-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [R-G] McReynolds on: The Saturday events in Washington DC: reflections Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 15:39:23 -0400 From: David Mcreynolds <david.mcr at earthlink.net>
(Some of you will get this twice, as I'm sending to several "sub lists". If you can use any of it in whole or part, of course do that.)
Saturday morning I woke up at 6 a.m,, but not nearly as early as many others along the East Coast, who had to catch buses for Washington DC by 5 or 5:30 a.m. I was lucky enough to be driving down with a young couple and their son, so we didn't have to leave New York City until 7:30 a.m.
We turned on the radio as our car came into Washington DC to hear Jesse Jackson speaking, then Cindy Sheehan so we knew we were late for the "official" start of the huge September 24th anti-war rally in the nation's capitol. Rallies are never tidy. I was surprised this one had actually started on time. We had heard several speakers before Bruce Cronin dropped his wife, son, and me off, while he went to park the car. The speeches were short, the list of speakers was endless. (More on this later)
I've been to "mass rallies" in Washington DC since the early 1960's (yes, I was there when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech). I was there at - and helped organize - virtually every one of the massive Washington rallies during the Vietnam War. After fifty years of this, you get a sense of rallies. This one was genuinely huge. The police, who don't like to give figures, admitted that the organizers had at least met their goal of 100,000. I believe there were far more than that present, but since we arrived late, there was never a moment when we stood in the midst of a neatly assembled crowd. (And it is not possible, without aerial photos, of getting a crowd count, and even then it isn't accurate - a photo gives a "static" count - but at any given time at a really massive rally, people are leaving, others are arriving - there is no single moment when "everyone stands still for their picture").
If we were late, so were thousands of others who were marching onto the ellipse - the area around the Washington Monument. With the invention of cell phones, it is possible to meet even in a dense crowd. My first task was to get a packet of the Socialist Party's magazine to the Socialist Party table (Greg Pason, the SP secretary, had worried they might run out and had asked me to bring down some extras). I found the table, which turned out to be next to the War Resisters League table, stopped and talked for a few minutes with friends, and then began phone tag with Yamakawa Yoshiyasu (Chair of ZENKO, a Japanese group), Keiko Yasuhara, of the International Criminal Tribunal for Iraq, and Ajmad Al-Jawhary of the Federation of Worker Councils and Union in Iraq). I'd almost given up finding them or being found by them, but we did meet, and I had a long discussion with them, got another copy of the ZENKO DVD on the Iraqi Civil Resistance. (I'll make a further report on those discussions later, which will reach some of you getting this).
Then I tried to find the friends I'd come down with. Again, thanks to the miracle of cell phones, we connected near the White House. Standing in Lafayette Park we saw the sea of posters and demonstrators directly in front of the White House. Thousands and thousands of people. I was surprised the police had allowed the demonstration to virtually surround the White House. By the time we met up, it was late afternoon, we were hungry and at least I was tired. So we made our way through the crowd, found a restaurant, had dinner, got to the car and took off for New York City.
When I got home I turned on the TV and found no mention of the rally on CNN. The New York Times mentioned the rally on the front page but moved the story far to the back pages. Younger demonstrators should realize the media was focused on Hurricane Rita, and while, by Saturday night, that was no longer the major story, the media (contrary to some who think it is all controlled by a central committee) has a hard time letting go of one story and turning to another. The 24 hour hurricane coverage on CNN continued. It had been downgraded from a Category Five monster to heavy rains, but once the media starts to cover a story, it will stick with it. (By ironic coincidence, as I type this I am listening to Bessie Smith, the great blues singer, singing "Back Water Blues", documenting in song the sadness and disaster of some other now forgotten hurricane).
So "our story", this truly historic demonstration in Washington, got very slight coverage. But we know we were there, and the politicians know we were there. The Democrats - no surprise - had no big political names out for the rally, except for two members of the Black Congressional Caucus, who spoke. Shame on both major parties. And praise for the handful of courageous exceptions who are speaking out.
As I left, I thought of the unsung heroes that make such rallies possible . And I thought of the waste of time over things like the speaker's list. Every rally organizing committee begins with the pledge to itself that there will be only five, at most, ten, speakers - but by the time the rally starts there are fifty. One can make a joke about it, but the politics of coalition groups make it inevitable. Someone from labor. Yes, and someone from the church. But if a Catholic, then also a Jew and a Protestant. A woman, absolutely, But what about a lesbian? And a gay man. And the disabled. Someone from the African American community, yes, but then surely an Hispanic. Yes, but there must be an Asian, and a Native American. A student, of course, but surely also a famous academic. What about stars and artists. I'm not making fun of this - I'm just reporting the endless list of speakers, to which no one is actually listening (the King speech is a remarkable exception in the fifty years I've been to these rallies).
The real work of these demonstrations goes to all the people - which includes many of you getting this - who organized the actual buses, sold the bus tickets, arranged for car pools, worked out housing for those staying in Washington for the civil disobedience and Congressional lobbying coming on Monday. The work of everyone who got the posters printed. The sadness (to me) of the tiny sectarian groups, each of whom might number no more than fifty or so members, who have pooled their cash to put out a special issue of "The Revolutionary Workers Bolshevik Alliance" paper, (or a dozen papers like it) which they are faithfully handing out to everyone they can. the copies largely destined to die unread, fated for the trash cans of history. I think of Leslie Cagan and the others at United for Peace and Justice, who have been working for weeks, trying to keep factions together.
There was a long and bitter behind the scenes struggle between United for Peace and Justice, which is a genuine, broad coalition with a real grass roots base, and ANSWER, a coalition set up by Workers World Party (a very small but intensely hard working neo-Trotskyist group, which has since had a split of its own). Some of the Jewish groups who should have taken part didn't, because the ANSWER position on the Middle East sometimes borders on anti-Semitism. And some of those which did take part, set up separate actions - but no one really cared, and I knew that. I don't blame Rabbi Waskow, a good man, and a critic of Israel, for his questions about ANSWER - but the broader public really isn't interested. The people who were there were there because of Iraq, and because they want the US out of Iraq. I suspect most of those present would share my own position on Israel, which is sharply critical, but that isn't what brought them out.
All those who worked so long and hard on this rally deserve a vote of thanks. Most of the supporters of the rally will get no credit, no ribbons are passed out to the local organizers. But without those folks, no rally would take part. The job now is to translate the massive numbers - clearly well over 100,000 and possibly closer to a half million - who turned out, into pressure on Congress. And into reaching out for a dialogue with those Americans who may still be uncertain about the war.
September 24th will go down in history as a genuine victory. It was a moment when people all across the nation, who may have felt themselves a lone voice in their own communities, realized they were part of a vast movement, politically as powerful as Hurricane Rita. They will, I know from past experience, return home more committed, more determined, more certain now that they are not alone. It is Bush who is increasingly isolated.
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Peace, David McReynolds former Chair, War Resisters International member, Socialist Party's National Committee
David Mcreynolds david.mcr at earthlink.net Why Wait? Move to EarthLink.