What the Peace Movement Can Learn from the NRA

Many thanks to all the commentators for their responses to my article and, especially, for their ideas about strengthening the U.S. peace movement -- most of which I agree with wholeheartedly. In my view, the peace movement should certainly challenge racism and other forms of injustice, encourage creative forms of public witness, avoid letting political parties define its position, champion a democratic and just foreign policy, support international law, develop better messaging, and encourage grassroots activism.

Nevertheless, I don't think our support for these things should distract us from taking a hard look at the peace movement's political weakness in the face of an unpopular war and a very unpopular administration. An opposition-controlled Congress remains far from pulling the plug on the Iraq war, all of the major candidates for president favor increasing the U.S. military budget, and nuclear disarmament remains a dead letter.

By contrast, other social movements have fared considerably better in recent years. Despite a string of horrifying school massacres, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has managed to block any effective gun control legislation in the United States. Despite the existence of a rightwing Republican Congress and a rightwing Republican president hell-bent on slashing the public sector, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has scuttled the Republican plan for privatizing Social Security.

Could these differences in efficacy have something to do with the fact that the largest peace group in the United States (Peace Action) has only 100,000 members, while the NRA has 4.3 million and the AARP some 38 million? Could it have something to do with the fact that probably 90% of the American public cannot name a current U.S. peace organization, while the NRA and the AARP are household words? And, against this backdrop, should we really be surprised by the differing responses of politicians to these organizations? I think the answers are pretty obvious.

In my opinion, these substantial differences in organizational membership reflect at least two factors. The first is that, as the late Michael Harrington pointed out in another context, the movement has a lot of "dues chiselers." Yes, the peace movement can turn out large numbers of people for demonstrations and millions more are sympathetic to it. But, either because of their individualism or their commitment to ideological purity, many peace people don't join peace organizations. The second reason for the absence of a national peace organization with a mass membership is that many of the peace organizations that do exist are local or, if national, represent specific constituencies (e.g. people of faith, women, or veterans). As a result, there is simply no single peace organization that exemplifies the peace movement in the way that the National Organization for Women exemplifies the women's movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People exemplifies the racial justice movement, or the AFL-CIO exemplifies the labor movement.

Scott Bennett suggests that, in this context, a peace federation would be a good idea. Certainly, it would be a step forward toward maximizing the movement's political clout, clarifying its message, and coordinating its strategy. But I am inclined to think that it doesn't go far enough. Even within the AFL-CIO -- which, as he correctly observes, is a federation -- there has long been a tendency for the parochial interests of individual unions to dominate, and even for union members to narrow their concerns to the fortunes of the union local. As a result, different unions all too often raid one another for members, cross one another's picket lines, and back opposing political candidates. In these circumstances, minimal attention goes to the overall defense of workers' rights and even less to the liberation of the working class.

Let me be clear that I am not advocating -- as one commentator suggests -- a "highly centralized" peace movement. Rather, I prefer one that has a more equitable balance between local, ad hoc activism (which now predominates in the United States) and the power of a national peace movement (which is currently very underdeveloped). I am also not implying that local, unaffiliated peace groups and national peace groups with specific constituencies or orientations are detrimental to the movement. Quite the contrary, they do very important work and I have belonged to a number of such groups for years.

But I do believe that the limited membership in the U.S. peace movement and the overall fragmentation of the movement pose significant obstacles to the movement's success. Or, to put this in a more positive manner, I believe that a national peace organization with a mass membership would make the peace movement in the United States considerably more effective.

Peace Action, as the nation's largest peace organization, seems most likely to play this role. To learn more about it, people might want to check its web site or perhaps read a book that I have co-edited with Professor Glen Stassen, of Fuller Theological Seminary. Entitled Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future, it will be published in late June by Paradigm Publishers.

Once again, we should all be grateful to the commentators, who provide numerous useful suggestions for building a more effective peace movement. Let's see if we can implement them and, also, build a more powerful peace presence on the national level.

Lawrence S. Wittner is professor of history at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press). He serves on the board of Peace Action.