Some were nervous. Others pondered the worst. But most in the group felt sure they could carry off an action that they’d discussed, rehearsed, sung about and, as one leader put it, “visualized.” Every person-from pamphleteer to Magi-knew what they had to do. They loaded the cars, ready to go for it.
It went, all agreed later, like clockwork.
Right on time, 300 of them hit the parking lot of the mall just north of Belmont and Western. Many carried banners and placards. Three Wise Men, decked out in crowns and robes, stepped forward from the procession. One carried a bullhorn. As five TV crews, a dozen photographers and a swarm of reporters pressed for angles, the assemblage, noting that war is hell, made a push for peace.
It was a crowd with much hair. Many of the men, with square jaws and shaped beards, looked like finalists in a Captain Ahab look-alike contest. Women leaders sang with clear-bell voices, like Judy Collins. The assigned target, as bodies moved into the Toys “R” Us store-past a flustered manager, two security guards and extra staff waiting for them-was Aisle 6A, a stretch of shelving filled with war toys.
“Anybody got a match?” whispered Rey Lopez, one of the Magi, looking to light his censer, an iron bowl on a chain, filled with incense sticks. No one did. That, Lopez said later, was probably just as well. “The guard told me, `Light that thing in here and you’re under arrest,’ ” he said. On the other hand, noted organizer Gene Stoltzfus, “nobody’s going to arrest a Magi and drag him out of a store, not with all those TV cameras there.”
In the end, nobody did, though things did get a bit testy around ground zero. That, for members of the Christian Peacemaker Congress, holding a convention in Chicago over the New Year’s weekend, was the back section that held the store’s extensive armory of war toys. After prayer and preparation, the conventioneers, from three churches with long traditions of non-violent direct action in the cause of peace, moved in.
“Don’t do that,” warned a security guard, as one determined peacemaker pasted stickers urging customers to “think before you buy” on GI Joe accessories and a game called Battlezone: Sounds of Fun.
“We are people of faith,” proclaimed a second Magi, Kryss Chupp, her voice amplified by bullhorn through the store. “We are parents deeply concerned by the violence that surrounds us, in our neighborhoods, on TV, in our children’s toy boxes. We’ve come to help people consider the toys that they buy, to demilitarize.” As one placard put it, “Would Mary buy Jesus a Toy Gun?”
Before leaving, organizer Stoltzfus shook hands with two police officers who were gingerly herding protesters out of the store. “I told you it would be peaceful,” he said to a store manager. In turn, the manager noted that while Toys “R” Us had no official comment on the action, the group “was free to do what they needed to do.”
Other demonstrators were careful to maintain balance. “The company did drop one very violent video, Mortal Kombat, and they no longer stock look-alike guns, but they could do so much more,” said another organizer Kathy Kelly, who two years ago led a toy-store protest called Elves for Peace. The point of such actions, another leader noted, is not to get arrested or cause damage; it is to mount a kind of teach-in for the larger community, to combat wrongs by making them visible.
That thought, drawn from Mohandas K. Gandhi, whose teachings were often mentioned at the convention, was, in many ways, the theme of “Peacemaker Congress ’93-’94,” as the four-day event was known. Delegates, who paid from $15 to $50 to attend, came from like-minded Quaker, Mennonite and Brethren congregations across the U.S. and Canada. Meetings were held at two sites, the ornate wood-paneled Peoples Church of Chicago, 941 W. Lawrence Ave., and the International Conference Center, a former insurance company headquarters, around the corner at 4650 N. Sheridan Rd.
There were workshops, worship, singing, folk dancing, coffee, bagels and time to break, stretch and chat between speeches, many of which were followed by minutes of silence so audiences could ingest the main points. Most of those had to do, as the program put it, “with exploring alternatives to violence in today’s culture and promoting non-violent resistance to injustice and war.”
There was no shortage of ideas, from a stage, in conference rooms, along hallways or at literature tables piled high with books, pamphlets and flyers.
Bette Hoover, from Dayton, Md., spoke of the Alternatives to Violence Project, a Quaker-promoted program that offers three-day workshops for prisoners, abused spouses and youth groups. The workshops deal with such underlying causes of violence as fear, anger, stereotyping, powerlessness and bad communication skills.
“There are, for example, different ways of reacting to kids instead of just smacking them,” Hoover said. One initial course of action is to “state your truth, without blame or judgment,” Hoover said, then allow others to do the same.
Pamphlets from the Iowa Peace Network offered help with penalties assessed on those who withhold income taxes from the Internal Revenue Service to protest military spending. Another group, the Brethren/Mennonite Council for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, offered copies of a newsletter, “Dialogue,” which urged “breaking down the dividing wall of hostility” between church members of differing sexual orientations.
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Other material described a workshop for high-school students put together in Plainfield, Ind., by a committee of Brethren, Mennonites and Friends. Two hours are used to look at conflict and peacemaking at home and school. Another two hours are used to explore international conflicts and attitudes that lead to war.
Make talk not war
One interest of the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center in Lombard is its Conflict Manager Program, which trains elementary and high-school students to intervene in playground and hallway disputes. Typically, said the center’s assistant director Ed Nyce in an interview, “it’s when two people both want to use a ball, or somebody cuts into line at the water fountain, or somebody calls somebody a name. The conflict manager asks, `Do you have a problem?’ “
The combatants are urged to “talk it out, hear the other, reach an agreement and get back to playing-or whatever,” Nyce said. Similar mediation skills have been taught to school principals, school board members, parents and, through other programs, to business leaders and church groups.
“Often, congregation issues, such as whether or not to build or expand, or if they’re happy with the pastor, are rooted in decades of misunderstanding,” Nyce said. “We try to get people talking about the real issues.”
One Quaker group, working in Hawaii, has encouraged high-school students of Hawaiian descent to return to their native values, which are largely non-violent, in settling modern-day disputes. In Baltimore, a Quaker program helps redirect young people dealing with grief after the murder of friends. Another Quaker group has organized African Peace Tours, a program that sends students from African countries, a dozen at a time, to American college campuses, seeking “to heighten awareness and mutual understanding.”
In an interview, Titus Peachy of the Mennonite Peace and Justice Ministry, described his group’s work in victim-offender reconciliation procedures. “We work out a process,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a series of conversations. Sometimes it’s compensation.”
Adventure in Haiti
Sometimes, the simple presence of peacemaker teams can cut down violence because the leadership of nations they visit “don’t want to make an international scene,” noted Garber, who has worked, among other places, with trade unions in Nicaragua.
Last fall, a Christian Peacemaker Team went to Haiti. “We listened to people on all sides and all class levels,” said Stoltzfus. “Our major contributions are to let people know that others are interested. We give emotional support.”
One day, the 11-member team held a vigil at a church where two prominent Haitians had been shot earlier. Later, three members trekked to a mountain-top army security post above Port-au-Prince and attempted to engage the commanding officers in conversation. “The military were not friendly,” Stoltzfus reported, “but at least we tried.”
Taking a public stand is not easy, Garber noted in her lecture, especially for those like her who have been raised in religious cultures such as Brethren that promote self-effacement.
“Who likes to stand in front of the post office on April 15 and protest war taxes?” Gerber asked, recalling that, on her first outing, she had “done a complete study of my shoes, made small-talk with a friend and let somebody else hold my placard.” Now, she said, she has become much bolder.
To help the meek, the conference offered three workshops in non-violence training. First, leaders sketched out possible scenarios for the Toys “R” Us action. Several Canadians in the crowd were warned that, if arrested, they might have to return to Chicago for court hearings.
Participants then joined in what were called “hassle-lines.” Forming rows, they acted out parts, in turn, of annoyed shoppers and, as one leader put it, “virtuous Christian peacemakers hoping to pass out a simple pamphlet.”
Earlier, a Christian Peacemakers Team had considered mounting a protest at Battletech Center, 435 E. Illinois St., a virtual-reality game room where players mimic the blowing up of other players while using replicas of military equipment over 100 miles of computer-generated desert terrain.
The idea didn’t pan out, organizer Stoltzfus said, because the area was too cluttered to accomodate protesters. But he did get to play the game, very badly, after signing in, as requested, under a nickname. He was, he said, “Peacemaker,” though the Battletech desk clerk heard it differently. She had him signed in as “Piece-maker,” until he gently corrected her.