Battle Lines Drawn--but War Protests Are Gentler

Midnight had passed on Los Angeles Street, and in front of the downtown federal building a new battle line had been drawn--anti-war protesters on one side, the Los Angeles Police Department on the other.

Then a large American flag abruptly appeared, held aloft by a man vehemently urging support for the troops in the Middle East. He strode into the crowd, and the protesters met his challenge, confronting him, surrounding him. Perhaps a half dozen started a chant.

“Burn it! Burn it! Burn it!”

The protesters surged toward the flag. So did reporters, photographers and a TV camera, its powerful light illuminating the scene. The police, immobile, watched as the flame of a cigarette lighter edged toward a corner of the cloth.

“Don’t burn the flag!” another protester cried out. “We love the flag,” someone else pleaded.

“Burn the (expletive) thing!” another man screamed.

There was a second of silence, and then a louder chant: “What do we want? PEACE! When do we want it? NOW!”

Just like that, a democratic spirit prevailed. The flag was spared. For the next half hour, the two sides engaged in a loud exercise of free speech. Still another hour passed before the crowd dwindled . Police arrested only three protesters who refused to budge.

In many respects, the peaceful outcome of that demonstration has proven typical. There have been exceptions--the torching of a Highway Patrol car in San Francisco, some rough clashes with police, a few ominous altercations with supporters of the war effort. Yet there is wide agreement that--so far at least--kinder, gentler attitudes surround this peace movement than the one that experienced the domestic violence of the Vietnam era.

As the ground combat intensifies and U.S. casualties mount, anti-war organizers and law enforcement officials alike expect an increase in the size and militancy of the demonstrations. Yet, even if the tens of thousands who have marched against the war with Iraq become hundreds of thousands, many protesters, police and observers express optimism that the movement will remain nonviolent. “It will remain peaceful,” Don White, a Los Angeles schoolteacher and activist, predicted, “but become much more disruptive.”

There is little chance, they suggest, of repeating such Vietnam-era tragedies as the slayings of four Kent State students by the Ohio National Guard, leftist bombing deaths in Wisconsin and New York, or the Santa Barbara riots in which police killed one student and protesters burned down a Bank of America branch.

“I’m optimistic that even if demonstrations get bigger, more bitter, they will still be peaceful,” said Art Spitzer, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) affiliate in Washington, where an estimated 75,000 rallied against the war on Jan. 26, the largest demonstration so far. “The attitude among police here is more positive about the right to demonstrate.”

“People don’t want to fight violence with violence,” said Cathy Scott, an organizer of a march in New York on Wednesday night in which more than 1,200 protesters mocked the major TV networks as cheerleaders of the war effort. “People want to fight violence with peace.”

“It’s a different time, a different era, a different war,” said Cmdr. James Jones of the Los Angeles Police Department. “And I think different feelings.”

Attitudes seem less explosive, less rebellious. Activists who bridge the eras emphasize that the Vietnam anti-war movement was part and parcel of a rebellious counterculture that shocked an American mainstream that had largely trusted its leadership, accepted the Cold War doctrine and took the domino theory on faith.

The turmoil of the 1960s--Vietnam, the civil rights movement, assassinations, urban riots--and then the scandals that came later such as Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair have produced a public that is more skeptical of its political leadership, they say, and perhaps more tolerant of diverse views.

A Washington Post poll of 827 protesters selected randomly from those who marched in the capital Jan. 26. offered this snapshot: More than half described themselves as “pacifists opposed to all wars.” About one-third had protested against the Vietnam War. Three out of 10 said they have a relative or close friend serving in the Persian Gulf, compared to about half nationally. Another one out of 10 was a veteran or member of the military reserves.

“We have a lot of middle America” in the peace movement, said Blase Bonpane, director of the Office of the Americas, who has been active in Los Angeles demonstrations. “We have parents of servicemen, people who wear yellow ribbons. . . . To presume someone has to be a warmonger to be patriotic is really outdated and, I think, really sick.”

Antagonistic rhetoric has been turned down a notch. The cheer of “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!/ Ho Chi Minh is going to win!” has no equivalent for Saddam Hussein. Similarly, there is nothing quite so vilifying as “Hey, Hey, L.B.J.!/ How many kids did you kill today?” But there is some biting sarcasm. One popular chant makes a pointed reference to the savings and loan crisis: “Send George Bush/ Send Dan Quayle/ Send Neil Bush/ When he gets out of jail!”

Although hardly the best of pals, protesters and police now emphasize cooperation in their encounters. Anti-war organizers dutifully obtain permits for events and parades, and assign their own marshals to discourage pointless lawbreaking. Police and protest leaders often meet before demonstrations so police know what to expect--how many protesters might show up and whether laws will be deliberately broken.

In earlier days, protesters taunted police as pigs and demonstrations sometimes disintegrated into club-swinging melees. Now, “We’re not emotionally involved at all, explained Capt. Jerry Conner, who joined the LAPD in 1963 and now commands the Central Station. “We’ve learned to control that.”

Not all encounters between protesters and police have been peaceful. The 61-year-old Bonpane was one of several activists who were struck with nightsticks wielded by Federal Protective Services officers in a recent sit-in at the downtown federal building. He and other protesters accused officers of overreacting. A federal spokesman said no formal complaint was filed.

Some anti-war organizers worry more about the potential of clashes with counterdemonstrators who support the war effort. Already, there have been fisticuffs and instances in which protesters were struck and threatened by vehicles. Sheriff’s deputies in Westwood arrested three people in connection with an incident in which anti-war protesters and one deputy were “shot” by pellets of red and blue dye from a gun used in combat games.

Police and protesters say they are now more familiar with the tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience that were popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Many protesters receive what is called CD (civil disobedience) training to prepare for sit-ins and ultimate arrests in what plays out as a kind of choreographed street theater.

When protesters spring the unexpected--such as human blockades of streets and bridges--law enforcement officers have often announced several warnings before making arrests. While police used to round up lawbreakers in large numbers, Jones said, officers are now more apt to begin making arrests in small numbers “and allow people in the back to drift away.”

“Once we declare that a protest has become an unlawful assembly, we give them ample time to leave,” said spokesman Dave Ambrose of the San Francisco Police Department, which has made more than 1,200 arrests since Jan. 15. “We made arrests occasionally and methodically. . . . We felt we made arrests when it was in our best interest.”

The San Francisco demonstrations--marked by vandalism and trash fires--stand as an example of how mobs sometimes can become unpredictable and militant. The radicalized attitude of the city’s large gay community is considered one factor in the rancor of protests.

Although some politicians see large urban protests--especially San Francisco’s--as a fluke, anti-war organizers portray them as a sign of things to come. Opinion polls may show widespread support for the war, but just as the AIDS death toll has radicalized gays, they say, heavy war casualties will turn many more Americans into protesters.

Organizers envision more and bigger demonstrations at campuses, government offices and media outlets. The ACLU’s Spitzer warns that some protesters may become more aggressive, perhaps violent, if they become convinced that current tactics are ineffective. But like many skeptics, the LAPD’s Jones thinks massive demonstrations are unlikely, simply because the war with Iraq isn’t at all like the war in Vietnam.

More Americans “feel it’s a just war, much more so,” Jones said. “And it’s finite. They see an end to it.”

Many protesters see it as a war that could have been averted and will prove long and bloody. In the spirit of civil disobedience, several Los Angeles activists considered it poetic justice that they were incarcerated when the war began on Jan. 16.

Conner finds such tactics puzzling: “They’re not furthering their cause by getting themselves arrested.”

The two sides also had opposite opinions about an incident on Los Angeles Street on Jan. 16, shortly after the war started. Protesters held up signs urging motorists to honk their horns if they opposed the war. Several drivers did so--and then got ticketed by police for excessive noise.

Activists called this a clear violation of First Amendment rights. Capt. Conner called it law and order.

“Oh,” he said with a smile, “I can work wonders with the vehicle code.”