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Anti-War Paper
Launched
A new, nationwide anti-war newspaper began publication in Oakland,
Calif. in February, hoping to promote what it bills as a more humane,
less jingoistic alternative to the gung-ho militarism of President Bush.
Bob Wing, managing editor of War Times, said he was disturbed by
the U.S. government's response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Instead of conducting a police action to bring the Sept. 11 murderers to
justice, Wing said the Bush administration was killing innocent Afghans,
threatening more than 60 countries and trampling on civil liberties and
civil rights at home.
While other Americans were mounting flags on their cars, Wing began
talking to everyone he knew about a project that could counter what he
saw as a warmongering atmosphere taking hold of the nation.
The result is War Times, a bilingual English/Spanish publication
launched by Wing and a group of Bay Area writers and activists with the
support of nationally known intellectuals and human rights advocates
such as Nobel Prize winner Noam Chomsky. After publishing a prospectus
of War Times online, Wing said the public response was
overwhelming. A first run of 100,000 copies is 10 times the number
originally planned by the group. War Times is being published
every six weeks and distributed in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and
Puerto Rico.
“The thing blew up on us,'' he said. Requests for copies came from
every corner of the country, and the idea of starting small and
targeting only active peace groups ended. War Times is still avidly
looking for additional distributors and financial supporters. They can
be contacted through their Website at www.war-times.org.
The first issue of War Times featured an interview with Danny
Glover, an actor and activist who shares the view that bombing
Afghanistan was wrong. Other articles criticize U.S. military deployment
in the Philippines, stepped-up attacks on Palestinians, racial profiling
and attacks on immigrants in the U.S., Bush’s new policies of
preemptive military strikes, and the cost of the war on terrorism.
The lead article of the premier edition, by Jung Hee Choi, a War
Times editor, profiles a New Yorker who lost her brother in the
World Trade Center and an Afghan-American woman who lost a large number
of family members in U.S. airstrikes on Kandahar. The two women met
recently, and have used their personal tragedies as a platform for
opposing the U.S. war.
“Our viewpoint will be, in general, war hurts a lot of people,'' from
Afghan villagers who lost their homes to non-citizen airport employees
in the U.S. who are losing their jobs.
Wing is a writer and editor who honed his activism during the student
strikes at University of California-Berkeley in the 1960s. More
recently, he founded and edited ColorLines magazine, which focuses on
issues of race and organizing.
Launching a newspaper
to protest government policy is a venerable American tradition, and one
with strong roots in the Bay Area. But Wing points out that the
landscape for publishing has changed since the '60s. Now there are free
alternative weeklies in every coffee shop, and a small anti-war
publication has to carve out its own niche. Wing wants to emulate the
muckraking work of journalist I.F. Stone and the social commentary of
African-American writer W.E.B. Du Bois.
"We need thousands of people like you to share War Times with other
people who question war, racial profiling and the curtailment of civil
liberties,'' the editors write in their first editorial.
The paper is free, and interested readers are being asked to help
distribute it. Distribution will be national, and the editors hope in
particular to reach readers in the middle of the country, where anti-war
viewpoints are not as accepted as in the Bay Area.
IF YOU'RE INTERESTED
For more information, contact War Times at
wartimes@attbi.com |
