Laura Bush ... Remember Lysistrata — a sign at the January 18 march.

One of the most provocative aspects of Saturday’s march was its dedication as a "living tribute" to Philip Berrigan, one of the most influential and effective American peace activists of the 20th century. Berrigan died on December 6, at the age of 81, after a lifetime spent both in the harsh glare of the spotlight fighting the Vietnam War and nuclear arms and in quieter acts of civil disobedience and charity in the Baltimore neighborhood where he helped to found a community of activists known as Jonah House. Berrigan’s tale is a story rich in complexity. It also offers an interesting perspective on one of the most fundamental debates in the present antiwar movement — the debate over tactics.

After September 11, the American left found itself torn into two sides. On one side are purists who believe that almost any projection of US military and economic power beyond no-strings foreign aid and debt forgiveness is wrong. To many of this persuasion, the Al Qaeda attacks were "blowback" — deeply tragic, but inevitable and thoroughly comprehensible. On the other side of the American left are pragmatists who can decipher the public mood and draw distinctions between a war of defense against Al Qaeda and the impending conflict against Iraq. For these pragmatists, the use of American power to weaken Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic and stop ethnic cleansing was justified.

At the core of this debate is a central question: who should speak for the antiwar movement? Will purists turn off deeper public opinion? Will pragmatists muddy the message?

The organizer of the large protests in October and on Saturday — International ANSWER — resides firmly on the purist side of the debate. The group has its roots in hard-core Marxism, and many of those associated with it (most notably former-US-attorney-general-turned-activist Ramsay Clark) argue that the use of US military might against Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and Milosevic is wrong.

The pragmatists have been quick to attack. In the October issue of Mother Jones, Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin argued that the "cynics of the hard left have moved to the front of the current antiwar movement." He accused Clark and others of defending Hussein and Milosevic and offering no substantive and positive role for the US to play in world affairs other than "US Out Of Everywhere."

Gitlin and others (such as Marc Cooper, who, in an acerbic take on those heading up the peace movement penned in September for the Los Angeles Times, noted that "carrying water for Milosevic and Hussein ain’t gonna help build the peace movement that we so desperately need") argue for broadening the protest movement. They think activists should tap into average Americans’ latent fear and distrust of the Iraq conflict and shape them into an effective political voice.

The answer from ANSWER is a continuing and full-throated attack on the Bush administration and US imperialism — including Clark’s call on Saturday for a drive to "impeach President Bush."

On the surface, Berrigan’s tale seems closer to ANSWER’s views than those of the Gitlin/Cooper school. Berrigan spent years in jail for acts of civil disobedience, and his rhetoric about the criminality of the US and its nuclear-arms policy was harsh and unflinching. But beyond Berrigan’s words, his actions had deeper currents that must also be navigated.

A decorated World War II veteran, Berrigan became a priest in 1950. His work with the poor and in civil-rights organizing in the early 1960s started him on a course that led to full-fledged civil disobedience by 1967, when he and three other compatriots stormed into the Customs House in downtown Baltimore and poured blood on Selective Service files.

Berrigan and the others were arrested, but he remained undeterred. Shortly afterward, he organized an even larger group — which included his brother, the Jesuit poet and priest Daniel Berrigan — to remove Selective Service files and burn them with napalm in the Baltimore suburb of Catonsville on May 17, 1968. The protest and subsequent trial of the "Catonsville Nine" may well have been the most influential and far-reaching antiwar gesture of the Vietnam era. But its effectiveness lay not in its purism, but in its creation of cognitive dissonance in the larger population. For a public all too familiar with the sight of students and radicals protesting Vietnam, seeing Catholic priests commit acts of civil disobedience opened a new front for the antiwar movement. It forced many Catholics who supported the war to question it.

I had a chance to interview Berrigan and others in the Catonsville Nine in 1992, for a long story on the 25th anniversary of the protest for the Baltimore City Paper. As he reminisced about the nonviolent clash that made such a deep impression, Berrigan told me that he spent a great deal of time analyzing what had gone wrong with the Baltimore Customs House raid, and honing the Catonsville action for maximum PR effectiveness.

"The first action had an effective result, but within a very modest context," Berrigan told me. "We thought the symbol of blood hadn’t meant that much to Americans.... On the other hand, napalm was understood completely."

Another member of the Catonsville Nine, George Mische, told me that it was not just the symbolism that lent the Catonsville action its pervasive and far-reaching effect. "People looked at the antiwar movement and saw young people," he said. "They looked at us as a bunch of drug-smoking, punk kids ... faggots. That’s what they called us. But [the Catonsville Nine] changed that."

Patriots Say No Again To King George — a sign at the January 18 march.

Catonsville’s lessons have not been learned yet, by either the purists or the pragmatists. Watching the rally again on C-SPAN on Saturday night, I was struck by how the picture presented through the view of the camera was at odds with what happened out on the National Mall and in the march. There wasn’t much that could be "understood completely" — like Berrigan’s napalm. Television viewers saw little of the crowd’s creativity and goodwill — people speaking simply and plainly with their feet and homemade signs. Those viewers didn’t meet Brian Slagle or Jethro Heiko or Jonti Simmons. Instead, they were bored by an endless string of speakers assailing a wide range of injustices — large and small, even petty and personal.

The extent of the coverage also varied wildly. Criticized by many for downplaying the large October antiwar protests in Washington, both the Washington Post and the New York Times put the protests above the fold on page one of their Sunday editions. But local media — in DC, at least — proved to be a much different story. For instance, as I marched along with the crowd down Eighth Street SE, toward the Navy Yard, I flicked on the local all-news radio station, WTOP-AM. For most of the 45 minutes I tuned in, you wouldn’t even know that tens of thousands of people were in town marching against the Bush administration’s Iraq policy. When the station did break to live coverage of the march, it gave equal time to the tiny group of pro-war protestors who baited the marchers as they passed by. Editorially heavy-handed WTOP announcers saw fit to note at every turn that the station was airing "both sides" of the issue.

Local TV news was no better. On the ABC affiliate, the three dozen counter-protestors actually received more airtime than the approximately 110,000 antiwar marchers. Coverage time on the local CBS affiliate was roughly equal.

Here is a perfect illustration of just what the left’s antiwar message is up against. And until the peace movement’s leaders speak unambiguously, amplifying the powerful message of the people who come to march, and drawing upon the clear distinctions and sense of theater forged by activists like Berrigan, its case will not be heard.

Richard Byrne can be reached at richardbyrne1@earthlink.net