Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 13:44:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Raja Harish Swamy"
Subject: [FOIL] McCarthyism Again? : FBI after Women in Black (fwd)

[ Original Source for this report missing]

FBI Investigates Peace Group


McCarthyism Again?

This is a letter to the editor by Ronnie Gilbert, famous
as a member of the folk group "The Weavers" who brought
all kinds of songs into popularity. One of the original
members, Pete Seeger is still on the road.

The group "Women in Black" that she refers to is a group
of women from Isreal and Palestine that hold peace vigils
dressed stylishly in black and who work to end the
occupation of Palestinian territory, through cooperation
between the two peoples. There are women throughout
the world who have decided to start "Women in Black"
vigils, including the one in San Francisco that Ronnie
Gilbert is a member of.

The letter is about the FBI's scrutiny, apparently of
peace groups.

Please relay it on. This could be important.
*****************************************************

Dear Editor:

For the second time in my life - at least - a group
that I belong to is being investigated by the FBI.

The first was the Weavers. The Weavers were a recording
industry phenomenon. In 1950 we recorded a couple of songs
from our American/World folk music repertoire, Leadbelly's
"Goodnight Irene" and (ironically) the Israeli
"Tzena, Tzena, Tzena" and sold millions of records for the
almost-defunct record label. Folk music entered the mainstream,
and the Weavers were stars. By 1952 it was over. The record
company dropped us, eager television producers stopped knocking
on our door. The Weavers were on a private yet well-publicized
roster of suspected entertainment industry reds. The FBI came
a-calling. This week, I just found out that Women in Black,
another group of peace activists I belong to, is the subject of
an FBI investigation.

Women in Black is a loosely knit international network of women
who vigil against violence, often silently, each group
autonomous, each group focused on the particular problems of
personal and state violence in its part of the world. Because
my group is composed mostly of Jewish women, we focus on the
Middle East, protesting the cycle of violence and revenge in
Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

The FBI is threatening my group with a Grand Jury investigation.
Of what? That we publicly call the Israeli military's occupation
of the mandated Palestine lands illegal? So does the World Court
and the United Nations. That destroying hundreds of thousands of
the Palestinians' olive and fruit trees, blocking roads and
demolishing homes promotes hatred and terrorism in the Middle
East? Even President Bush and Colin Powell have gotten around
to saying so. So what is to investigate? That some of us are
in contact with activist Palestinian peace groups? This is bad?

The Jewish Women in Black of Jerusalem have stood vigil every
Friday for 13 years in protest against the Occupation; Muslim
women from Palestinian peace groups stand with them at every
opportunity. We praise and honor them, these Jewish and Arab
women who endure hatred and frequent abuse from extremists on
both sides for what they do. We are not alone in our admiration.

Jerusalem Women in Black is a nominee for the 2001 Nobel Peace
Prize, along with the Bosnia Women in Black, now ten years old.

If the FBI cannot or will not distinguish between groups who
collude in hatred and terrorism, and peace activists who
struggle in the full light of day against all forms of terrorism,
we are in serious trouble.

I have seen such trouble before in my lifetime. It was called
McCarthyism. In the hysterical atmosphere of the early Cold War,
anyone who had signed a peace petition, who had joined an
organization opposing violence or racism or had tried to raise
money for the refugee children of the Spanish Civil War, in other
words who had openly advocated what was not popular at the time,
was fair game.

In my case, the FBI visited The Weavers' booking agent, the
recording company, my neighbors, my dentist husband's patients,
my friends. In the waning of our career, the Weavers were
followed down the street, accosted onstage by drunken "patriots,"
warned by friendly hotel employees to keep the door open if we
rehearsed in anyone's room so as not to become targets for the
vice squad. It was nasty. Every two-bit local wannabe G-man
joined the dragnet searching out and identifying "communist spies."

In all those self-debasing years how many spies were pulled in by
that dragnet? Nary a one. Instead it pulled down thousands of
teachers, union members, scientists, journalists, actors, entertainers
like us, who saw our lives disrupted, our jobs, careers go down the
drain, our standing in the community lost, even our children
harrassed. A scared population soon shut their mouths up tight.

Thus came the silence of the 1950s and early 60s, when no notable
voice of reason was heard to say,"Hey, wait a minute. Look what
we're doing to ourselves, to the land of the free and the home of the
brave," when not one dissenting intelligence was allowed a public
voice to warn against zealous foreign policies we1d later come to
regret, would be regretting now, if our leaders were honest.

Today, in the wake of the worst hate crime of the millennium, a
dragnet is out for "terrorists" and we are told that certain civil
liberties may have to be curtailed for our own security. Which ones?
I'm curious to know.

The First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech or of the press?
The right of people peaceably to assemble? Suddenly, deja vu -
haven't I been here before?

Hysterical neo-McCarthyism does not equal security, never will. The
bitter lesson September 11's horrific tragedy should have taught us
and our government is that only an honest re-evaluation of our
foreign policies and careful, focused and intelligent intelligence
work can hope to combat operations like the one that robbed all of
us and their families of 6,000 decent working people. We owe the dead
that, at least.

As for Women in Black, we intend to keep on keeping on.

Ronnie Gilbert
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