More great ideas, from today's Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Kim Ode: Code Pink is the new alert for peace
Kim Ode
Star Tribune

Published Jan. 11, 2003 ODE11

This is how it starts. Plates of cookies placed on low tables around a stylish living room, Web sites and talking points taped to the fireplace mantel, a flip chart propped in the foyer, women streaming through the door and whooping with delight at the particularly inflamed shade of pink they're being asked to wear to stop a war.

This is the way a peace movement begins, or one of the ways. Some are born in rage. Others in grief. But this group, Code Pink, was born in the intuition that a lot of women are willing, maybe for the first time in their lives, to stick their necks out.

That's what it can feel like these days, when pressing for hard evidence to warrant invading Iraq draws comparisons to Benedict Arnold. Again and again on this past Tuesday night, women in Binky Wood's living room said they'd never done this before, never spoken up about a global issue or considered joining an antiwar protest march, such as the one that will snake through Uptown Minneapolis at 1 p.m. today.

They'd also never contemplated wearing this shade of pink, but I got the feeling it won't be their last act of courage.

Code Pink joins a growing list of peace groups active here. I had no idea how many until the women started trying to find a day for their next meeting and kept bumping up against this vigil or that vigil. Each week, more than a dozen such vigils are held from Duluth to Northfield, mostly people standing on bridges and intersections, promoting peace. (For a list of vigils, see http://www.worldwidewamm.org).

Yet here we are, on the verge of war. So let's get to the rude question: Has a peace movement ever stopped a country from going to war? The short, true answer is no.

But of all the things that have to die in a war, isn't it good to know that hope doesn't have to be one of them? Hope and, strangely enough, courage.

"Code Pink is about giving each other the courage to do what we need to do," said Nina Utne, who brought the concept home to Minneapolis after joining a pink-clad group of women protesting in front of the White House in November. When she came home wearing a saucer-sized hot-pink button that read "Code Pink Women for Peace," she was forever being stopped by women relieved to find a kindred spirit.

Why, she wondered, were they so surprised? Following her intuition, she talked with a few friends, who talked with a few friends and within a week, 70 women swathed in shrieking pink mufflers were sitting in a crowded living room, amazed by the crowd.

But this how it begins. They brainstormed tactics, momentarily getting hung up on buying newspaper ads and building Web sites and getting media attention before blessedly breaking through to what might actually make a difference.

"You know how we look at each other's children?" one asked. "You know, as if they could be our own? That's what this is about. This is about creating conversations with the person in the grocery line, or our day-care providers or our book clubs or churches, talking with them as if we share something precious."

We can think bigger, said another. "Look at us. We're educated, middle-class women. We're on boards of directors. We have access to power."

We can think smaller, said another. She works with poor families, some of whom don't agree with the military buildup against Iraq, but who can't take time from a job to volunteer or afford child care to join a protest march. "But anyone can wear pink."

This is how they started: If you don't support war in Iraq, wear pink on Wednesdays. Buy a map of Iraq, put it on your fridge, and start learning the names of the towns that could be bombed; make it real for your family. Put up a lawn sign, which could give your neighbors the courage to put up their own. Show up for Saturday's march wearing fuchsia.

The women streamed into the night, buoyant, even hopeful that war could yet be stopped.

Code Pink, by the way, is the phrase hospitals use to alert staff that a baby may have been abducted. A child is in danger. People react as if it were their own.