Peace Posse Leads Resistance Movement in Orange County

Jeanie Bernstein of Laguna Beach doesn’t know if she’ll be able to get within six blocks of President Bush on Friday, but the 79-year-old rabble-rouser is rounding up the posse and getting the protest signs ready.

The president will be at a Dana Point fund-raiser on a mission from God, attempting the miracle of raising California GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill “Simple” Simon from the dead.

Bernstein is attempting a miracle of her own. She is trying to get fellow Orange County residents to challenge Bush’s saber-rattling drive toward war on Iraq, a war that will be like a stick to a hornet’s nest, setting the U.S. up for decades of retaliation.

I don’t know if it’s a case of widespread support or just plain apathy, but I don’t recall a time in my life when talk of war spurred less debate in the United States. And Orange County, quite frankly, was the last place I expected to find a resistance movement.

But I was strolling down the South Coast Highway in downtown Laguna Beach Saturday when I came upon Bernstein’s posse. The first guy I spoke to was holding two signs. One said, “No War 4 Oil,” and the other said, “Violence Begets Violence.”

No sooner had I learned Bill Strahan’s name than a young man pulled up in a Ford Extinction, or some such vehicle the size of an armored personnel carrier.

The driver, wearing a baseball cap, leaned out the window and yelled:

“Hey [blank], go the [blank] back where you belong!”

Strahan, 66, reacted calmly as the true American roared away.

“I find that very interesting,” said the retired mathematician from Orange. “This is where I belong. My family’s been in this country for five generations.”

Strahan, exercising a right he holds dear--the right of dissent--had already had four such reactions in 30 minutes. “But I’m getting a lot of support too,” he said with hope in his voice, waving to a driver who honked.

Strahan pointed down the road a ways to the rest of the crew--half a dozen folks waving protest signs from the comfort of lawn chairs. Jeanie Bernstein’s sign said, “War Is Not The Answer.”

Laguna Beach has changed a lot in the last several decades. Members of Bernstein’s gang say it used to be politically eclectic, but with skyrocketing real estate prices, it has become more conservative.

But one constant, going back to the 1960s, has been the sight of Jeanie Bernstein in front of Main Beach on Saturdays between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. She waved a protest sign through the entire Vietnam War, and for 11 years during the Cold War.

Bernstein reappeared during the Gulf War, and then, when Bush centered Saddam Hussein in his cross-hairs three or four months ago, she was back at her post. It’s a great location because traffic is always jammed on this gorgeous stretch of South Coast Highway by Ocean Avenue, which makes for a captive audience.

“I just feel like our country is way too eager to jump in with a violent resolution to just about any conflict,” said Bernstein. “If we would dedicate just a small percentage of what we spend on arms to eradicating hunger, poverty, disease, homelessness and all of those bad things, it would go a long way toward advancing the cause of peace.”

For holding such principles, Bernstein has been cursed, flipped off and told to get a life. So has the rest of her gang of retirees and middle-aged reformers, which last week included Shirley McGovern, Anita Dobbs, Maxine Quirk, Chuck Anderson and Elizabeth Erger, who goes all the way back to the Vietnam days with Bernstein.

“Someone called us a bunch of old hippies,” said Anderson. “I told him we’re not old.”

“We used to have a sign that said, ‘Honk for peace,’ but someone complained about all the noise,” Bernstein said.

“Yeah,” said Anderson. “They’re inconvenienced by horn honking, but not by thousands of people being murdered and maimed. We should have a sign that says ‘Don’t honk for peace.’ ”

Then they’d honk for sure, the gang agreed.

A gargantuan gas-guzzler roared by, and yet another patriot raised a clenched fist at the peaceniks.

“Strike Iraq!” he bellowed.

Jeanie, who hauls the protest signs around in the back of her Toyota Prius gasoline-electric hybrid (48 mpg), doesn’t doubt that Saddam Hussein is a menace.

But we don’t seem to have a problem dealing with the oil-rich Saudi devils who provided home and hearth to many of the Sept. 11 terrorists. And it’s not much of a stretch to view war on Iraq as a bombing-for-oil mission that would conveniently divert attention from our own economic woes and fatten the energy barons and military contractors who dictate public policy.

“Some people are outraged because they think if we’re opposed to war, we’re somehow on the side of terrorism,” said Bernstein. “They’ll shout out, ‘Where were you on Sept. 11?’ And, ‘Don’t you care about all the people who died?’ Of course we do, but we feel that our grief is not assuaged by causing more death to innocent people in other parts of the world.”

The jeers don’t bother Bernstein, who says she hears even more cheers. What gets under her skin is that the majority of people have no reaction at all. The war won’t even register with them until the bombing is carried live on CNN.

“Ignorance is bliss. They really would prefer not to have to think about it.”

The more apathetic the public, the more determined Bernstein becomes. She’ll pull an extra shift at Bush’s Dana Point appearance on Friday. And then she’ll be back at her regular spot Saturday, a protest sign in her hand, an American flag flying from her lawn chair.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.