Young Blood

On January 31, KCUR 89.3 devoted an episode of its Friday talk show Under the Clock to "the human face of today's peace movement." About eighty people sat in the audience.

KCUR's news director, Frank Morris, sat in for the Reverend Emanuel Cleaver, the live program's regular host. He introduced the three guests: a World War II conscientious objector, a suburban housewife who recently changed political perspectives, and a high school student just back from the rally in Washington, D.C.

Stepp and his friends had cut class so they could go downtown. He had talked a girl at school into forging a pass for them. Stepp says when he flashed the pass at his teacher, "He was just like 'Yeeaahhh, all riiiight. Go ahead.'"

Just before the show, an NPR newscaster's voice filled the air, talking about increasing tension on the "world stage." Bush had just issued a statement that Iraq had "weeks, not months" to cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors.

Stepp slipped off his Birkenstocks and sat cross-legged on his chair, fidgeting. The host reminded the audience that the show was not a forum for discussing whether America should go to war with Iraq but was rather a profile of the new peace activists.

"Demonstrations against war with Iraq are the latest in a long tradition of protests in America. In World War II and Korea, small war-resistance movements formed," Morris said. "During the Vietnam era, anti-war agitators became pop culture icons; their anthems became the soundtrack of a generation."

With that, a song by the late Phil Ochs, who made his name singing protest songs in the '60s, came on. Many eyes in the over-forty crowd grew misty. But, apparently not in the mood for a folk fest, the kids just looked impatient.

Morris turned to the three generations of protesters sitting on the couch.

"First off," Morris said, "I'd like to get from you guys a sense of what the scope of the peace movement is in Kansas City ... I've seen dozens of people protesting at Mill Creek Park."

Stepp scowled. "Dozens," he muttered. "They always do this to us, man." Thrutchley quickly corrected Morris, noting that crowds of 300 regularly show up on Sundays and that on the weekend of the D.C. protests more than 600 people demonstrated at Mill Creek Park.

"What makes you think that protesting is going to stop this bulldozer?" Morris asked. He looked at Gold.

"Well," she began, "it doesn't just become about stopping the bulldozer. It's speaking out for what you believe. And we have got to speak for those who cannot. It is our obligation. We are a member in the human family. In the years to come, I will look back, and I will not regret anything. I will know that I did what I'm supposed to do as a human."

Now it was the audience's turn to share stories.

One by one, adults made their way through the aisles and down to the front of the room. About 25 people had lined up behind a microphone on a stand. At the back of the line, Stepp and his friends were barely visible behind all the gray heads.

A tall, birdish man with white hair in a "No Blood for Oil" T-shirt stepped to the microphone and began a long diatribe.

"I'm from Overland Park," he said in a shaky voice. "I come from a long line of patriots," he said, before recapping his work in a Central American refugee camp in the '80s, where current Bush administration figures were "running the show." He went on about "corporate media lies" and the "corporate influence" driving U.S. foreign policy. "My father fought in World War II, and we now know that IBM corporation made a bunch of money helping the Nazis run more efficient death trains," he continued. "And George Bush's grandfather made a fortune selling steel to the Nazi war machine...."

"Wait, wait. It's going to be hard to refute any of this stuff," Morris said. "Let me just ask you, does your position on the war cause a rift within your family?"

"The reason you can't refute it is because it's true," he said, laughing.

The man kept talking about Vice President Dick Cheney's company, Halliburton, selling supplies and equipment to Saddam Hussein.

A voice in the back threatened to cut off the microphone, and he finally sat down.

Stepp was growing exasperated waiting for his chance to talk. He worried that listeners would think peace activists were a bunch of left-wing conspiracy theorists.

Then a gray-bearded American Friends Service Committee leader spoke.

"Back in the '60s, I was in college and wasn't very active -- really was more of an artist -- but felt obligated to speak out against the Vietnam War ... I really wasn't prepared to be an activist again. I'm an artist, a teacher, but it was really just something I felt I had to do," he said.

Then a woman with spiky silver hair walked to the microphone.