ANNALS OF DISSENT Rhode Islanders, in DC, slam the war BY JOHN ZORABEDIAN

They traveled overnight to the capital on cramped buses for nine hours. And after 10 hours of hearing speeches and marching past the White House, they again boarded the buses, exhilarated but exhausted, for the nine-hour trek back to Providence. Nearly 400 Rhode Islanders joined an estimated 250,000 other protesters in Washington, DC, on Saturday, September 24, telling the government, "Bring Our Troops Home Now."

Among the marchers, Tanya Fields of Providence, who served eight years in the Air Force and volunteers at a VA hospital, fears for her friends in the military and laments the lack of services for veterans. "With all of these young guys coming back, and women, with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, basically shell-shocked, we can’t help them," Fields says. "We don’t have the means to help them. They’re left on their own. And they’re going through a hard time, especially women, coming back to the states and acclimating to normal life."

Without any participation by Democratic Party leaders, with the president out of town, and with national media intently focused on the latest hurricane, it appeared to Brown University student Lydia Stein that the only audience for this volunteer army of dissent was itself. "If all we did was march our shoes thin and shout at empty government buildings, why did people travel so far, spend so much hard-earned money, lose so much sleep, stay up late organizing for months and years to make this protest happen?" Stein asks.

Similarly, Nick Schmader of Warwick worried that politicians are lagging behind the public perception of the war in Iraq. "This will translate, for me, into political action, but that is not being capitalized upon by the Democrats," he says.

Noah Merrill, program coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee in southeastern New England, however, was heartened by the protest. Police told him, he says, that more 370 people were arrested for performing civil disobedience – the largest number in a generation. "I think there was just an incredible spirit of commitment and jubilation," Merrill says. "The one most significant thing I heard from people was, ‘This must only be the beginning.’ " For the first time, the activist says, "This felt like a movement."

Shaun Joseph, an organizer with the Rhode Island Community Coalition for Peace, says the mobilization will help to build anti-war groups and coalitions on the local level. But anti-war groups have much more to do to be effective. "Not to pile on the self-flagellation in the movement, but it’s a little too white and middle class," Joseph says.

To reach out to working class blacks and Latinos, he says, the RICCP is organizing a Hurricane Katrina-related "Relief not War" discussion and forum on Saturday, October 1, at 5 pm at the Beneficent Church in Providence. To be successful, Joseph says, the anti-war movement has to engage in mass strikes and civil disobedience. "That’s what the big social movements of the ’30s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s did," he notes. "That’s where it’s going to have to go. Either our movement takes some risks, or our future is what happened to New Orleans."