Press Action Hero of the Week: CAROL MOORE
Press Action
Friday, January 17, 2003
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hero01172003/
Is Carol Moore the perfect peace activist? 
When it comes to opposition to state violence, Moore certainly must be ranked among the most prominent and consistent voices against the U.S. government’s use of aggressive measures, both internationally and domestically. Since she became politically active in the 1970s, the inimitable Moore has waged many campaigns, including protesting against U.S. military adventures abroad, educating Americans on the value of resistance to paying taxes that support the U.S. war machine, and advocating nonviolent public action against state terror.
With another madman squatting in the White House and members of the U.S. Congress kowtowing to his every repressive move, American public anger against the arrogance of the U.S. state is beginning to boil over.
The confluence of the rise of a repressive Bush regime and the virtual loss of any official opposition in Washington is a sign that it must be time for another demonstration in our nation’s capital. The legacy of the liberation movements that blossomed in the 1960s is that Americans these days often act preemptively to voice their united disgust with the schemes planned by the thieves in Washington to spend our money on violence and destruction. As part of this trend, thousands of Americans will travel to Washington this weekend to voice their disapproval of the U.S. war machine invading Iraq.
The weapons industry knows it can always find a group of addicts — also known as politicians and military brass— willing to steal money from U.S. taxpayers to support their habit of buying every imaginable type of killing device and then testing them on innocent targets around the world and here in their own backyards. Since the dramatic growth of the war machine in the post-Second World War years, no member of Washington officialdom ever has been willing to stage an intervention in the lives of these war-mongering junkies. As long as the junkie politicians are allowed to continue stealing from us to build a bigger and bigger war machine, the probability of it all blowing up in our faces looms larger every day.
Moore recognized a long time ago the destructive potential of Washington’s war addiction, but she refuses to relinquish hope that the government will one day end its bullying ways. Too much is at stake for such truly committed activists as Moore to give up the campaign for peace.
Moore, a D.C. resident since the late 1980s, will once again trek to the Mall this weekend and join thousands of others to voice their opposition to a U.S. attack on Iraq. A veteran of scores of demonstrations, Moore pledges to be there on Saturday, “because I never miss a good protest,” she tells Press Action.
“I’ll be selling buttons promoting love, peace and liberty,” Moore says. “A leaflet lasts a few hours. People carry their buttons on their backpacks for years! Plus it’s fun to commit verboten capitalist acts in the midst of the anti-capitalists leading the antiwar movement!”
Moore’s philosophy represents an ideal for those truly committed to freedom. She’s a radical feminist who has been active in the antinuclear, peace, libertarian, Green/bioregional, radical decentralist, drug legalization and new age consciousness movements.
Moore recently authored an important e-book that challenges the street-fighting culture that has regained prominence in the wake of the 1999 Seattle anti-World Trade Organization protests. In the book, The Return of Street Fighting Man: The Pathology of the New Progressive Violence, Moore predicts violent street fighters eventually will see the counterproductive nature of their actions.
“It is only a matter of time before most activists recognize and admit that street fighting drives away less committed activists; intimidates, demoralizes and divides committed ones; and gives the police an excuse to spy on, disrupt and destroy movements which use street protest, civil disobedience or nonviolent direct action,” Moore writes.
Moore also has little patience for those members of the libertarian community who profess a belief in the nobility of U.S. military violence abroad. “Most of them are reacting irrationally, letting their testosterone-driven desires for revenge or to prove their manhood drive out sensible ideas like — ‘hey, maybe if we weren’t messing in their backyards, a few of them wouldn’t have come messing in ours,’” Moore says, referring to some libertarians who are supporting the latest U.S. war efforts in Iraq. “I also fault libertarian leaders who have not been vocal enough on the non-intervention and peace issues, except in reaction to war, which it is often too late to educate people.”
Moore said she and a group of like-minded peace activists started the Libertarians For Peace group “just to make sure that those of us who make non-intervention a high priority have a way of communicating with each other and with less committed or aware libertarians.”
Like most political and social activists, Moore recognizes the Internet’s value in helping people around the world break through the propaganda of their respective establishment-controlled mass media outlets. Here in the United States, the challenge is to deprogram the minds of Americans who “went to public schools whose main purpose is to train them to be complacent,” Moore says. “They watch 30 hours of government-regulated TV a week, and they are brainwashed by the government. Thank heavens for the Internet subverting them with other ideas!”
If you’re in Washington for this weekend’s protest against the Bush regime’s latest war, look for an energetic woman hawking buttons that say, “Don’t Bomb Iraq, “What Would Gandhi do?” and “No Blood for Oil, Israel or Jesus.” If you locate her, you may want to buy your favorite button and then take time to offer thanks for her many years of taking principled stands, both in her actions and writings, for peace and freedom.
-- Mark Hand