Like the organizers of the recent actions in San Francisco, the M27 coalition takes as its starting point the nexus between corporate rapacity and Bush's foreign policy. The group's Web site proclaims, "We target corporate war profiteers and the media/corporate/government collusion that is promoting this war. We target the Rockefeller Center area since many media and corporations have offices there or nearby. We target the corporate structure that is profiting from this war."

Of course, activists will also end up targeting lots of regular people trying to get to work. To quell any hostility that may result, some of the disobedient have plans to be civil, preparing a flyer to hand out that explains to anyone put out by the action: "We are aware that shutting down the city will inconvenience many people. While we and others may suffer disruptions and lost wages on this one day, ask yourself, what is a human life worth? What are the lives of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians worth? ... We feel strongly that any inconvenience on this day is dwarfed by the horror of death that will be experienced around the world during this time and beyond."

Yet there's no guarantee that ordinary New Yorkers will agree that the protesters' reasoning is, as the letter says, "both deeply moral and patently pragmatic." They might just find it annoying, or worse.

Civil disobedience, Cagan says, is useful when the purpose of it is clear. "It's an effective tool for highlighting something that's been overlooked before. If civil disobedience was done in the corporate offices of some of the arms manufactures who make a lot of money off of war, it's an opportunity to bring greater attention to that," she says. "You can even actually stop part of the horrendous war machine," as at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, a target for activists because much of the targeting for the Iraq bombing campaign is done there.

The symbolic import of snarling traffic in midtown, though, might not make sense to onlookers who don't share the organizers' analysis of the relationship between media, capitalism and war. Thus Todd Gitlin, a former president of Students for a Democratic Society, '60s historian and Columbia University professor, cautions that actions some activists find cathartic may alienate the unconverted. Speaking of the San Francisco protest, he says, "I can only imagine corks popping in Karl Rove's living room at the spectacle of demonstrators disrupting the lives of people in the least Republican city in America. What a gift to them, or at least an amusement."

That doesn't mean he thinks civil disobedience is a bad idea, but, like Cagan, he believes it has to be targeted at places like Halliburton or Clear Channel Radio, not at the city at large. "That just seems like self-indulgence to me," he says.

After all, like fellow '60s historian Paul Berman, he's long argued that, contrary to popular mythology, the radical elements of the Vietnam era only undermined the left's political power. Gitlin calls it the "inauspicious paradox of the late '60s," explaining, "as the war became less popular, so did the antiwar movement. In fact the antiwar movement was hated. That had huge political implications. It basically dismantled the political advantages that had accrued to the antiwar movement and left the left isolated."

The answer to this paradox, Gitlin argues, isn't for war opponents to stay home and shut up -- it's for them to get involved in practical as well as symbolic politics. "The political actions that are most necessary over the next years entail the political defeat of George Bush," he says. "If you were asking the right political questions, you would be reasoning backward from 2004. If you ask how did we get here, the answer will track you through the rise of the right wing of the Republican Party and the election of 2000 and Ralph Nader and Florida.

The serious political person now asks, 'How do I focus my energy? How do I weigh in against the continuation of the Bush foreign policy?'" says Gitlin. "That's an absolute prerequisite to disrupting this very dangerous march we're on."

Cagan calls Gitlin's thinking "totally ridiculous." The Vietnam War, she says, "became less popular because of the work of the antiwar movement." She questions his call for war opponents to work for the Democrats, saying, "It is important that Bush loses, but it's also important that somebody with a little backbone and a little leadership capability wins. Some of these Democratic candidates, I don't know if they would be handling things any better right now in terms of foreign policy questions."

She continues, "I also think that the progressive community in this country falls into the trap of the presidential election and puts too many eggs in that basket without paying enough attention to congressional and Senate races that will be happening in that same year." Regarding the war in Iraq, she says, "Congress basically rolled over."

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