The PeaceWorks Park vigil was an anti-war protest action that occurred in Gasworks Park beginning Sunday, August 26, 1990 and carrying on through the end of the [Gulf War]. Throughout this period of over six months, including the cold of winter, there was a continuous 24-hour-a-day vigil in the park in opposition to the military buildup and the war itself. Although the core of the vigil was a group of 25-50 dedicated, mostly young, activists, among the people who would participate in the vigil at one point or another were former congressman and future governor Mike Lowry, then-city-councilperson Sue Donaldson, sixties icon Timothy Leary, and beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
"A free speech zone for world peace"
The vigil arose out of a Peace Concert that had been held in the park the weekend before Labor Day. Don Glenn, organizer of the longstanding Peace Concert series (an outgrowth of his days with the Love Family) had addressed the crowd, expressing the irony of continuing the concert series as usual with a war looming. He called for people to stay after and discuss what to do; little did anyone know they would stay half a year.
Initially, the group gathered in and around the Seattle Portable Outdoor Theater (SPOT), a large, circuslike tent/stage that had been erected for the peace concert.
The group's first consensus statement already expressed what were to prove the themes of the vigil. Although the chief focus would be opposition to the Gulf War, it almost equally focused on the creation of a space for free-speech discussion. In keeping with the democracy movement that had so recently swept through the Communist Bloc, there was as much concern with means as with ends:
PeaceWorks Park is a free-speech forum for world peace. We are calling for an end to the U.S. military intervention in the Persian Gulf region. We are gathered in the center of Seattle's Gasworks Park, exercising our First Amendment rights to speak out: "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."
One of the first institutions established were "silent circles" occurring every six hours: at midnight, 6 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m. A flyer from early September announces, "We especially need people for the 6 a.m. circle. Come by on your way to work in the morning. Bring juice, coffee, breakfast rolls, etc."
Meetings typically occurred immediately after these silent circles.
Participants at first slept in the park
From the start it was clear the the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation wanted the vigil out, and the vigilists were determined to run their vigil in such a manner as not to give them an excuse to kick them out. A September 3, 1990 story in the Seattle Times, about a week into the vigil, records, "Participants at first slept in the park. Friday afternoon they were asked by the Seattle Parks Department to move elsewhere after holding that night's midnight candlelight ceremony."
Even the earliest communiques any flyers carry hints that the difficulties of holding such an action in a public park extended beyond dealing with city officials. "Come join us. Come speak out!" they called, "Bring food, bring musical instruments," but also, "Please do not bring alcohol or other drugs." Six weeks in, when a group of non-violence trainers from Seattle Non-Violent Action Group came to do a role-playing workshop on Thursday, Oct. 4, they were a bit surprised that most of the vigilists were more interested in tactics for dealing with park drunks than with the police.
Although Gasworks was, at the time, a 24-hour-a-day park, there was a rule against "camping" overnight. The rule was written broadly enough that simply remaining in the park overnight, even wakefully, qualified as camping. However, after some lengthy conferences with the police up at the North Precinct, it became clear that as long as people came and went, and no individual was in the park through the night, the continuous vigil was technically in compliance. For a period, the parks department held the vigilists to this absurd ritual; within weeks they relented, and while few people actually slept in the park, the maintenance of a wakeful overnight vigil was tolerated.
The September 3 Seattle Times story represented a victory of sorts for the vigil: with a story like that in the paper, the vigil's profile was much higher and, hence, their tenure in the park much more assured. It was no accident: about a dozen of the people involved had scrambled like mad for a week to bring together a Sunday, Sept. 2 "Prepare for Peace" rally (speakers, music, etc.) in the midst of the vigil, and to get press coverage for it, in order to shore of the perception of the vigil as a legitimate political action, not just the extension (without permit) of a one-day, permitted concert.
The first 1000 hours
Some of the character of the vigil, and of the issues it had to deal with, can be gleaned from the various announced events during roughly the third through fifth weeks of the vigil:
| Saturday, Sept. 8 | "Join most of us at the peace march downtown!... Then come up and join our vigil to continue talking and working toward future actions. (We also need people who can sit the vigil during the march.) |
| Sunday, Sept. 9 | 12 noon: Picnic. 2 p.m.: Teach-in. |
| Wednesday, Sept. 12 | 8pm. WORKSHOP. "Consensus: What it means and how to achieve it" |
| Thursday, Sept. 13 | 7pm. Open acoustic music (drums welcome till 10 p.m.) |
| Friday, Sept. 14 | Sunset Drum Circle. |
| Saturday, Sept. 15 | 12 noon. MEDITATION WORKSHOP: Instruction provided by Bemaraj, nephew of Shiva Bala Yogi. Come explore inner peace through meditation. 2pm. Play on homelessness, by Seattle Public Theater |
| Sunday, Sept. 16 | 12 noon. Picnic, with speakers from NORML 2 p.m. teach-in "Our Native Lands" |
| Tuesday, Sept. 18 | 8pm. WORKSHOP. "Racism: a poison inside and outside the peace movement" |
| Wednesday, Sept. 19 | 8pm. WORKSHOP. "Consensus: What it means and how to achieve it. This workshop proved so popular last week that we are planning a review and a continuation" |
| Friday, Sept. 21 | Sunset Drum Circle. |
| Saturday, Sept. 22 | 12 noon. Free Speech Picnic |
| Sunday, Sept. 23 | 12 noon: Picnic and concert: The Ducks, Venus Envy, Kuli Loach, Innocent Bystanders |
| Tuesday, Sept. 25 | 7pm. WORKSHOP. "Drugs, Oil, and other addictions" |
| Wednesday, Sept. 26 | 12 noon and 7pm. WORKSHOP. "The future of the vigil" The vigil is one month old. Where we stand and where we're going. Agenda. |
| Thursday, Sept. 27 | 8pm. Acoustic singalong. |
| Friday, Sept. 28 | Sunset Drum Circle. |
| Saturday, Sept. 29 | noon. ART-IN. All artists welcome. Display your work, create art inthe park... Please respect the Seattle Parks Code: do not attach your works to parks structures... Team projects, political art especially encouraged... 5pm. Poetry: Jesse Bernstein, Ricardo Wang, Randy Thompson & others 8pm. Discussion: "PEACE". Led by PeaceWorks Park Men's Group (at the sundial at Gas Works). |
This was all on top of two, three, even four internal meetings every day; also, a mid-September flyer announces women's meetings every Monday 8pm and every Thursday 2pm.
Sunday October 7 at 10 a.m. marked 1000 hours of the vigil.
The two coalitions
By this time there were three main entities in Seattle opposing Operation Desert Shield: the vigil, the Northwest Coalition Against U.S. Military Intervention in the Mid-East, and the Seattle Coalition for Peace in the Middle East. The Northwest Coalition was jokingly described by one vigilist as "Six Vanguards in Search of a Following": member groups included Workers World Party, the Freedom Socialist Party, and the Revolutionary Communist Party. The Seattle Coalition included numerous church-based groups, local chapters of third-world solidarity groups such as Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), and several Jewish peace groups, notably the local chapter of International Jewish Peace Union (IJPU). The main overt point of difference between the two coalitions was that the Northwest Coalition took no position on Saddam Hussein, and the Seattle Coalition condemned Iraq's advance into Kuwait as firmly as they condemned the U.S. buildup.
The vigil attempted simply to split the difference, participating in and helping to publicize actions of both coalitions equally, inviting both to hold meetings in the shelter structure of the park as a sign of solidarity with the vigil. Vigilist and military veteran John Hatch, quoted in the the University of Washington Daily (Oct. 119, 1990) remarked that the group "has no consensus on how the problems of the Middle East should be solved. But we all agree that the U.S. does not need a military presence there." However, the vigilists were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that certain members of the Northwest Coalition, especially those connected to Workers World, were active apologists for Saddam Hussein. While still maintaining generally positive relations with the Northwest Coalition (and especially with the FSP), the vigilists were drifting closer to the Seattle Coalition, as indicated by an October 3 consensus statement:
Being, for the most part, citizens and residents of the United States, it is our first duty to speak out when the U.S. government undermines peace in the world. The PeaceWorks Park vigil has done that since its inception. Our original, widely reproduced, consensus statement calls for "an end to U.S. military intervention in the Persian Gulf region."
However, we are also, one and all citizens and residents of the world. It is our duty to speak out against breaches of the peace committed by other governments as well. We are equally clear in our condemnation of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
The problem is not the U.S. government alone. Imperial aggression is imperial aggression, whether committed by the U.S., Iraq, or any other nation. We are not endorsing the exiled Emir of Kuwait: ideally we support a democracy in Kuwait, not a restored monarchy. That issue is secondary to the removal of foreign troops.
Saddam Hussein's Iraq started and prolonged a war with Iran. This war was conducted with unrelenting brutality. Iraq used chemical weapons against its own citizens in Kurdistan. Iraq's invation of Kuwait was a stab in the back to a fellow Arab state and longstanding ally.
Saddam Hussein and George Bush both act from the principle of rule by the sword. This is precisely what we oppose. It is crucial that we speak out against both of them: in the fight that really counts, they are on the same side.
Gimme Shelter
Almost from the first, the lower level of the Gasworks Park shelter "barn" had functioned a month as something like a movement headquarters, with not only meeting spaces but bulletin boards, stack of flyers, political art, and even a bookcase of (mostly) political books. With colder weather coming, discussions turned first to the need for an indoor office, but soon to the need for a base house, as well, providing both a kitchen and indoor crash space.
Many of the vigilists were poor. Quite a few were vehicular dwellers, and several others had given up jobs to participate heavily in the vigil. Feeding the vigilists was no small matter: while there were quite a few donations of food, they usually didn't keep pace with the need. An October 12 document on the food situation contains comments like "Ask your family and friends", and "Emergency only: food bank, but we should be careful not to hit them unless they have a surplus. Donate our surplusses", and "If we dumpster dive, it should be to cook: health consideration", but also specifics like "Ask at Hot Lips Pizza on the Ave (but don't undercut Teen Feed; set up a regular night)" and "When we must spent money... extend produce with pasta, rice... Ma Poh Tofu at Original King on Roosevelt... is a bargain at a little over $5, easily serves 2, add rice..."
To support the vigilists and to provide shelter to the growing number of people attracted to the vigil, the PeaceWorks Park Affinity House was opened five blocks north of the vigil site. The Affinty house was, at any given time, the home of upwards of 40 people. Rent was provided by those who could afford to pay with the remainder coming from one of many "financial angels". Most of the organized activity took place in the "Zen Room", the graffiti covered office space that housed the phone, a beleaguered Mac and its deafening dot-matrix printer.
The written record
The vigil left behind a prodigious quantity of printed materials. A zine from within the vigil, "Time for Another", produced three proper issues and a few one-sheets; there were numerous position papers, agendas, notes from workshops, etc., and there were often several different posters by different designers to promote any given event, with styles ranging from neo-hippy to clean and contemporary.
There are also tape recordings of many of the meetings, including the one where Allen Ginsburg showed up. Having decided early on that the best defense against police spying was to be so radically open that there was nothing to infiltrate, and having adopted a protocol at meetings where an object was passed to determine whose turn it was to speak, the vigilists soon hit upon a brilliant synthesis of the two: participants in meetings passed around a portable cassette deck (which was promptly dubbed "the sacred tape recorder"), and the person holding the tape recorder was the one allowed to speak.
"Berkeley in the sixties, Seattle in the nineties!"
When the film "Berkeley in the Sixties" opened at the Neptune Theater around the beginning of October, vigilists were out working the line with a specially made handbill that began, "Berkeley in the sixties, Seattle in the nineties!". The prophecy would be fulfilled nine years later at WTO, when the nineties had barely a month remaining.
Two aspects of the vigil definitely pointed the way to the WTO demonstrations. One of these was a strong sense of street theater. The other was that although there was definitely a primary issue at hand — the impending Gulf War — the vigil was by no means "single-issue politics". In addition to workshops on everything from racism to drug abuse, the vigilists turned out en masse in support of other groups' actions, ranging from CISPES's Walkathon for El Salvador to a protest by Chinese students and Tibetan Buddhists against a visit by a PRC trade delegation. (One of the Chinese students did a translation of the vigil's consensus statements into traditional Chinese and posted copies around the International District.)