Indigo Franks, a 13-year-old middle-school student, has been present with the Ladies and Laddies nearly every day. She wants, she says, to demonstrate solidarity with other citizens who are also against the war but who may be afraid to express themselves so openly or publicly. This too is a theme that is echoed by several others in the group. Already conscious of the connection between America’s dependence on oil and the incidence of wars involving the US in oil-producing nations, Franks feels that the US needs to research and employ more renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy. She is concerned, should the present course of American foreign and energy and environmental policy continue to be followed, about the eventual extinction of all humankind.
Maria Silva is also there to demonstrate that not everyone is in favor of the war in Afghanistan, and to present an alternative point of view. She feels that terrorism is not and should not be considered a problem only of the United States. She perceives it as a problem of the entire world, which should be addressed not through war but through peaceful legal means in such international venues as the United Nations.
Silva emphasizes her love for America. She has heard people say that to be against the war is to be against the US, but she knows that this is simply not true. She emphasizes that dissent, too, is patriotic, and that the right to dissent is a precious Constitutional freedom which must be vigorously protected and defended. She also stresses that she and her colleagues are not standing outside in the cold because they enjoy it, but because they have an important message to communicate and no ready access to the mainstream media.
Meg Miner, a thoughtful and articulate retired Air Force veteran, tries to make a different ‘theme’ sign each day that is reflective of that day’s news. One day her sign read “John Ashcroft - Winner of the 2001 Joe McCarthy Lookalike Contest”, attempting in a few words to equate the new military tribunals espoused by the current Attorney General with the witch-hunt mentality of the McCarthy era in the 1950s. Several days later, her signwas an abbreviated version of another variation on the theme, which she expressed verbally in greater detail: “If we’re randomly arresting people of Arab descent for the events of September 11, why not randomly arrest PhD biochemists in response to the anthrax episodes?”
Barry Miller, a 55-year-old mechanical and wind engineer, is also an Air Force veteran, from the Viet Nam era. He is a descendant of ancestors who fought in the American Revolution, and is present with his wife Barbara Dyskant. They are the parents of three children.
Dyskant feels that mothers share a special concern for human life, and are therefore natural allies. She expresses the hope that American mothers, considering their love of their own precious children, will feel an empathy for the mothers in Afghanistanand Iraq whose children are needlessly dying, and will translate that empathy into political action. She was appalled by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s now-infamous statement, that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to economic sanctions were “worth the price”.
Dyskant also thinks that America shouldn’t have a double standard for terrorism. She asserts that we as a nation support at least as many terrorists as we oppose, and that therefore a ‘terrorist’ as we currently define it is in fact simply someone who employs violence and who disagrees with us.
Dyskant is of the opinion that there will never be true security in the world as long as the world’s wealth and resources are so disproportionately distributed. This inevitably results, she is convinced, in anger and frustration, which may lead to acts of terrorism.
Anita Keller, present with the Ladies and Laddies for the first time, agrees with Dyskant and elaborates a bit further. She suggests that the anger and frustration is compounded by the manner in which the inequality in resources is created and maintained. A Master’s student in African Studies at UIUC who has spent time working in refugee camps on that continent, she is well aware of the long history of exploitation of the resources of Third World nations by America and western European countries, with nothing of value being given back.
While the Ladies and Laddies are there to express alternative points of view and, they hope, to make their fellow citizens think more deeply about government policy, Mark Enslin, an artist and teacher like Susan Parenti, is also present to listen to hisfellow citizens, to try to find out what they are thinking. He does this, he says, by making himself and his own position as obvious as possible, and seeing how they respond as they drive past. Reactions of passers-by range from smiles and friendly supportive waves of the hand while honking their horns, to angry comments and obscene gestures. About a month ago Enslin says he kept a rough tally, and was somewhat surprised to find that the positive responses outnumbered the negative ones by a factor of approximately 3 to 1. While he freely admits that his polling method is far from scientific, he has been encouraged by the results.
On the two days of my visit with the Ladies and Laddies on North Prospect, both types of reaction were in evidence. At one point a burly man, appearing to be in his mid-twenties and driving an SUV with an LA Raiders logo on the rear window, leaned out of his window and bellowed across three lanes of traffic, “Go to another country! Get the hell out of here!” At the other extreme, a grandmotherly white-haired lady wearing a red, white, and blue outfit emerged from her own car window to shout, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
One woman, with an embarrassed-looking teenage son staring straight ahead in the passenger’s seat, stopped at the curb long enough to engage in brief but impassioned dialogue with Barbara Dyskant while the rest of us listened. At first the woman said, speaking of the peaceful protest, “You couldn’t do this in any other country!” A few moments later, seemingly oblivious to the multiple ironies inherent in her comment, she exclaimed, “If I could have you arrested I would!”

*****

With the approach of frigid weather, the Ladies and Laddies have scaled back their outdoor demonstrations to one day a week. But they will still be out there, attempting to dialogue with their neighbors about more sustainable and affirmative ways in which to think about war and peace, about terrorism and justice, about how to live.

previous page