Spitting distance: creating a yearbook of political protests

By SUSAN CAMPBELL / The Hartford Courant

No matter what you think of today’s political climate, protesting is as American as apple pie and FBI surveillance.

Protesting is what we do. We condense heartfelt ideology into a handful of words, paint a poster board, and head out. “Make Love Not War.” “Take This War and Shove It.” “Don't Mess With Mesopotamia.” Or the existential: “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”

When the United States dropped bombs on Afghanistan, Patrick T. Barnett stood on a street corner in Windsor, Conn., to hold a “No War” sign. He stayed on the sidewalk, but one morning a neighbor called the police anyway. Officers came and, in the interest of neighborhood harmony, suggested Barnett cross the street. Barnett said he’d consider it. The police left. Rather quickly, Barnett said, seven men joined him with signs supporting the war. The police came back — who knows who called — to remind the men that they all had a right to protest. Barnett started talking about the defense budget, and then he left to protest in the middle of town.

Today, you can drive down Barnett's street and see his peace flag and no-war-in-Iraq placard out front facing a battalion of American flags flying at his neighbors’. That’s not to say that displaying the flag means you support the war, but which is more patriotic? Waving Old Glory, or waving a “Bring the Troops Home Now” sign?

Later, Barnett was in West Hartford, Conn., protesting with his friend Thomas J. Gradante when they met Chengiah Rogers Ragaven. Through rain and cold, Barnett and Gradante brought to the corner decades of activism and I’ve-had-enough-ism. Ragaven, who teethed on the anti-apartheid movement of his native South Africa and was a political prisoner there, has had a lifelong predilection for liberation struggles.

They all had traveled to various protests in New York, Washington and Boston and participated in grass-roots actions in their hometowns. Mindful of the history of the anti-apartheid movement, Ragaven suggested they document the struggle.

That was October 2003. One of the first photos Barnett took that month was at a protest in Washington, back when there were 130,000 troops in Iraq, not roughly 150,000, as there are today. An older woman with hair like a dandelion is walking away from the camera holding a sign that says “Bush Lied.”

“She'd been sitting at home and she'd had it,” said Barnett. “That excited me.”

The photos began to take on a documentary tinge. One series shows a New York police officer aiming a video camera to his left, looking over to see a camera, then swiveling to point his video camera at the photographer. In the background, a crowd pushes against a police line.

Said Ragaven, who teaches at Southern Connecticut State University: “There is more educational value in one poster standing in the corner than in all the lectures you can give.”

The result is “Peace, Protest and People: An Anti-War Yearbook, Class of 2004.” The $36 book — with photos and quotes from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas and former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm — is available at peaceprotestandpeople.com.

Proceeds will be rolled back into the self-published book, although the men wouldn't mind making money and being able to splurge on a pizza on production days. They also would like to find a publisher while they continue to document ongoing protests. The Class of 2005, after all, is just warming up.