Peace activists remain committed

Originally published: Monday June 7 2004
By BETSY GILLILAND
Staff Writer
         
Alarmed by the "drumbeats of war," Karen Porter of West Goshen decided to go to an anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C., in October 2002.
    
She contacted the international Act Now to Stop War and End Racism coalition about buying a bus ticket. ANSWER, in turn, asked her if she could bring a busload of people to the demonstration. Porter doubted she could find that many people who would be willing to go.
    
She was wrong.
    
"We filled up three buses and were turning people away," she said.
   
A month later, she founded the Chester County Peace Movement. Eighteen months later, after having seen tanks roll into Baghdad, President Bush's administration proclaim "mission accomplished" and then the death toll among American soldiers rise and turmoil engulf Iraq, Porter and her group are still loyal to their quest to bring about and end to the war.
    
And, as national polls show, many in the country are beginning to have some of the same doubts members of the CCPM share.
    
Porter is not surprised. "We're not all hippies and sandals," she said. "We're all kinds of people."
    
She described Peace Movement members as teachers, physicians, senior citizens who are concerned about the state of world affairs and parents who are worried about the future of their children.
    
And, almost every Saturday since November 2002, these people have promoted their message by holding signs on the corner of High and Market streets in West Chester from 11 a.m. to noon.
    
"That's rain or snow or zero temperatures," said Porter. "That's a very cold and windy corner. And it's hot in the summer."
    
More and more people have become receptive to their message, she said, as the death toll has mounted in Iraq.
    
"It's dragging on and it hasn't been getting better," said Porter. "I think the lies that have been exposed have made some people start to question."
    
In its runup to the war, the Bush administration said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the United States. However, WMDs have yet to be found.
    
"The war hasn't gone away. And we haven't gone away," said Porter. "And we never gave a thought to going away."
    
They suspended their Saturday morning vigils after President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 and, beneath a banner that read "mission accomplished," declared an end to major combat in Iraq.
    
However, Porter said, they returned to the corner a week or two later.
    
"We have more and more ordinary people who say, 'Thank you for doing this,'" said Porter. "It's been an amazing growth from passers-by."
    
The organization has an e-mail list of about 700 people. It has expanded its activities to offer informational sessions, voter registration drives, scholarships for two young people to attend a peacemaker training institute and the formation of a speakers bureau.
    
Porter said interest in the Peace Movement from military families has come and gone. However, she also said the organization saw an upsurge in interest after the death of West Chester's Nick Berg in Iraq.
    
"I think that brought (the war) home to a lot of people," she said.
    
Porter said the experience sometimes has been "painful."
    
The most frustrating aspect, she said, is the passers-by who makes derogatory comments without stopping to talk. In addition, she said, the war has diverted attention away from domestic issues such as health care.
    
Their supporters also lack representation in Washington, D.C., she said, adding that they receive nothing but form letters from Chester County's congressional delegation in response to their concerns.
    
U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-6th, of West Pikeland, said he has gotten mixed reaction to the Iraq war from his constituents. However, he said he plans to take a poll of his constituents in the next couple of days. In the survey, he said, he plans to ask constituents if they support the effort in Iraq.
    
Gerlach, who has backed the Iraq war from its outset, was not surprised that peace movements have garnered support.
    
"I think any time that our country's engaged in war, there are people that are opposed to it. And they exercise their constitutional rights of free speech and assembly," he said. "The question is, what is the best policy to protect your safety and your national security?"
    
While it is important to hear from constituents, he said, he also has to make judgments based on the information he receives as an elected official.
    
"The last chapter in all this has certainly not been written," said Gerlach. "And at the end of the day, more Americans than not are going to support what we're doing."
    
However, Betsey Piette, of the Philadelphia chapter of ANSWER, said "the Bush policy in Iraq is falling apart in a lot of ways."
    
She said she is not surprised that ANSWER, which was started in the spring of 2002 to promote education and activism, and other similar organizations have grown.
    
"I think this peace movement has been able to hang on, in large part, because it's been more international," said Piette. "People really feel fundamentally that we're right. This is a war that should not have been started."
    
Porter also said the Chester County Peace Movement will outlast the Iraq war.
    
"There will always be a voice here in Chester County so nobody has to create this again," she said. "We want to be an institution that survives all of us who started this."

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Peace Movement looks to move forward
 Originally Published: Thursday Feb. 10 2005  
By GINA ZOTTI
Staff Writer

WEST CHESTER -- Because she feels that the country is and will be constantly at war, the leader of the Chester County Peace Movement said the organization will always be necessary.

"Unfortunately, the peace business never goes away," said Karen Porter, founder of the CCPM.
    
However, Porter may be stepping down from her position as president of the organization in the coming months and with it, the group may see a shift in its organizational standing.
    
"We're not folding," she said. "This isn't the end of anything."
    
But Porter recently used the group's e-mail list to inform members that as they begin to look to the future, they should do so without her holding the reins.
    
In the e-mail letter, Porter asked members for an alternative to the current system of organization. Since its inception two years ago in opposition to the then-threatened war in Iraq, Porter was responsible for organizing all that was the Chester County Peace Movement, from its networking of like-minded individuals to its weekly pro-tests to its educational lectures.
    
With upcoming personal obligations, Porter said she will be stepping aside with hopes that another individual or board of members will keep the group going.
    
For West Whiteland resident Michael Berg, whose son, Nicholas, was beheaded by insurgents in Iraq in May, the organization was a "blanket" and a "soapbox" in a time when he needed an outlet for his emotions.
    
"It was a pretty lonely time for me," said Berg. "My family was against my outcries of the war and the president."
    
He said his involvement in the organization was "everything I needed."
    
"Probably most of all, a network of friends," he said.
    
Berg said he enjoyed the way the organization was run. He liked having someone to organize a rally, tell him when to show up and how much his ticket would cost. He said he fears that if the group were to incorporate, it would be spending more time and effort keeping it a legally established institution instead of staying true to its mission.
    
He said he'd also like to see it stray away from becoming a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization.
    
"Then we could no longer be political," he said. "And, to me that's what we are - political."
    
And while he'd love for someone to just jump in and fill Porter's shoes, he said that person will not be him.
    
Porter said she had kept the group a loosely organized association of people. She did not get the organization incorporated because of the efforts to do such a thing and because she felt that would leave the organization open to verbal attacks.
    
She also declined to register it as a 501c3.
    
The group has not fund-raised any more than to cover its own minimal costs, she added.
    
"Once you start taking money from people, they want you to start reflecting their opinions," she said.
    
With an e-mail list of more than 700 members, Porter prided the group on being a "coalition of individuals," reaching a diverse group of people, affiliated to all political parties and ranging in age.
    
"We're all over the place in terms of what our beliefs are," she said. "There's so many different views, when you try to get too formal, you lose some people because you never get all of the views represented."
    
But member Eleanor Fleming, of West Goshen, said she felt the new direction of the group should include a board of directors to run it. She also would like to see a possible name change to show the inclusion of other local issues.
    
When she had proposed that idea in the past, some in the group said it would be spreading itself too thin, but Fleming said she felt that some local is-sues, like housing problems within the county, were all related to the peace movement.
    
"It's a drain on our economy going into an unjust war," she said.
    
She sees the name change as making the group more inviting to more people.
    
"There's many ways to appeal to people," she said. "It's important to listen to other people and what they think and not have in the way this preconceived notion as a radical organization."
    
She also would like to see more emphasis put on lobbying legislators and less on demonstrations and marches.
    
"We need to be smarter about the ways for us to be heard," she said.

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