rhetoric or rationalization.

The antiwar movement must learn something it does not seem to have: patience and perspective. Is there nothing right with this country? Is everybody in it a herd of bleating dupes? Has this nation betrayed every principle, crushed every hope, denied every right? If so, then why are we bothering? Maybe we should just get on our "wooden ships" and split (anyone who recognizes that reference can join the AARP with me and with the folk rock group that sang that song).

Wars come and go. When war is here, it is rarely justifiable, is brutal and murderous, and must be stopped. But stopping one war does not stop the next. If we are to change attitudes for the long term, we must articulate--much better and with greater and innovative efforts and approaches--our vision of a world of larger peace, where war is a last resort and is rarely waged, where global realities are recognizes in ways other than globalization, where human rights are uppermost, and where every government's first priorities are public needs including employment, education, transportation, housing, health, safe power, and a clean environment. Not to mention inspiration.

We must learn to be teachers and prophets. We must speak spiritually without being embroiled in a religious debate. We must inspire and encourage and invite. True teachers are hard to find. True prophets are even rarer. I didn't see any among the hundreds of bike riders rolling down Broadway at 11 pm on the Friday before the RNC, shouting every conceivable antiwar slogan (even though it looked like a lot of fun).

That effort, frankly, must be undertaken in every elementary and secondary school, among the nation's youth (which is why the Youth Convergence was so important). The media and cultural forces which have their hooks into our nation's youth are massive and pervasive. If we do not act soon, as youth values are formed between the ages of 10 and 18, we will lose yet another generation to ridiculous patriotism, mediocrity, situation ethics, and consumerism.

The antiwar movement must be commended for its persistence and its energy, its insistence and its voice. Yet it must be faulted for a certain narrowness of vision and for a lack of credibility with the middle class. We must be willing to be self-critical, and keep what is good and fix what is not, if we have any hope of stopping the next war. For, as it looks now, we will not be able to stop the re-election of the President who initiated the current one. And believe me, if you think we are in trouble now, you ain't seen nothing yet.

C. William Michaels is an attorney in Baltimore, Maryland and the author of "No Greater Threat: America After September 11 and the Rise of a National Security State" (Algora, 2002). "No Greater Threat" is the only book containing a review of the entire USA PATRIOT Act. For more information on the book and author, contact www.nogreaterthreat.com.