Sunday's Journal Sentinel carried this op ed column. Unfortunately, they edited out the website link, so here it is: IraqMoratorium.org

How to take a stand against the Iraq war

By BILL CHRISTOFFERSON

As we march inexorably toward the sixth year of the Iraq war with no end in sight, the country's antiwar movement is asking itself: What will it take to end this war?

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The discussion of strategy and tactics aside, there is consensus on one thing: This is going to be a long haul.

President Bush is not persuadable on the issue; he will not be moved. He's now looking for ways to commit our troops there beyond his term of office.

Depending upon which poll you read and how the question is phrased, a solid majority and perhaps as many as two-thirds of the American people want to end the war and start bringing our troops home.

Unfortunately, most of them say nothing about it unless asked by a pollster. On a day-to-day basis, they are silent. Opponents of the Iraq war have become the new silent majority.

They elected a new Democratic Congress last year, with a clear mandate to end the war. But the new Congress is as chicken-hearted as the president is bull-headed.

Next year's presidential election offers precious little hope, as the three leading Democratic candidates refuse to commit to having our troops out by 2013.

Against that backdrop, what's the peace movement to do? Its job is not to persuade Americans to oppose the war. They already do. The challenge is to find a way to mobilize them to become active, vocal advocates to end the war.

They spoke in great numbers before the war began. But more than four and a half years later, their voices have become quiet.

United for Peace and Justice, the nation's largest antiwar coalition, sought advice from activists in a recent online poll about what to do next, with a range of options including electoral action, a national march, lobbying Congress, challenging war profiteers, targeted boycotts and more.

The obvious answer seems to be "all of the above."

That's why I have joined many others who have signed on with the Iraq Moratorium, a decentralized but national grassroots effort which asks individuals to take personal responsibility to do something - anything - to show their opposition to the war.

The moratorium asks people to pledge to take some action, either individually or collectively, on the third Friday of every month. It can be as simple a gesture as wearing a black armband or button for the day, as big as participating in a large-scale protest or a lot of things in between.

The third monthly moratorium day is Friday. Milwaukee activists hold a vigil from 5 to 6 p.m. every moratorium day at the intersection of Water and Wisconsin, urging an end to the war. They'll be out again on Friday.

Last month, there were at least nine events across Wisconsin and hundreds across the country, plus uncounted thousands of individual actions.

The idea has not attracted much media attention yet, and probably won't until it becomes too big a story to ignore. As it grows, so will the attention it focuses on the war.

It's easy to dismiss this as meaningless. But doing something is infinitely more likely to have an impact than doing nothing.

Buttons and armbands won't stop the war by themselves. Neither will rallies and marches or letters to the editor or phone calls to Congress or speeches. There's no single magic solution.

Those who want to end this war need to do everything. The moratorium is one more tool in the toolbox - but one that, in the long run, could be quite effective.