(The following article ran in the 3/23/03 Edition of the Boston Globe; Section: Globe West, Page: 1)

By Matt Viser,

The morning after President Bush gave Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to leave Iraq or face "military conflict," Lewis Randa got out his markers and poster board and presented his homemade sign to morning rush-hour traffic at the intersection of routes 27 and 16 in Sherborn.

" All I could do is hold up my sign with just two letters: `No,' " said Randa, director of the Peace Abbey in Sherborn. "I didn't know what else to say. Tens of thousands of people will be killed in an effort to make us safer."

Two days earlier, a group gathered in Framingham to show their support for Bush's moves toward war. About 100 people assembled on the Main Street bridge last Sunday, holding signs that said things like "Damn Saddam" and "Inspections Don't Work."

The two groups are part of a burgeoning contingency of protesters, both for and against a war with Iraq, that have organized over recent months in the suburbs west of Boston. And as the drums for war grew louder leading up to Wednesday night's attack, so did the vigilance of the protesters.

Every Thursday since July, a group of antiwar protesters has gathered in Newton Centre, holding signs like "Honk for Peace" and "1st World Countries Do Not Bomb 3rd World Countries."

The numbers have nearly doubled in the past month, according to Jim Casteris, who regularly attends the Newton protests and who last weekend was in Washington doing the same.

" People are participating a lot more than I would have expected," he said, noting that there are now about 100 regulars. "Which is a good thing. Sadly, we're not having too much of an effect on Mr. Bush's policy."

Although the suburban protests may not be as raucous or as crowded as those in Boston or Cambridge, they certainly have grown over the last several months as groups of protesters have formed. Churches are chiming in, students are mobilizing, and septuagenarians who marched against the Vietnam War are resurrecting old tactics.

" It's amazing, the sort of feeling that has been building in the suburbs," said Sheila McPharlin, a founding member of Patriots for Peace in Westborough. "Every week, there's something to go to. You can go to a vigil in Northborough from 12 to 1 and then go to Grafton and hold up signs. And then, there'll be a protest in Hopkinton at night. It's just everywhere.

" All these towns have developed a cluster of people and started their own protests," she said. "We communicate back and forth, but each group has sort of started on their own."

Colleges and universities in the area are also teeming with protesters. At Brandeis University, a rift has grown between those who disagree with the United States-led war and those who advocate for it as a necessary means for ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein.

" Unfortunately, things have been growing into an animosity on campus, and it's getting sort of ugly," said Joshua Wiznitzer, a founding member of United We Stand, which was formed last month in response to the antiwar group on campus. Wiznitzer says the group's signs have been vandalized and he has received several vitriolic e-mails.

Brandeis junior Jocelyn Berger, on the other hand, helped organize a campuswide walkout in protest of the war. More than 400 students and faculty left class on Thursday and took the commuter rail into Boston and joined other college students on the steps of the State House.

" I've never seen the activist community organize so quickly and become so tightly knit," said Berger. "I think it [the war] is lighting a fire under our butts to get organized, prepare our signs, and get our armbands ready."

Members of United We Stand had encouraged students to stay in class, and they have been handing out yellow ribbons and red-white-and-blue ribbons in support of the war and the US troops.

" No one likes war, but we feel like it's a necessary evil and we support the decisions of our leaders," Wiznitzer said.

The day after the war began, Randa led about 100 protesters in a march from the Natick Common to the US Army Systems Center, also known as Natick Labs.

Randa and 17 others were arrested after they formed a human blockade and refused to leave the entrance to the Labs.

" We must continue to express our outrage through active civil disobedience," Randa said after quoting Henry David Thoreau, who once wrote that "the true place for a just man is a prison."

The protest was peaceful. Organizers had alerted Natick police and officials at Natick Labs of their plans ahead of time. But still nearly 70 law enforcement officials, both military personnel and Natick police, were at the scene.

" People need to engage in peace activism in their own town, in their own backyard," said Dan Dick, 49, of Natick, who was among those arrested. "You don't need to go to New York, or other big cities. In every town, people should be banding together and supporting each other."

Political activism also reached the high school level. About 100 students used their lunchtime this week at Hudson High School to go outside and protest.

And on Thursday, about 200 students at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School walked out from class at noon and held a rally in the Sudbury town center. A second group of about 50 students gathered outside the school in support of the war and American troops.

" There was no violence, and it wasn't a bad, divisive, ugly thing," said John M. Ritchie, the school's principal. "It was just two groups of students coming at the same issue in two very different ways."

Students were not punished, Ritchie said, but they will be held responsible for the work they missed.

Church leaders also grew more vocal as war edged closer to reality.

" The religious community in America has never been more united in condemning this war as unjust, illegitimate, and illegal," said the Rev. John Buehrens, pastor of First Parish in Needham, Unitarian Universalist. "I frankly don't know of a religious leader in the area that is supportive of this war."

But churches are also often divided between speaking out against the war and comforting people in a time of great anxiety.

" We don't have a united voice on this, and we don't pretend to," said the Rev. Nancy Taylor, president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, which has headquarters in Framingham.

" We have had clergy who have been arrested protesting the war and we have clergy who are serving as chaplains in the military," she said. "So we're trying to honor both sides, even if they are opposed to each other. But all of us are praying for peace and the safety of our troops. And for the safety of the Iraqi civilians."

Many area churches have also been holding regular vigils.

" Every town I know of has been holding a peace vigil for months, with the number of people getting involved growing as the months have gone on," Buehrens said Wednesday, speaking while in the midst of a daylong fast in protest of the war.

In January, Buehrens traveled to Baghdad with a humanitarian delegation made up of a dozen religious leaders from around the country.

" A true humanitarian disaster looms [in Iraq]," he said. "But the notion that we will be greeted by most Iraqis as liberators is truly naive."

Buehrens is speaking at 7 tonight at the First Parish of Watertown on "The Consequences of War With Iraq: Spiritual and Practical Reflections."

" We will continue to do what we're called to do," Buehrens said. "Which is to be peacemakers."