Summary
As we enter the sixth year of the war, [Chip Smith] concedes there is a muted response in Fayetteville's anti-war movement. Committee meetings draw 15 people tops. The public is focused on the elections. "We've hit a plateau," he says, adding, "the momentum and leadership has shifted" to more broad-based social justice campaigns like the NAACP's legislative agenda at the General Assembly-dubbed its "HK on J" campaign, for Historic Thousands on Jones Street.
"It's a little bit of exhaustion," agrees John Ashford, Smith's fellow committee member. Their group has held street-corner vigils every month or two since March 2003. Initially, Ashford says, the reaction from military-friendly Fayetteville was "all jeers and middle fingers." But as the war has worn on, he says, "we get mostly thumbs-up and peace signs.""Well, there's still some negative reactions," Ashford's wife, Ann, injects. But the real problem, she says, is that while most people finally agree with the committee's message to "bring the troops home now," they're still afraid to speak out in a town where anti-war protests are easily misinterpreted as anti-soldier.See the full content of this document
Extract
Battle Scenes
Chip Smith's house in Fayetteville is four short turns from Bragg Boulevard, the front door of Fort Bragg. With his close-cropped, gray hair and lean build, I'm thinking he's a military veteran. "Not a veteran," he says, smiling. "I am a veteran of efforts to end this war."
As the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion approached, on a Friday in mid-March I visited with Smith, a retired labor organizer whose political views date from the '60s and his service in Laos with an international aid organization, and a half-dozen of his friends on the Fayetteville Peace and Justice Committee.On past anniversaries of the war, the committee ...See the full content of this document
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