A quest for peace

Sit on their couch, and you'll be next to a pillow with the word "peace" on it.

Sift through their personal things, and you'll see a ton of T-shirts and buttons they have collected through the years at the countless peace rallies they've attended.

Thumb through their reading material, and you'll come across such publications as "Veterans for Peace" and "Peace Corps," plus posters and books about Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.

This is the home of Bob Polack and Joy Bell, the driving force behind Cape Girardeau's peace movement. As the United States geared up for war with Iraq, the married couple galvanized a small group they describe as "progressive and liberals" and formed the Peace and Justice Coalition.

You've seen them. They gather on Broadway each Thursday to wave peace signs near the replica of the Statue of Liberty at Freedom Corner.

For them, leading the local anti-war movement has been a blessing and a curse.

They say that they've changed the discourse in Cape Girardeau -- even if slightly -- and made it easier to dissent with the area's unquestionably conservative core.

But they've also subjected themselves to weekly abuse from those who adamantly disagree with their stance. They've been spit at, had cups of ice thrown at them, been flipped off and labeled everything from traitors to lowlifes.

"People say, 'Why bother?'" Polack said last week. "The real core thing is that everyone in the group takes the responsibility of citizenship very seriously. None of us are willing to blindly follow a leader -- even in times of crisis."

Bell, a counselor for the Safe House for Women, said it represents a quest for peace.

"We're always striving for it," she said. "Peace doesn't permeate my life. But that's a good goal."

It's that goal -- along with what they describe as a sense of justice, integrity and patriotism -- that has kept them protesting a war that they say is unjust, uncalled for and fueled by a dishonest and greedy administration.

"I remember thinking, 'We're about to attack a country that I don't believe is a threat at all to the U.S.'" said Polack, a social work professor at Southeast Missouri State University. "It scared me for the future of this country. It still scares me."

Protests at Capaha

Each Thursday at about 5:30 p.m., Polack and Bell take a break from restoring their 110-year-old home, crawl into their red Ford Escort -- bumper stickers: "More War, What For?" and "Peace is Patriotic" -- and drive to Capaha Park.

Once there, they meet with the seven or eight fellow protesters. Shelly Goss always brings her daughters, Cheyenne, 7, and Sierra, 5. Most weeks, Marcus Bond brings his dogs.

Leading up to the war, there were 100 or so protesters. The numbers have dwindled significantly. Polack concedes the war has subsided somewhat and the bombs have stopped dropping, causing some interest to wane.

"And it's summertime," he added. "Folks are out doing things."

Polack and Bell provide the signs, pulling out dozens from their trunk that say things like "No Blood for Oil," "Support the Troops, Bring Them Home Now" and "No Links to Al Queda."

They chat for a few moments. Bell and another woman tell a story involving purses. The girls do cartwheels. Others talk about the upcoming school year.

Meanwhile, Brian Judd, a 16-year-old student at Notre Dame Regional High School, is sifting through the signs, looking for one that strikes him. He admits his parents probably don't like that he is here.

"But my parents are fooled by the media," he said. "I felt like I wanted to do this. At first I just didn't like the idea of us going to war. But when I got into the politics of it, I realized Bush is killing people for oil. That's why I'm here."

As they gather up their signs, a young man who had been sitting with a group of young people not far away walks up and asks for a sign. He says that he doesn't want to join them, he just wants to hold it from his bench. Polack gives him one, but will regret it a short while later.

The small group of protesters makes the short trek up to what they feel is an appropriate place: Freedom Corner, at Broadway and West End Boulevard.

Then, for an hour, they stand there, hold their signs pleading for peace as what passes for rush-hour traffic in Cape Girardeau drives by.

Over the course of the hour last Thursday, several things of note happened. Many people honked. Some flashed peace signs. But, like every week, not all of the reaction was positive.

"Lowlifes!" yells a man in a white Bronco, two small children in the back seat.

One man shouts that he supports the troops. More than a few hold up their middle fingers. A high-school kid with a Super Soaker shoots from the back seat of a car, hitting some of the protesters, and a newspaper reporter, with what appeared to be water. One of the younger girls was shot with a steady stream directly in her face.

Polack said it's not unusual. Two weeks ago, someone threw a cup of ice on a protester. Once a man threw a cup of tobacco spit.

"One man told me his grandfather fought in World War II so I could do this," said Bell, who said she is familiar with war firsthand from working with the Peace Corps in Sri Lanka at the height of its brutal civil war.

"That's another thing they say," Polack interjects. "Their relative fought in a war so we could have this right. As if that means we shouldn't do it."

Changing attitudes

At first, at the beginning of the war, it was all pretty favorable, Polack said. "After the bombs started dropping, we got a lot of hostility."

That's because, obviously, not everyone likes seeing the protesters there. That includes Cape Girardeau resident Dru Reeves, who has shown up occasionally with a few others to protest the protesting.

"When I heard they were doing it, my initial reaction was I wanted to go out there and show the side that the majority of people in Cape Girardeau are on," said Reeves, who is in the Army Reserve. "This group is such a small minority, they don't represent most people's view."

Reeves, who did not show up last Thursday, dismisses the group largely as liberal college professors and students. Indeed, three of the protesters are affiliated with the university -- Polack, chemistry professor Marcus Bond and biology professor Alan Journet.

Reeves especially resented the fact that the protesters profess to be "supporting the troops."

"Most people on that side have despised the military," Reeves said. "They were just saying they were for the troops because it was the popular thing to say. I would respect them more if they have their true colors showing -- just say they hate Bush and the war."

Reeves isn't the only one who feels that way. In fact, the young man who borrowed the sign Thursday wrote a different message on the back of it: "Bush is my hero," it read. There also was the word "hippies" written inside a circle with a slash through it.

The young man's friend, Wendell Bigham of Millersville, took the sign and walked up and stood beside the protesters. He had harsh words for the activists before crossing to the other side of the street.

"It's immoral," Bigham said of their actions. "If it wasn't for the military, we wouldn't be safe. It's like they forgot Sept. 11."

Making their points

Polack and Bell -- and the rest of the group, for that matter -- disagreed on each of those points. They said their objections to war stem from a deep concern for the troops' safety, the loss of life that has resulted, and what they feel is an unjustified cause for the war.

That concern started last summer, Polack said, when the Bush administration began speaking about invading Iraq. He was puzzled about how the public could swallow talk about weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Qaida when there was no proof.

Polack began gathering signatures for a petition to send to lawmakers to show opposition to the invasion of Iraq. He eventually had hundreds of e-mail addresses because of it. He asked people to come to weekly meetings, which led to the public demonstrations.

In addition to the weekly protests -- the group calls them vigils -- they've brought in outside speakers from the Veterans for Peace organization to speak at the Osage Community Centre. The group has taken out large educational ads in the newspaper. They've also launched a Web site -- www.semoprogressive.org -- so people have access to their views and alternative news sources on all sorts of issues.

Now that no weapons of mass destruction have been found, Polack feels even more justified. He was outraged when he heard what he perceived as the Bush administration backpedaling, saying that one of its main goals all along was liberating Iraq from an evil dictator.

"First of all, if the criteria for putting our service people in harm's way and losing lives is the presence of a brutal dictator, then we've really got our work cut out for us," he said. "There are plenty of brutal dictators all over the world -- over 50 at last count -- and we can't possibly address every situation and then attempt to rebuild the countries in question."

Instead, Polack and others in the group believe that the real reasons for the war is to get access to Iraq's oil and to give huge government contracts to American corporations to rebuild the country, such as Kellogg, Brown & Root, a unit of Halliburton, the Texas oil firm once led by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Who's better off?

He said it also remains to be seen whether the Iraqi people are better off.

"There is also a serious question of whether or not democracy can take hold in that country," he said. "It may be the only thing that could hold them all together is a brutal dictator."

Polack said he's concerned about the continuing loss of life and the huge costs taxpayers will bear to rebuild Iraq.

"If the U.S. pulls out of the country now, it will collapse into civil war, and the region may also destabilize," he said. "I think we never should have removed the United Nations from the equation. It's a very difficult situation."

So the group will continue to hold its weekly protests, and members are planning to have more speakers come in for events. But even if the conflict in Iraq were to end today, the group wouldn't disband and instead plans to take on other issues, including a voter registration drive for the 2004 election.

With so much negative attention that comes from being a protester, Polack said he couldn't just ignore something he feels so strongly about.

He summarizes it with the words of another peace activist, Martin Luther King: "He said life is not worth living until you found something worth dying for, and I believe that," Polack said. "This war was a spiritual turning point for me."

Polack and Bell both said they hope their efforts have made a difference.

"I think the overall level of political discourse in this town has changed, and we've been a part of that on some level," he said. "It's now OK to voice a differing opinion, or at least it's more OK than it was."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137