A hundred thousand or so marched in Washington this weekend against the war in Iraq, myself included. United for Peace and Justice and International Answer organized the rally, march and concert that encircled the White House for the first time in ten years. ANSWER as Alex Cockburn act like back benchers from the cast of The Life of Brian listing every cause on their banners and literature from the war in Iraq to fixing the stop lite at 5th Avenue and 47th Street. UPJ on the other hand try for a single demand like US Out Now! and try to stick to the point and create the largest movement possible under such a banner.
Random thoughts on the march; what's up with the fixation with the White House? It was such a focal point that we stalled in front of it. After we passed the White House, which was unoccupied by W the Younger, the march lost some steam. It picked up when the anarchist drummers smashed through a barricade but the energy surely released after 1600 Pennsylvania. There was no food on the mall except for a few institutional stands and those nasty New York City type pretzel vendors! Now I appreciate the lack of commercialism in the entire city and on the mall but where was Food Not Bombs and the hash brownie/burrito sellers? This points to my major problem with the rally/march/concert, people seemed to consume the event. They came to the march checked out the White House and went home. The concert was VERY poorly attended. I would say at the most there were 2,000 people at the concert. WE ARE LACKING A MOVEMENT CULTURE! We can't just consume social change. It has to be something that you want to do because it feels, tastes, sounds good. The counter-culture in the 60's understood this. The left/labor folks of the 30's understood this. These things are organic however and you can't create chicken salad out of chicken shit to quote a baker I met at the rally. We live in a time where niche marketing is seen as progressive (see Thomas Frank on Market Populism). If we think what we buy makes us some how radical we are deluding ourselves. I know it's an old debate but this march depressingly re-enforced the old Marcusian idea that we are automatons in the consumer culture. On the positive it was great to see thousands out demanding an end to the madness and lots of people met, agitated, educated, and felt like they weren't alone in struggle that is THE most important issue today. By the way I went to the U2 concert last night and Bono did a shout out for the great men and women of America's armed forces while a huge US flag swaggered behind him. I surrender!
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10 comments:
How was the march on Washington?
What's the point in marching against the war? Is it gonna matter? So who cares if we're fighting for oil, we need it don't we! If you're anti-war then you're pretty much anti-American. So screw all you hate mongers. Support your country!
To commentator 1: good march of tens of thousands with a unified message of Yankee Come Home, weak after march. To commentator 2: you sound like a good German circa 1939. If an anti-war march is anti-American you have very little understanding of the principles of the US revolution. The point of marching against the war is that we disagree with our taxes/name being used for the benefit of the richest in our society. We also think that the war was based on lies; Iraq, even with WMD's, was no threat to the US, had nothing to do with 9/11, would not great the US with open arms, quite the opposite. Also,Iraq has now made us much more unsafe because the country is now a training ground for Jihadis and such that are organizing by the bus load. I think your right about anti-war=anti-American. War certainly does seem to be one of the central ideas of actually existing Americanism.
My comments were not a condemnation of people who went to the march. These are the best of our country. But in a country where people work more, have less vacation, get paid less for their labor relative to other industrialized countries, are less organized, live in communities that neccessitate an automobile, etc... we can't help but be isolated. Because of this we, in late capitalism, lack social movements. And when I say social movements I think of environmental, labor, gender, etc... When those movements have thrived there has been a social component to them, people eat, drink, sing and sleep together. I am as guilty of this as anyone but as union member I try to encourage socialization with my fellow workers as much as possible to try to create solidarity beyond the immediate concerns of the work place. Given our limited democracy and liberal democratic education we also are not encouraged to do anything more than vote.
On the Bush/White House fixation I stand firm. I think the people should have been much more focused on the Treasury building or the Bank of America. These are the people that run the system not lackeys like Bush. I would bet that most of the people at the march voted for Kerry, you know what his position on Iraq is? We need more troops!
Actually there is a fairly active social movement in our society today and its right wing and religious and they on a regular basis play sports together, eat together, pray together and march together. I think that is why they are so much more succesful.
On the consumption of culture issue I defer to Thomas Frank, who can articulate the ideas far better than I.
Anton, did you see on the Daily Kos site the posting (by Kos) that said marches are obsolete? He says, in effect, that protest marches are so 20th Century.
It's the web roots that are gonna change the world, man. Or something.
I don't know. Marches sure make you FEEL like you're doing something. (I remember a certain march in D.C. during the Reagan era.) And I don't know how one can argue that the visual doesn't make a difference to our TV-addicted society.
I love the guy above. "Screw you hate mongers." Perfect.
The most successful anti-war movement in history is the Bolshivek revolution. I am involved in this movement for this reason. I think that people are initially horrified by the violence of war. Most people are not pacifists however and think, "hmmm, why exactly does such and such country tend to be at war all the time"? Well there are lots of people around to answer that question and some answers sound more reasonable than others. In a movement those ideas, state capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, underconsumption, they're bad, the devil made them do it, etc...., are kicked around. At times the war has continued on and on and people took up arms or got arrested or lit themselves on fire and more people start to question the logic of the madness. And then there is a big march of millions and we occupy the House, Senate, White House, Bank of America, Pentagon and Washington Post and the socialist future is ours. Oh, and there is lots of good bread, cheese and wine with good music playing.
History has not ended. Exploitation in real terms is greater than ever given the amount of wealth that is now created.
Will there be ponies?
Only at the circus. No private affairs, you see.
To Jennifer's comments on the press. In any society the major media will represent the ideas of the ruling elite. In our liberal, relatively free society this means that anyone can publish whatever they want but people with a louder bull horn, the rich, are able to buy newspapers, TV stations, radios, etc... and dominate the discourse. Our issues are put on the front burner when we take action; burn cities, get arrested, march, vote respectables out of office, etc..The problem really isn't individual or collective freedom in our society when it comes to information. It's who owns the distribution of information. With this in mind we need to create our own press/radio/TV/internet and as our movement grows we will either become the dominant media or we will be crushed like little bugs. More likely we will be ignored.
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