Peacefest was spawned by opposition to the Iraq war and has since become the country's biggest alternative music event. This year there will be a record number of bands and as usual, tomorrow night around dusk, everyone will be encouraged to hold hands and dance in a circle repeating the word peace.
It sounds impossibly idealistic to believe this will achieve a great deal but Peacefest has grown partly because it's different from the other annual commercialized festivals like Spring Scream, Ho-Hai-Yan and Formoz. Its revenues entirely benefit charities and its accounts are an open record, published on the Hoping for Hoping Web site (www.hopingforhoping.com).
Even so, singing and dancing has not brought peace. The Iraq war is still raging and there appears to be no end in sight to conflict and destruction around the world. While Peacefest has succeeded as an event, its reason for being seems forgotten.
"Peacefest appears not to have anything to do with the war," said Sean Wratt, one of the activists behind Taipei's 3,000-person street protest against the Iraq occupation four years ago. "It's more about charity work and good deeds."
Wratt said this reflects the inability of people to change the course of governments, particularly that of the US. He said he naively believed mass protests would work in a similar way to the anti-Vietnam war movement four decades earlier.
"Governments are more powerful now. I thought the biggest anti-war rally ever [when 8 million to 30 million people marched in 800 cities worldwide on Feb. 15, 2003] would make a difference. But it didn't."
Instead, a month later, the US and its "coalition of the willing" invaded Iraq after issuing reports accusing the country of hiding weapons of mass destruction and linking Saddam Hussein with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US.
"The AIT (American Institute in Taiwan) thought we were getting in the way of its weapons deals, the government didn't like the anti-Americanism that was developing, so we were told to stop and if we didn't we would be deported. The party was an alternative form of protest."
"A group of us were sitting in Da-an Park and I asked Lynn [Miles] what peace was in Chinese and he said 'heping.' I said, 'Hoping?' and Peace Dave [Nichols], said, 'Hoping for Hoping.' That's how the name came up. Hoping for peace," Wratt said.
A month after the invasion the first Peacefest was held in a herb garden near Lungtan, Taoyuan County, and a good time was had by all.
Four years later we know there were no weapons of mass destruction. Blood has been spilled for oil (activists in Taipei marched under the banner "No blood for oil"), terrorists have poured into the quagmire that is Iraq and the world is a more dangerous place.
The peace campaigners were, in hindsight, right about their opposition to the war but no longer actively campaign against it. Former protesters, mostly expat English teachers like Wratt, are less influential and a new breed of local activist has emerged.
For festival organizer and member of the The Anglers, Scott Cook, Peacefest could not stop the war therefore it has to deal with it.
"Now, it's not a protest against the Iraq war so much as it's a demonstration of an alternative to the whole culture of violence and coercion that sprung this war, and will continue to spring others."
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