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Hearing the drums of war

by Don Kazak

Barron Park resident Carol Brouillet is a typical Palo Altan in many ways. She is the mother of three sons -- at Juana Briones, Terman and Gunn -- a Scout leader, and a graduate of the Leadership Midpeninsula program, a nonprofit agency spawned by the Chamber of Commerce to give participants the tools to become community leaders.

However, she has put those skills to use in a manner that is anything but typical.

For more than a year now, you can find Brouillet at Lytton Plaza in downtown Palo Alto every Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. She sets up a couple of folding tables, fills them with books and leaflets, and hangs up anti-war banners.

She will talk with anyone who stops by, telling them what she thinks about 9/11, the War on Terrorism and, more recently, the likelihood of war against Iraq.

But she mostly listens to what other people say. She calls her weekly vigils "listening for a change," and when people stop by she asks them the same three questions and writes the answers down in a notebook:

* What do you feel about 9/11 and the response to it?

* How can we defuse terrorism?

* How can we create a safer world for our children?

These are questions without any obvious "right" answers, but they make people think, which is the point.

"The most typical response to the third question is by listening and respecting other points of view," she said. "The most typical response to the second question is to address the root causes of economic inequities, since one-fourth of the world lives in poverty."

And then she adds: "The common view is that poverty breeds terrorism, but most terrorism is state-sponsored. Al Qaeda was a creation of Saudi Arabia and our own CIA (by establishing fundamentalist Islamic schools in Pakistan, which created the Taliban in Afghanistan). It helps create a cycle of violence. Don't fund it, don't support it, and it will go away. It's not human nature to go out and blow up a building."

At that point, Brouillet is off and running -- figuratively and literally.

In a recent two-week period, there were only three days when she wasn't at an anti-war demonstration or meeting. The week of the anniversary of 9/11, Brouillet ran from one thing to another every day.

Why is she doing this?

"I don't mind spending 10, 15 or 30 minutes talking to someone," said Brouillet, the daughter of a conservative Southern California family who socialized with GOP power brokers. "I like to find out where they are and have a real dialogue."

She said the public has treated her well, even though she is highly critical of President George W. Bush and his policies. "I haven't been called unpatriotic by anyone I've really been in a dialogue with, only by guys driving by in trucks," she said.

"The highest thing you can do as a citizen is to hold your government accountable," said Brouillet. "You raise your voice and question the government. Others tell me they've been thinking these things but have been afraid to say them."

TBrouillet and other local activists are the latest chapter in Palo Alto's long involvement in the peace movement. The area, partially due to the proximity of Stanford activists, has provided more than its share of leaders. David Harris, a Stanford student body president in the late 1960s, went to jail rather than be drafted to fight in Vietnam. His former wife, folk singer Joan Baez, once had a nonprofit peace institute in downtown Palo Alto.

Earlier in the 1960s, Stanford students were part of the cadre of college students who went to Mississippi as part of freedom summer during the days of the Civil Rights movement. Palo Alto mainstream Protestant churches -- All Saints Episcopal, First Presbyterian and First Congregational, to name just a few -- have long involved themselves in such issues as homelessness and U.S. military policy in Central America.

Every once in a while, motorists driving along El Camino Real will see a group holding peace signs at Embarcadero Road. It's the Peace Center folks.

The Peninsula Center for Peace and Justice, located in a house next to First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, has been active for 20 years now.

Paul George has been involved in political work since he was a 16-year-old volunteer campaign coordinator for Sen. Eugene McCarthy back in 1968.

George started working at the Peace Center in 1988 and became its director on Aug. 1, 1990. That date is important, because Iraq invaded Kuwait the next day, leading to the Gulf War the following January.

If the U.S. attacks Iraq, there will be a peace demonstration at City Hall Plaza in downtown Palo Alto at 5 p.m. the same day. It's a tradition.

"We had 3,000 people (at City Hall) when the Gulf War started." George said. "It was the biggest anti-war demonstration in Palo Alto since the Vietnam war. We had 500 people when we started bombing Afghanistan."

If a war in Iraq starts, "You'll definitely be seeing the big marches in Palo Alto," he said.

The Peace Center is a nonprofit with about 1,000 members between Burlingame and Sunnyvale, with most residing in the Palo Alto area.

Anti-war sentiment is higher in the Bay Area than the rest of the country, George said, much like during Vietnam. But he asserted the movement is growing in the heartland, as well.

A national network for peace groups has formed, anticipating the war in Iraq, and more than 100 peace groups from around the country are taking part. "Now, we can get a real sense of what's happening," George said, through the coalition's Web site (www.endthewar.org).

The Peace Center's own Web page (www.Peaceandjustice.org) used to get 75-100 hits a day, George said. That's up to 400 a day now, with the drums of war beating.

George also speaks to community groups, including a recent visit to the San Mateo Kiwanis Club, hardly a hotbed of radicalism. "Some members there expressed serious doubts" about a war in Iraq, George said. "They didn't understand what was happening and why we needed this vote," speaking of the War Powers Resolution passed by Congress earlier this fall.

George points to the War Powers Resolution as a mark of how far to the right the country has moved since 9/11. Before the Gulf War, a War Powers Resolution was passed in the Senate by just five votes. This year's resolution was passed by a 77-23 margin. More than 200 House members voted against the Gulf War resolution, a far fewer number voted against the current War Powers Resolution.

"People critical of (a war in Iraq) say they haven't been given any legitimate reason to go to war," George said. "This administration has failed miserably to change the dynamics of the Mideast through diplomacy, and now they'll do it through force."

"It's about oil," George adds. "It's the oil companies in the White House" (both President Bush and Vice President Cheney have energy company business backgrounds).

George feels that protesting a war in Iraq is a true act of patriotism. "It's always patriotic to take a direct, participatory role in any decision we make," he said. "And the question of war and peace is the greatest decision we make."

Such questions take on greater urgency in a land already torn by terror and violence. In the Mideast itself, few issues are cut-and-dry, as innocents on both sides of the conflict are killed with alarming frequency.

For Brooke Atherton, though, the matter has become crystal clear; standing in front of an Israeli tank can do that to a person.

Atherton graduated from Stanford two years ago, and spent the intervening time working at the Haas Center there, which connects students with volunteer work in the surrounding communities.

Haas quit that job this summer to go to the West Bank as part of a Palestinian group working for peace. The effort was called Operation Defensive Shield and "internationals" like Atherton became human shields, protecting Palestinians from the actions of the Israeli military forces.

"They promote non-violence," Atherton said of the group. "They decided to bring in internationals because Israel was reacting so violently."

She stayed in the West Bank settlement of Askar, which has Palestinian refugees from 37 former villages in Israel. Some have been in the camp since 1948.

"I talked with a women, a grandmother, who walked there from Jaffa in 1948," Atherton said. "She was 15 years old then. They were told it would be a week, but 54 years is a very long week."

The fear of being shot by Israeli soldiers "is part of daily life there," she said. By Israeli law, the military can demolish the homes of anyone acting against Israel, so she and other internationals often slept in Palestinian homes to protect the residents. "They knew we were in there," she said of Israeli soldiers.

While people here can run the risk of being called anti-Semitic if they criticize the policies of the Israeli government, the debate in Israel itself over the West Bank occupation is fierce.

Much of that debate was triggered by a young lieutenant in the Israeli reserves (everyone in the country serves in the military), who wrote the famous "Soldier's Letter" published in Israeli newspapers. He refused to serve on the West Bank when he was called up earlier this year, and his case is now before the Israeli courts. And the protest is gathering momentum, with other Israelis refusing to serve on the West Bank.

Atherton didn't meet any soldiers like that, though.

During the march with women and children, the protestors were met by an Israeli tank. "The tank pointed its gun at us and came very close," she said. "It was presumed that the internationals (who were standing in front of the Palestinians, arms linked together) created a deterrent from shooting into the crowd."

Then the tank shot a smoke cloud into the crowd. "You had no idea what they were going to do," she said. "The smoke was so think we couldn't see each other."

After 10 minutes, the tank backed away and a Jeep with soldiers drove up. "One of them said, 'Don't make me shoot at the children,'" Atherton said.

The protestors refused to back down. Instead, they sat down and had lunch.

"So we didn't march forward, we didn't want to take that risk," she said. "But we held our ground for an hour. It was a huge victory. We didn't go back until we chose to, and that sparked renewed demonstrations against the curfew."

The Israelis weren't about to shoot a young, blonde woman from Texas, by way of Stanford.

"I knew that soldier wasn't going to shoot me, this white girl from the U.S.," Atherton said.

But later, a boy was shot while walking with four internationals, so it wasn't a foolproof scheme.

Nothing there is.

Few elements of the emerging protest movement convey their message quite as eloquently as the Women In Black, a group that takes its stand in silence.

Every second and fourth Friday at noon, you can find the group holding a silent vigil in Lytton Plaza.

Several of them are part of a group of seven women from Palo Alto. Menlo Park and Atherton who meet twice a week in each other's homes to meditate, talk, provide comfort and walk in each other's gardens. (Editor's note: One of the women is Carolyn Clebsch, a former Weekly photographer.)

They started meeting after 9/11 last year and, near the anniversary of that tragedy, six of them signed a letter to the Weekly that expressed their thoughts about the War on Terrorism and the possibility of war in Iraq.

"We are dealing with our personal reactions to this," Clebsch said. "That's how we began."

"In my lifetime, we've never been in this place before," said Carol Fitzgerald. "It's scary. "I'm scared."

"I remember when the drums of war started before," said Della Lou Swan, who is also part of the Women in Black. "The group has helped me be more centered."

Meg Beeler had been part of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war. "I was frustrated and angry then," she said. "I still feel despair, but it sits there right along with peacefulness now."

Beeler is one of the women who wrote the letter published in the Weekly. "We were talking about the rule of law," she said, which governs constitutional democracies like America. "All of us are thinking human beings and we were thinking about the people who are having their lives and country ruined," like in Iraq.

Ginny Anderson, who also helped write the letter to the editor, has a closer experience with 9/11 than most of us. A mental health professional who volunteers for the Red Cross, she went to the East Coast after the terrorist attacks last year as part of a Red Cross effort.

"How do we learn to be more peaceful?" she asks. "Even in this pocket of tranquility, it's really easy to be angry."

Barbara Hiken has been a peace activist her whole life, "but with this group, I feel I am awakening. We wanted to do something ongoing." She also gives money to a land mind foundation.

"We needed to find something concrete to do," said Jenny Buchen. "I have eight grandsons between the ages of 8 and 21. I doubt we will have a draft, but we could. It's really important for us to provide role models for our children and grandchildren, to move the world."

Women in Black has antecedents going back to silent protests in Chile 30 years ago when women there protested the overthrow of the Allende regime and the resulting violence when people "disappeared."

Also, in 1989, women in Israel and Palestine started similar, silent protests for peace there.

A women named Elaine Baskin started Women in Black in Palo Alto last April. "There are many people who feel alone and isolated," Beeler said.

In Lytton Plaza, people often come up to the group and express their gratitude. Sometimes they stand in silence as well, a small sign of unity in a world seemingly spinning out of control.

E-mail Don Kazak at dkazak@paweekly.com