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boston’s tea-time peace party The keepers of the Peace Vigil gather every Thursday tea-time in Depot Square in the small town of Lexington, a dozen miles north of Boston. ‘End the Occupation – Bring the Troops Home Now’ is inscribed on one banner; ‘The US used to be against Tyranny’ on another. The banners are held up by a straggly group of residents who exchange greetings with the passers-by. Drive-time commuters on nearby Massachusetts Avenue honk their support. ‘There is overwhelming sympathy for our position,’ says a local Democratic Party activist and vigil organiser. This is especially significant as we are on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, or ‘DNC’, at the Fleet Center in Boston. Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers sprout along Mass Ave. Whether or not to vote for Kerry was the subject of long debates across town, at the University of Massachusetts, or UMass, where the Boston Social Forum met on the weekend prior to the Convention. The prevailing view appeared to be that getting rid of Bush was the first priority. ‘Then the work really starts, on November 3rd’, as Lesley Cagan, the canny organiser of United for Justice and Peace, put it. UJP want to fill the streets of New York with protesters on 29th August, the eve of the Republican National Convention. That will pose some interesting questions for the authorities. In Boston, UJP and others refused to comply with the ‘Free Speech Zone’ established by the city authorities near to the Fleet Center. This walled cage, allegedly for up to 4,000 people playing ‘sardines’, was the subject of a legal challenge by the American Council for Civil Liberties. The judge found that the cage was certainly inimical to free speech, but nevertheless upheld that it was necessary to put people in it if they wished to register a protest during the Convention. In response, the UCJ and others refused to be complicit in their own muzzling and caging. Not surprisingly, Palestinian groups protesting against Israel’s wall and land-grab, did decide that the walled cage was a fitting venue and symbol for their own protests. Otherwise, as longtime South African activist Dennis Brutus told the Forum, let’s declare ‘Free-Speech Zones’ all round the city. ‘After all, isn’t all the US supposed to be a free-speech zone?’ ‘It’s never been easier to talk to people about the war’, according to Jim Caplan of the Somerville Teachers’ Association, during a workshop on ‘Organised Labour Against the War’, which receives much of its funding from the US public services union, SEIU. ‘More and more people are against it.’ Tony Donaghy, President of the RMT, spoke of a similar situation in Britain and Ireland. Mention of Tony Blair elicited loud hisses from Forum audiences The ‘Peace Track’ within the Forum was organised by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organisation. The impetus for this came initially from Ken Coates and the European Network for Peace and Human Rights (ENPHR), whose meetings in the European Parliament in Brussels were initiated by the Russell Foundation. The European Network had long wanted to strengthen its contacts and establish a dialogue with peace movement organisations in the United States. AFSC picked up the ball and ran with it at the Forum, broadening the participation to include activists from Asia, Africa and Europe, as well as from the United States, under the rubric of ‘A World Working Together for Peace’. War and peace will certainly be amongst the issues to the fore when the European Social Forum comes to London, from 14 to 17 October. Thousands are expected to participate. ‘We are many, they are few’, as Rae Street of CND reminded the closing session of the Boston Social Forum. Meanwhile, back in Lexington, where, in 1775, the ‘shot’ that echoed round the world marked the beginning of the removal of the British from their American colonies, Fahrenheit 9/11 continues to play to packed houses at the Lexington Flick, just across the street from Depot Square. The US peace movement is becoming altogether harder to ignore.
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