HISTORIC ANTIWAR DEMONSTRATIONS

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>At 01:40 PM 05/02/2002 -0400, Carrol wrote:
>>Moreover, you must have noted that it took several hours for everyone to
>>arrive. The speakers fill up the time. While the speakers, if you try to
>>listen to them, are indeed boring, my guess is that if nothing was
>>happening at the platform during those two or three hours, it would be
>>fairly awkward for everyone there.
>>
>>There ought to be a way to organize rallies without many (if any)
>>speakers, but those (like you) who merely bellyache about how terrible
>>this&that is are wasting their time and making themselves look foolish.
>>If you want it different, go out and organize. If you don't want to do
>>that, focus on the people at the rally, not on what's going on up at the
>>platform.
>
>There's always art: dancers, musicians, poets.
>
>Joanna

At our 4/9/02 Deir Yassin commemoration in Columbus, OH, an activist 
friend of mine -- a charming & talented young man named Dan Heck -- 
read a poem he composed:

*****   I wasn't there when it came,
the gun crazed eyes and bullet rain.
I wasn't there to see land drinking blood,
the harvest and the stain.

But I saw that pregnant belly shot
And that woman's eyes were salt for lot. 

As I kneel in this land to pray, I can't help but hear
Isaiah's words:

Shame on you!
You who add house to house and join field to field
Until no acre remains
And you are left to dwell alone in the land.

Shame on you!
You who call evil good and good evil,
Who turn darkness into light and light into darkness.

You may listen and listen but will not understand,
Look and look again but will never know.

Oh Deir Yassin Deir Yassin Deir Yassin

Deir Yassin Deir Yassin Deir Yassin

And still a thousand more.

Memory washed plastic clean

Deir Yassin

Bone broken starved lean

Deir Yassin

A murder slammed door

And they're making still more .   *****

Works much better as "spoken word" performance than it reads.
-- 
Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: 
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
* Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>