Jean Kumler was baking cookies when I called her at her home in Cincinnati the other day. Peanut butter, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, sugar cookies.The cookies are to be sold at a fund-raiser tomorrow night to support Cincinnati's organized anti-war effort. When it's over, Kumler and about 35 other people will pile into a bus and ride 12 hours to New York, where they'll take part in Saturday's anti-war rally near the United Nations.
The polls say that more than 60 percent of Americans favor a war against Iraq. But the steady round of protests that are taking place here and abroad prove that many people oppose it. This Saturday, along with the thousands who're expected in New York, they'll be marching in Johannesburg, protesting in Great Britain and reading anti-war poetry in Vermont. Meanwhile, the heads of Germany's churches are criticizing the United States' rush to war, and an Irish group is trying to round up Westerners who're willing to go to Iraq and form a human shield for the Iraqis.