Chalk one up for us.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Demonstrations made US reconsider bombing Iraq in Feb '98 - Brief Article - Editorial

I left work a couple of hours early on February 12. I told the staff I had a demonstration to go to.

It was six days before dissenters flummoxed Clinton Administration officials at the Ohio State town meeting on Iraq, but here in Madison the peace movement needed no jumper cables. An ad-hoc coalition against U.S. aggression in Iraq kept going after the Gulf War in 1991, holding teach-ins on the effects of sanctions and protesting whenever the United States looked as if it was ready to attack Baghdad again. Last fall, when the Clinton Administration came close, a small group of about thirty of us gathered in front of the federal building to voice our opposition.

By February 12, with a U.S. attack appearing imminent, that group had swelled to about 175. Led by Norm Stockwell of Madison's fine community radio station, WORT, and by the indomitable peace activist Sam Day, it was a spirited rally despite the chill in the air. I was among friends. I stood next to my neighbor the radical reverend Cecil Findley. I waved to Betty Jallings of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and I saluted Bonnie Block of the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. But there were many new faces there, too--young people I did not recognize.

We listened to a speech from Dr. Karin Ringler of Physicians for Social Responsibility, who had visited Iraq and had seen the devastation sanctions had wrought. We heard from Erik Gustafson, a Gulf War vet who has been organizing against sanctions almost ever since. We chanted Save the Children, End the Sanctions, No More War.

Then Sam Day called for volunteers. He asked us to join him in blocking traffic on University Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in Madison. "We want to cause a minor disruption in order to protest the major disruption that a war in Baghdad would cause," Sam said. He warned us that we would be breaking the law, but almost everyone followed him anyway.

It was rush hour, and we spilled into the four lines of traffic. As the cars stopped, a few of us took some yellow leaflets and went door to door. Some drivers clenched their jaws and shook their heads, and one girl flipped me the bird from her passenger seat. But many drivers accepted our offering.

After a while, the police began to clear one lane of traffic and then another. "Bring on the fire hoses," said a college-aged guy standing outside a bar. But with the exception of one arrest and a short-tempered officer who snarled at a...