2/15: The Day the World Said NO to War

AK Press and Hello NYC, $24.95

“Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men” is not a bad message for this year’s holiday, and a healthy international reminder is this new book by AK Press and Hello NYC. Conceived and created by anti-war organizer Connie Koch with photo-editing by Mariele Fritzsche and editing by Barbara Sauermann, 2/15: The Day the World Said NO to War (242 pp., 131 illustrations) is a full-color collection of more than 100 photographs from the worldwide peace demonstrations last Feb. 15 — from Amsterdam to Vancouver, and myriad points in between, including Austin (p.27). The photos, like the crowds, are eclectic and inventive, with even a few of the now widespread “naked” protests, at least one of which (by National Science Foundation employees in Ross Island, Antarctica) showed not just flesh but courage. Brief commentaries from Gandhi to Sontag, including this from Tolstoy: “In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.” www.akpress.org.

This article appears in December 12 • 2003.

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