Anti-War Protest

Friday I attended the anti-war protest in front of the military recruiting office at Celebration Mall.

The Grand Rapids Press had this article on the subject. Media Mouse has a write-up of the same event, including a critique of the Press article, which can be read on their website here.

I’ll just chime in with a few of my own thoughts.

Regular readers of this blog can be left in no doubt as to my opinions about the Iraq war. However ever since the war began I’ve been in rural Japan, and the predominant feeling I’ve had over the past few years is one of impotence. I feel very strongly against the war, but what good does that do anyone? For all I’ve done the past four years, I might just as well have been strongly in favor of the war. It wouldn’t have made any difference.

In the lead up to the war, I did have my adult English Conversation class write letters to Bush asking for peace. This had a bit of a snowballing effect because other people heard about it and wanted to join in. Some local school teachers even assigned their classes to write letters for peace, all of which were then passed on to me to mail to Bush.

But of course when you think about all the effort this President and his administration went through to trick the country into war, the idea that 100 letters from Japanese school children asking for peace would make a difference one way or another is kind of laughable. I have no doubt the letters ended up in the White House trash can. The only real purpose of the whole project was to give me some way to wash my hands of the war. "There, I tried. I did my part. The war’s not my responsibility anymore."

....Which brings the question: how effective are these protests as an agent for actual change, or how much of this is just a way for us to publically state our opposition to the war and therefore wash our hands of it?

It certainly felt very empowering to hold up a sign saying, "Stop the War Against Iraq" and chant "No War", especially after 5 years in Japan feeling unable to do anything. But what good was actually accomplished by it? Did we change anyone’s minds, or make a dent in military recruiting? I’d have to say probably no.

I’m somewhat haunted by the words of Philip Gold "It is arguable that popular support for the [Vietnam] War would have faded years before it did, had not supporting the war become a form of protest against the protestors." Of course that’s a right-wingers perspective on things, isn’t it? Whose really to blame for the atrocities in Vietnam? Why the people who were protesting the war of course, and therefore tricking the rest of us into supporting it.

And yet there’s probably some truth to the statement. Unfortunately not all good intentions lead to good results, and there is a danger protesting, if overly confrontational, can hurt its own cause. So in that regard there were a couple moments on Friday which made me slightly uneasy. Not the protest as a whole, just little moments.

It’s a difficult question of course, because the alternatives are few. Letter writing didn’t seem to do a lot of good. Obviously electoral politics have failed, as in 2004 when the choice was between a Republican and Democrat who had both been in favor of the war. And I’m not generally in favor of violence. So what’s left? The politics of the street. But at what point does sign holding become just as ineffective as letter writing? At what point are more confrontational tactics necessary?

I’m somewhat talking in circles because I haven’t figured out the answers to these questions myself. I’ll leave this part for now and give a brief overview of the event itself.

I’ve been out of the game for 5 years, so I knew I wouldn’t recognize many of the faces. I dug my old 2001 Media Mouse press badge out of storage to identify myself as one of the good guys. I saw 3 old friends from Media Mouse there, and although I hadn’t seen them for 5 years I was glad to see none of them looked like they had aged a day. They were just the same as I remembered them.

Those 3 aside, everyone else was a new face. Mostly college students.
When I was 21 and 22 attending Media Mouse meetings, I felt like a kid trying to break into the adult world of politics. Now I feel like the old man on the scene.

I arrived with nothing but my Media Mouse badge and a pad of paper, but the others had come well prepared and had an extra sign for me to carry and fliers for me to hand out.

The reaction of the passerby’s was very mixed, as I guess you would expect these days. A number of people gave us honks or thumbs up. One lady shouted across the street that she completely behind us, and we cheered her back. Then, unwittingly committing a faux pax, she added that she had voted for Kerry. This was greeted by awkward silence. (I supported Kerry in 2004, but most of the Media Mouse crowd did not.)

And of course there was negative reaction as well. A few people swore at me when I tried to offer them fliers, and one person tore them up, threw them on the ground, and then asked me if I wanted to give him anymore.

A few high school kids got an American flag and started running up and down the sidewalk with it, and cheering for the war. Generally I find pro-war demonstrators to be the lowest forms of humanity, but I try and make allowances for the ignorance of youth. After all, I myself was conservative at the age of 16. If you grow up in Grand Rapids, most of us are by default. Not everyone is a child prodigy and has their own independent belief system by the age of 14. I think most people, myself included, were still politically evolving during their four years at Calvin.

Still...Besides the military recruiters themselves, the only people who were really upset at us seemed to be Dutch Princesses and Abercrombie teenagers, blissfully secure in supporting a war they know others are going to have to fight for them.

The police came a couple times to warn us that we were disturbing the peace because of our loud chants and drum beating. We huddled up briefly and agreed to continue as a silent protest. Secretly I was glad of this because I’m not sure how effective a lot of the chants were. Some seemed overly confrontational, others just needlessly complicated and muddled. (There was also a complaint that we had been blocking the doors to the recruitment office, which had questionable merit, but we moved up to the edge of the sidewalk anyway).

Around 7 0'clock, another group of protesters showed up across the street to protest "The DaVinci Code" (you’ll recall Friday was opening night). Some of them initially saw us and thought we were part of their protest. Then, when they found out we were protesting the war, a couple of them glared at us as if we were the devil incarnate. And then they went across the street to protest a fictional story.

Whenever two groups of protesters are across from each other, things get a little silly. We ended up calling it a day shortly after that.

Again, questions of our effectiveness still linger in my mind, but with an injustice as huge as this war, I strongly believe it is everyone’s duty to do something. It’s easy to criticize tactical errors or excessive of rhetoric if you’re sitting on your ass not doing anything, as so many people seem to be fond of doing. How future protests will evolve remains to be seen.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
Before leaving Iraq, Paul Bremer enacted order 39 which allows for the following:
1.privatization of Iraqs 200 state-owned enterprises;
2.100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses;
3.national treatment of foreign firms;
4.unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds; and
5.40-year ownership licenses.

Bremer also enacted order 17, which grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq s laws

Link of the Day
Dick DeVos: Top Ten Things to Know about his Real Agenda

Video Version