Peace & Justice Center feels left's malaise

To turn Bob Dylan's famous line around, the times they are not a changin' -- at least not fast enough for many people on the left of Sonoma County politics.

This potent bloc -- liberals, progressives, Democrats and some who disdain labels -- wants change. Not just a policy tweak or two, but serious landscape-shifting change.

Yet for all the street protests, programs and public appeals they have mounted, two wars they strongly oppose still rage and the coveted goal of a government-run, single-payer health care system got nowhere in Congress.

President Barack Obama, elected with strong liberal support on a campaign theme of change, will compound the left's dismay with his anticipated announcement Tuesday of plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

These and other setbacks on the national stage, following the euphoria of Obama's historic victory, have brought malaise to the movement that envisions a world, nation and neighborhoods in which peace and justice prevail.

"People are discouraged," said Susan Lamont, a Santa Rosa resident who drives a Subaru wagon plastered with bumper stickers.

Lamont, who took over in July as office manager at the Peace & Justice Center, said there's been a letdown since the frenetic days of protesting former President George Bush's post-9/11 wars at Old Courthouse Square and in San Francisco.

Donations that fund the nonprofit center were down 10 percent last year and another 20 percent this year, a trend that has crimped budgets for many nonprofit groups. But political activism has also waned, with many on the left now merely signing e-mail petitions, which Lamont considers a "worthless effort."

The center's modest storefront on Sebastopol Avenue south of Juilliard Park is open three hours on weekday afternoons -- the time Lamont is there. Her $17-an-hour wage is all the center can afford in the wake of full-time director Elizabeth Stinson's departure June 30.

A newsletter, called "Peace Press," goes out to 800 homes, but it's bi-monthly instead of monthly. An additional 3,000 copies are distributed to stores, libraries and schools. There are currently 485 dues-paying households who support the center.

More than 260 people turned out for an Oct. 15 celebration in Sebastopol of the center's 25th anniversary as a focal point for the left in a county that tilts that way overall.

"We've been a conscience in this community," said Alice Waco of Santa Rosa, a retired teacher who helped found the center in 1984. "We are a place for people to come for an alternative message."

It coalesced from a cloud of groups opposed to nuclear weapons, including SoNoMore Atomics, Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament and Physicians for Social Responsibility, in the 1970s. Concern over upheaval in Central America became an issue for the fledgling group in the 1980s.

Over time, the center embraced an array of liberal causes, including immigrant rights, abortion, the environment, health care and capital punishment. A cleanup along Santa Rosa Creek and two gifts-for-guns exchanges were sponsored by the center.

"Liberals are free-thinkers. They go in many directions," Waco said. "It might take us longer to get what we want."

There are important issues -- like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- that strongly divide peace center members. "Sometimes we have to agree to disagree on a few things," Lamont said.

But the center has always hewed to the Mahatma Ghandi-inspired principles of civil disobedience and nonviolent living as the means toward its ends, Waco said.

The center is "an icon of the peace movement," said David McCuan, Sonoma State University political scientist.

It fits comfortably in a county strong on green ideals and liberal politics, he said. A pro-labor, environmentally inclined majority controls the Santa Rosa City Council, and two former council members from that bloc hold the local state Senate and Assembly seats.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, co-chairwoman of the House Progressive Caucus and an outspoken Iraq war opponent, has handily won nine terms in Congress. She faced a strong intraparty challenge from moderate Democrat Joe Nation in the 2006 primary, but beat him 2-to-1 districtwide, in Sonoma County and Santa Rosa.

Critics say the far left is marginalized in American politics. Two of its pet issues -- impeaching Bush and single-payer health care -- got no traction in Washington, even in the Democratic Party.

At best, the left can "poke and prod" Democratic leaders, McCuan said, hoping for small gains in a political system that resists radical change.

"Progressives run the risk of being perennially disappointed," McCuan said.

Mushrooming budget deficits at the state and federal level compound the roadblocks to liberal ideas that typically involve government intervention and lots of money, such as single-payer health care.

The budget crunch "cuts off the progressives at the knees," said Barbara O'Connor, professor of communications at California State University, Sacramento.

Nearly a decade ago, the Bush administration's military response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks energized the left. In Santa Rosa, nearly 3,000 people marched along Mendocino Avenue in a November 2002 anti-war protest.

The center sent 12 busloads of Sonoma County protesters to a San Francisco rally two months later, during the run-up to the Iraq war.

But last month, Lamont went to a demonstration in San Francisco marking the eighth anniversary of the Afghanistan war. In a crowd of about 1,000, Lamont said she recognized about a dozen people from Sonoma County.

Many protesters gave up in the face of two seemingly intractable wars, she said. Obama's election has amplified the inaction, Lamont said.

The left is now divided between those willing to give Obama more time to deliver the goods -- like an exit from Iraq and an end to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military -- and those unwilling to wait.

"We need to be making a whole lot of noise," said Lamont, who puts herself in the second group.

Anticipating Obama's announcement of an escalation in Afghanistan, the center has called for a protest in Old Courthouse Square on Wednesday evening. "We can hit the streets with a simple message: California wants out of Afghanistan," said a mass distribution e-mail form the center.

David Thatcher, a founding member of the center, is concerned about its future. "Times are changing rapidly. People are edgy. The economy's collapse has fragmented things," he wrote in the October-November edition of the Peace Press.

The center "needs to focus on a few concrete programs to bring good-willed and like-minded people together," he said.

It also needs to involve young people, the center's gray-haired leaders say. "People are always saying, 'Where are the kids?' " said Waco, 78, the oldest of 13 board members.

Carl Patrick, a 22-year-old Petaluma activist, is the center's youngest board member. His contemporaries would be "totally supportive" of the center "if they knew it was there," he said.

Patrick, who was arrested in a Petaluma war protest in 2006, said part of his job is to bridge the gap between Generation Y and the center's veterans, who have been organizing "longer than I've been alive."

Despite the sour economy, the ambivalence over Obama and other ills on the left, O'Connor at Sacramento State is confident the faction will persevere.

"You keep chugging," she said. "It's the Don Quixote syndrome."

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.