What You Never Knew About War & Peace in Hampton Roads (Unless You Read Port Folio Weekly)

17 September 2002

by D.D. Delaney, Port Folio Weekly

If you're a regular consumer of local mainstream media (who never turns to Port Folio Weekly for news), you wouldn't know that there is a small but active peace culture working in the region to promote a fundamental change in the way America does business.

Yet these peaceful few continuously hold vigils and events, bring guest speakers into the area, and are regularly arrested, fined, and even jailed for non-violent civil disobedience in their uphill efforts to convince people of the negative consequences of enforcing a social agenda with overwhelming force.

A case in point: on Dec. 7, 2001, the Tidewater School of the Americas Watch [SOAWTVA] held a vigil on the sidewalk outside the downtown Norfolk offices of the Virginian Pilot. Among the dozen or so demonstrators was Jeff Winder, an officer of the national SOA Watch, which holds demonstrations annually in November at the school's headquarters in Ft. Benning, GA. The organization's influence has hardly been negligible. In large part because of its documented evidence of serious human rights abuses in Latin America by the school's graduates, the U.S. House of Representatives last year came just ten votes shy of ordering the school closed. A similar bill, HR1810, has been reintroduced in the current legislative session.

The Pilot, however, did not cover the vigil outside its offices. In fact, a security guard came out of the building and ordered the demonstrators off the sidewalk. When they refused to move, informing him the sidewalks belong to the public, not the Pilot, he returned inside, and the demonstration proceeded without further incident.

Last April, in a second demonstration at the same location not even the security guard came out to interview the demonstrators.

There was no Southside coverage of the four regional activists arrested at the Ft. Benning demonstration last year, nor of the Norfolk activist arrested on April 22 in a protest in Washington, DC, against U.S. Columbian policy.

Today we are preoccupied with what to do about Iraq, with some serious discussion of the civilian suffering caused by U.S.-led sanctions there. But in April, 2000, local mainstream media ignored the arrest of three local women sitting in at U.S. Rep. Owen Pickett's Virginia Beach office in protest against those sanctions and the ongoing bombing that accompanies them. Their trial two months later, however, when each was fined $250 for the offense, was briefly reported.

And so far there has been no Southside coverage of Norfolk Catholic Worker Steve Baggarly's arrest in June when he and a colleague climbed on top of a B-52 war plane and unfurled an anti-weapons banner at the Langley Air Force Base AirPower show. Their trial, originally scheduled for Sept. 12, has been continued to Oct. 24.

Meanwhile, for the record, from 5-6pm on the second Tuesday of each month at St. Paul's Blvd. and City Hall Ave., Norfolk, demonstrations continue against a military response as our only alternative to today's difficult issues. The non-denominational event is open to all.