Site Presented By
Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Readers respond to Salon's coverage of the weekend's antiwar protest in Washington.
Oct 30, 2002 | [Read "A Day for Peace -- and Fury," by Michelle Goldberg.]
Michelle Goldberg's disappointment with the protesters in Washington over their apparent lack of a coherent message is akin to a campaign manager saying that her candidate should "stay on message." However, the protesters were not running for office, and the language of corrupt, corporate politics should not be applied to grassroots movements.
People against this upcoming war in Iraq (whose inevitability has been guaranteed by the corporate media) are against it for many different reasons. Some are against all wars; some think we should focus our efforts in Afghanistan; some think we should not remove someone who we put into power in the first place. Whatever the reason, Goldberg did her duty as a mainstream reporter by trying to lump everyone at Saturday's protest into one category defined by those shouting the loudest. This is like lumping all who are for war in Iraq into one category as defined by George Bush. Bush is in it for oil and popularity, but others recognize Saddam Hussein's overwhelming brutality.
But what separates grassroots movements from corrupt, corporate politics is that regular people don't have to compact their beliefs into a 30-second TV ad. Peace enthusiasts don't have to be slick or politically savvy or generate headlines. They simply have to believe in something and be willing to stand up for it. Isn't that the very definition of citizenship?
In a world where the Republicans and Democrats try their damnedest to always present a unified front (and dumb everything down in the process), it is encouraging to read that democracy is still being practiced in all its chaotic and wonderful glory by people who have real beliefs and are willing to stand up for them.
I'm glad people who agree on peace disagreed about other things on Saturday. This country was founded by people who agreed that we should have our own government but disagreed on everything else from taxes to slavery.
Sorry, I got off message there for a second. "Lockbox, lockbox, lockbox."
-- Christopher Dazey
Thank you for your coverage of the antiwar march in Washington. I am a former Air Force officer who has never before marched in an antiwar rally. I was there on Saturday.
You're right that the march too easily boiled down into a yes-or-no question with facile answers on either side. And yes, all the other causes (free Mumia and al-Amin) are off-point. That does not change the basic fact that in the rush to war, the march has become almost the only way of showing opposition. What is indeed troubling is that nearly 100,000 people can gather here in opposition to a war and be treated as irrelevant by the press.
I'm sorry that the behavior of some of the marchers was insensitive to the pain of the Iraqis present in the "pro-war" rally. However, they allowed themselves to be used for a far-right political demonstration, and it is the pro-war side that has made it impossible to have an honest dialogue.
And although I found it abhorrent to be marching next to people waving Iraqi flags, it is even more abhorrent to me not to oppose an ill-thought-out, poorly planned war. Although ANSWER was described in your article as a radical organization, the fact remains that it is the only organization that managed to pull together a large protest of people who include moderates like me to show that we oppose the current policy. I think frankly that this reflects poorly on other human rights organizations for not picking up the ball and running with it. It also reflects poorly on Democrats and other legislators who are not willing to stand up and say that there is real opposition to the administration's policy.
If the Bush administration changes tactics and enlists the world and the U.N. and tries sanctions first and makes a more forceful case, then presumably some of the opposition to the war will drop off. In the meantime, my hat is off to the march organizers for creating the sole remaining vehicle available for expressing opposition.
-- Bill McColl
