Won’t I ever give up, old geezer from the 60s that I am, on trying to make a difference, to change the world? I mean, heck, how long can I keep this shtick up, as a counterculture activist, marching, rallying, joining vigils, shouting slogans? To tell you the truth — as long as it’s gonna take. For how tragic, how wrong, how unpardonable it would’ve been to miss out on the peace rally on the Mall last Saturday, held to protest the imminent war on Iraq. And, hey, let’s bundle up for peace, for it’ll be eight degrees below freezing. No matter, for once you get there and imbibe the group ecstasy of 500,000 demonstrators from all over the East Coast and the Midwest, you feel the affirmation, the hope, the passion you share with all those fellow peace warriors around you.
It’s allright to believe, you say, it’s allright to tell the world you’re mad as hell and you won’t take it anymore. But first you have to put up with the speeches — two long hours of that, standing there in the freezing cold — from the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whose presentations were typically delivered as if a gospel choir was singing in the background, and the film actress Jessica Lange, whose birdy tweet, sonorous voice didn’t carry that well. But who was listening! You walk up and down the Mall, circulating as if at some social gathering, to see if all the usual suspects are there — the college kids, the lefties, the environmentalists, the feminists and, yes, the baby boomers, with graying beards, broadening waists and thinning hair, who had been there, done that, during the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement in the late 60s and early 70s.
Then there’s the stroller brigade, parents bringing their babies to the demo. The old men with signs saying, “Korean veterans against the war,” accompanied by wives walking along on canes or sitting in wheel chairs pushed along by young relatives. Children holding up signs asking, “How many Iraqi deaths does it take to fill your SUV’s?” and especially that fetching 4-year-old slung over his dad’s shoulder, fast asleep, still clutching on to a tiny sign proclaiming, “I don’t want Iraqi children killed.” And how could you have a rally on the Mall without that kooky Uncle Sam on stilts? Or the odd smart aleck, like the demonstrator who had brought his dog along, with a sign over its back saying, “Don’t wag this dog”?
And, yes, blessed are the slogan makers, whose penchant for the pithy expression at an event like this is legion. Looking for the philosophical? “Speak truth to power.” The committed? “Freezing out here for peace.” Anti-government? “Drop Bush, not bombs.” Existential? “No killing in our name.” Political science? “War is terrorism.” Anti-establishmentarian? “This country is going to hell in a Bush basket.” Cynical? “Regime change here.” Personal? “I have family on both sides.” Commonsensical? “Money for jobs, not war.” Disrespectful? “Bush, a moron and a bully.” (So, scribble, scribble, in gloved hands clutching onto a pen and a steno notebook, and, heck, my own sign to hold up too, “In Palestine, give me liberty or give me death.”)
Truth be told, Bush came in for disrespect, and then some — and this one takes the cake: “The asses of evil,” it read, accompanied by pictures of the president, vice president and secretary of defense. And among the profusion of these free-for-all anti-Bush statements was the one, emblazoned on a large banner, held up by a group of young anarchists (who else?) was this: “(Expletive) Bush and his stupid war.” Only in fun-loving America, folks! And only in Washington, where this great American tradition, of allowing the citizenry to let off steam, do their thing, and tell it the way it is, began in 1894 with Coxey’s Army, the rally of unemployed men led by the radical, though somewhat eccentric, businessman Jacob Coxey, who marched to the Capitol in support of a jobs bill.
Mercifully, the speeches ended, thank heavens, before hypothermia set in, and the march proceeded to the Navy Yard a mile away, where this chanting throng of demonstrators gathered, and then demanded (you have to love these guys’ sense of theater, irony and panache) that their own “inspectors” be allowed to enter the military compound to search for “weapons of mass destruction.” That was, pardon my 60s idiom, really hip, dude. Since no permit had been granted by the DC Metropolitan Police for that, or even seriously considered in the first place, the cops on the beat — who had been, given the well behaved nature of the crowd, drawing the easiest overtime pay around — blocked the way. Then everybody went home, some, in groups like those who had come from Maine, Vermont, New York and Massachusetts, shouting rhythmically, “This is what people’s democracy is all about.”
Did we make a difference? Was it all a shrill exercise, a bore to the rest of the nation, earning us the sneers of those neocons who want to go “get the gooks,” the disparagement of the media, that doesn’t take us seriously, the ambivalence of the pundits, who don’t give two-pence what we think, and the indifference of the powers that be, who never listen anyhow? Maybe, but who cares. It’s good to have been out there, energized by the knowledge that you are with like-minded people — and half a million like-minded souls are not a mean number of folks to be hanging out with — who give a damn. It’s a great society we live when college kids from all over take 5-hour bus rides each way, and old geezers whose idealistic side has stayed up there intact after all these years, insist on making a statement against those who believe that the only way to solve international disputes is to send in the Marines and the B52s. How much nobler in the mind is it, as the bard would attest, than to stand up and be counted! And how thoroughly American! Now, I’ll be able to tell the kids: I never skipped the bus ride to Washington in 2003, so stop bugging me about having missed out on Woodstock in 1969.
Arab News Opinion 23 January 2003
