Iraq: Profiles in Protest

A former fourth-grade teacher who sews quilts for peace, a 24-year-old who is the closest thing to a professional pacifist, a Gulf War veteran who is trying to rally his brethren against Gulf War II--these are the new faces of the peace movement, a motley collection of activists who would seem to have little chance of changing popular sentiment but have started to make their voices heard all the same. Some protests have been hard to miss, like the Oct. 26 march on Washington that drew 100,000 people. But for months the antiwar movement has been churning in smaller, less clamorous ways. In Dallas antiwar protesters wore yellow ribbons and read poetry at the city's cultural festival; in Miami a dozen people wave NO WAR signs on U.S. 1 every Friday during rush hour. This week several peace groups plan to stage protests in at least 15 states--but don't expect the spectacle of Vietnam War--era rallies. "You can't burn a flag here," says Anne Marie Weiss-Armush, a longtime Dallas peace activist. "Here people are very image conscious, and the image of peace protesters is very weird."

For folks like Weiss-Armush, that's a challenge. At a time when most Americans view the war on terrorism as self-defense and close to two-thirds support a military campaign to remove Saddam Hussein, members of the antiwar movement have to be careful to avoid drifting even further outside the mainstream. "There are a lot of people who may say they are against the war but are in no mood to be politically demonstrative about it," says Columbia University sociology and journalism professor Todd Gitlin, a 1960s student-protest leader. "And so you can't simply argue that the U.S. poisons everything it touches. The left-wing sectarian style is an impediment to moving it to a larger public."

While no amount of protest is likely to have much effect on whether the Administration decides to go to war, the movement could still push legislators to speak out if the fighting goes badly. Activists say they are slowly building a diverse constituency of dissent, one that includes labor unions, the National Council of Churches and Gulf War veterans' groups. Interviews by Time across the U.S. show that a wide variety of Americans have joined the antiwar campaign. Here are some of their stories:

The Debater Santiago Leon, 57

Tall and slender, distinguished by a thoughtful reserve and slightly unkempt gray hair, Santiago Leon walks and talks more like a New England college professor than a Miami rabble rouser. In 1990 he gave up his career as a lawyer because selling insurance sounded more exciting. And yet, throughout his life, Leon has been drawn to protest. In the '80s, he led the Dade County Citizens for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze. This fall, with fellow members of the Coral Gables Congregational Church and other like-minded people, he helped launch Concerned People Opposed to War in Iraq. Leon prefers intellectual debate to raucous protest. In September Leon's church brought together Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders to debate religious philosophies toward war, and he has since helped convene teach-ins at local colleges. "My preference is not really for massive demonstrations," he says. "They have a limited use in terms of persuading people who are not already persuaded."