Oxford Citizens Rally Against War

By SCOTT MASON

     Protests have a rhythm. The young people’s protests filled with students are firecrackers. They have short wicks ready to explode into the public with self-made signs loudly displaying the anti-war message. Their energy recalls students protesting years ago against napalm in Vietnam and bombs in Cambodia. Dissent is patriotism, and they harbor the hope that the world is theirs to change. They sway and chant.

      “What do we want?”

     “We want peace.”

      “When do we want it?”

      “We want it NOW!”

      The students move together like heated molecules. They are visions of hope with their eyes up, flashing peace signs and smiles to all who will look. The group pulses fast. No one can help but see and know. The public agree with the message, or say to themselves, “These children have not lived enough to know the ways of the world.”

     The peace protest uptown has a rhythm and a repetition of its own. It is the type of rhythm that meets every single week and will stop meeting once a week only after George W. Bush calls off the war. Theirs is the rhythm that is in it for the long term. Maybe their presence won’t elicit a reaction from every person who walks or drives by during their weekly vigil. Many will react either positively or negatively, and if they don’t one week, then the protesters will be there the next week to ensure they do.

      On the coldest Wednesday of the winter, the protesters are still there demonstrating against conflict in Iraq. The breath of 25 protesters rises up from their mouths in white gusts as they bundle up against the freezing conditions. They stand in a straight, organized line on the sidewalk of the uptown park. They face traffic with their own signs a little more subdued than those of the student protesters.

     “Peace, not oil.”

     “War is not the answer.”

      A car drives by and the man behind the wheel honks his horn and flashes a peace sign. Linda Musmeci Kimball, the director of Oxford Citizens for Peace and Justice, gives the two-fingered sign right back. “It seems like we either get that or that.” She says taking down one of the fingers from the peace sign, and transforming it into a universal sign for nastiness.

      Kimball has been an Oxford resident for 35 years. She was the one who organized the weekly vigils in November, and the ongoing quality of the vigils seems to rest upon her shoulders. Others appreciate the weight she carries.

     “I have had considerable concerns about the idea of a war since they started talking about it, so I’m glad that someone else organized something so I could be a part of it,” Mary Melvin says of the weekly vigils, which she has been attending only recently. Melvin is an Oxford resident known for her volunteer work in the International Reading Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. Through these groups she spends weeks at a time in former Communist countries helping to instruct teachers on how to open their classrooms toward free expression in their new democracies.

     Kimble, Melvin and the other participants in the protest are considerably older than the student protesters. Some are retired; others such as Kimble work in Oxford. No one can accuse them of being too young to understand responsibility or the ways of the world. Some have experience protesting war in Vietnam, and all have something at stake in the situation with Iraq. Many know people or have family in the military, while everyone seems to disagree with the morality and justifications of instigating an armed conflict in Iraq.
“I cannot conceive of the United States of America being an aggressor and introducing a war. I just can’t get it to jive with what I know about our democracy,” Melvin says vehemently with others chiming in behind her.

      Also on their minds is the idea of public safety. John Blume, an Oxford teacher, believes that Iraq does not pose a direct threat to the U.S., and Al-Queda is the real concern. He believes that war in Iraq would do anything but put a stop to the terrorist group. “It’s the support for Al-Queda that we have to be afraid of and we’re not going to decrease the support, we’re probably going to increase it in the Muslim world by attacking.”

     Kimble organized the first protest on Nov 6, 2002, and there has been a group there every Wednesday following from noon to 1 p.m. with the exceptions of Christmas and New Year’s Day, which both happened to fall on Wednesdays. Not all of the protesters can make it every time due to scheduling conflicts or because they aren’t confident in their ability to remain healthy while bearing the freezing temperatures, but there seems to be a growing number of representatives every week while people in Oxford are catching wind of the protest and more are coming out to support.

     Despite the freezing weather, today marks the largest crowd to gather at the vigil yet. The majority of the group is over 50, but occasionally younger people will come join the ranks. In January a few Tallawanda High School students joined the protest, and this particular week Chris Burkhouse is visiting from Wisconsin. She has been in weekly protests in her hometown, and decided to participate and continue her support to protest movements while visiting friends in Oxford.

     One group conspicuously missing from the uptown vigil is the students. “Their constituency is their peers,” Kimble acknowledges. She realizes that many students are interested in protesting the policy of war in Iraq, but are tied up in class or are affiliated with campus groups such as MU Solidarity. Kimble has even gone to student-organized functions to show support and to weave her way through the crowd handing out signs and stickers to students who agree that dissent is patriotic.

     Of course not all students are supportive of Kimble and her anti-war stance. One week some students, rumored to be members of the ROTC program on campus, staged a counter-protest on the other side of the uptown park, expressing their view that war is the answer to the problems facing America. Kimble doesn’t have any hard feelings. She believes in the constitutional right to gather no matter what the opinion of the people involved.

     In the beginning she even faced some opposition in city council to her weekly vigils. Some officers told Kimble they were afraid that her group would monopolize the park, while others were worried about her group’s safety. She would have had to apply for a permit every two weeks to use the park. Instead of going these hassles, she compromised with the city manager and obtained a year-long permit to use the sidewalk on the side of the uptown park.

     From that point on, her protesters have stood in a straight line on the sidewalk, allowing pedestrians plenty of room to pass, while still making their presence felt.

     “We are out here letting the politicians, public officials, and the press, know that there are people who strongly oppose this impending war on Iraq.” Kimble says, presenting the mission statement for her group. “We’re going to continue to be here in solidarity with people in this country and the world.”

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