As the one year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine comes around another anniversary has slipped by unremarked. Twenty years ago on 15th February 2003 the biggest peace actions in human history took place across the world. A coordinated day of protests was held in more than 600 cities expressing opposition to the imminent Iraq War.
That day has been described by Stefan Walgrave and Dieter Rucht, as “the largest protest event in human history” in The World Says No to War: Demonstrations against the War on Iraq Social Movements, Protest, and Contention. It was depicted in the film We Are Many, a documentary.
It was estimated, by the French academic Dominique Reynié, between 3 January and 12 April 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 anti‑war protests, the demonstrations on 15 February 2003 being the largest.
Of course numbers don’t capture the mood. The most memorable moment for me was when we were stuck on Waterloo Bridge, the sun was high and bright. The air was crisp. The march had come to a staggering halt as so many were trying to get across.
Behind me I noticed a tall guy with thick dark hair that fell to this shoulders waving his arms about saying, “I’m talking to Athens,” then reeling off the number of people there. Around him others followed suit. “I’ve got Paris… Budapest… Istanbul…
I rang a friend in Barcelona, he wasn’t particularly ”political” but I thought it was worth a try. He sounded like he was almost in tears saying, “Estoy en una marcha. Es enorme!” – I’m on a march. It’s huge! By this point I’m almost in tears. Those feelings of jubilation, of solidarity that rise when we meet in defiance, hope and solidarity, shared across the world in real time.
Eventually we were moving again. I’m pretty sure I saw just about everyone I knew that day on the streets of London at one point or another. I don’t even really remember Hyde Park to be honest as we spread out over the flattened muddy grass.
Many people felt dissolutioned when the war began and I understand that but I think it’s worth remembering many of those people were transformed and didn’t go away but took part in a myriad of global protests against the G8, the G20, the WTO and began other campaigns large and small.
I reference one of these that same year in a short story called Indian Summer about my mother, our relationship, her death which took place a year later.
“My book abandoned I read in The Observer that in Cancun, Mexico in the blazing heat Lee Kyung-hae, a young man from South Korea plunged a knife into his heart during a protest at the World Trade Organisation. It’s reported that other protesters make a shrine between two concrete blocks at the feet of the riot police; the so called ring of steel that keeps sanity out of the building. It doesn’t work, the talks break down.
Back in his home town the tenant farmers of Jangsu come to pay their last respects bearing sticks of incense, the walls of his house are decked in yellow and white flowers sent from agricultural associations, Korean War veterans and old school friends, among them a message of condolence from the prime minister and a banner that reads, “Stop WTO agriculture negotiations which are killing millions of Korean farmers.””
Indian Summer was published in Out is the Word, an Anthology from The Word is Out 2012
After the protests in February 2003 mum told us she had been diagnosed with cancer and didn’t plan to have any treatment. She’d been through all that before and had had enough. Though she stopped saying, “Just be careful!” before a protest and when Bush came to London in the Autumn told me, “Just remember I’ll be by your side,” for a moment I thought she meant she be gone by then. In fact it was a time when her energy revived briefly while on steroids though still too tired to leave the house; her Indian Summer.
It’s worth remembering this was the time of The Project for the American Century, a Washington think tank dedicated to US global dominance and military supremacy, hugely influential on the Bush regime.
By declaring the “axis of evil” it certainly felt like Bush was declaring permanent war. This was the opinion of the European Social Forum that met in the previous November in Florence and was instrumental in calling these coordinated protests.
Despite the terrible destruction wreaked on Iraq, with consequences that still exist to this day; power cuts, food shortages, protests against the present government, terrible inequality and, it’s estimated, one million widows, I do not believe the global movement was defeated.
Today I believe we see the offshoots of this incredible day. It’s been described as the birthing of “a movement of movements” for equality, justice, peace, a sustainable planet. Interlocking, global, powerful. Though I can’t help but ask – would Putin have had the audacity to launch his aggression in the Crimea and Ukraine had it not been for the blatant disregard of international law shown by Bush and Blair.
It is so hard to imagine a world without war yet somehow we must. And as the anniversary of the Russian invasion in Ukraine approaches there is increasing anti war action across the world this weekend. If we can do nothing else at least we can hold up a light in the darkness, one that will be seen across time, across continents as our collective actions always are. We can imagine a different world, we can write of it, we can work for peace and speak of peace and know love is light and light is love. Let there be light!
A blog post by Anne Enith Cooper
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