Discuss with a partner how you would put these words into
the passive voice:
heard, heat, make, own, saw, saying,
share, stuff, working
Now, listen to the song, and write in
the missing verbs.Some of these verbs
will be in the active voice, and some of them will be in the passive voice, so
listen carefully.
When we were children, we had a Pete Seeger album in our record collection: Birds, Beasts, Bugs & Fishes
I'm not quite sure how it got there. For that matter, I don't know where any of our records came from. We weren't going to the store and selecting them ourselves when we were 3 or 4, so our parents must have bought it for us. Or a Christmas gift from a relative. Or a hand-me down from someone. Who knows.
As tastes change rapidly in childhood, my sister and I went through several stages with this record. (Or I should probably just speak for myself actually....)
First I loved the songs. Then I got bored with it. Then I hit an age where I was just at the perfect stage to enjoy the humor in this album, and my sister and I thought "The Foolish Frog" song on this album was the funniest thing ever, and we listened to that song over and over again, laughing our heads off each time.
And then eventually I outgrew that humor, and got bored with the album again, and it became disregarded.
I rediscovered Pete Seeger when I was 18, and beginning to become interested in the history of popular music, and protest music. I began to hear Pete Seegar's name a lot in connection with other artists like The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul & Mary, et cetera.
I bought Pete Seeger's greatest hits on CD. I hadn't realized at first that this was the same singer whose animal albums I had grown up with, but once I listened to the voice on the CD, I immediately made the connection. I was pleasantly surprised to combine childhood nostalgia with my more adult tastes.
I used to play the CD around the Calvin College dormitories.
My roommate Brett initially mocked me at first for the CD--the song Little Boxes in particular he thought sounded like a parody of a children's song instead of what an 18 year old should be listening to. But then after a few spins of the CD, he became a Pete Seeger fan himself. (This was back before the song got renewed popularity from the television show Weeds).
I saw Pete Seeger live in November 1999 at the School of America Protest down in Georgia. I had gone down with a Calvin group, and we were sitting on the lawn listening to the speeches and the music, when suddenly I thought the voice of one of the musicians sounded familiar. I left the group to get closer to the stage, and there was Pete Seeger singing.
Although this was 15 years ago now, he was already not young at this stage, being 80 years old. His singing voice seemed pretty shot, and he was singing with his grandson who helped him carry the song. But in between the songs he would tell stories, and his talking voice hadn't changed at all from the familiar voice I grew up on.
This was in a big field, and I saw him only from a distance, but I was happy just to say I saw him.
However I got a much closer look at him later that night. We went to a non-violence training workshop in the evening, which was a small group of people in a small little room. And before the training began, Pete Seeger came out and sang several songs to the room, and I was really elated to have seen him up so close.
During my time in Japan, I was delighted to discover Pete Seeger was also quite popular in Japan. During my brief experiment with joining the town choir in Ajimu, I discovered the choir sang some Pete Seeger songs translated into Japanese. The choir director asked me if I had ever heard of Pete Seeger. "Have I ever heard of him?" I replied, "Let me tell you the story about how I saw him play in just a small room once..."
I also enjoyed the Japanese version of Big Muddy.
By the way, sorry I'm a few days late on this post. The news that Pete Seeger had died completely passed me by the past couple days. Despite the fact that I try to keep an eye on the news, the past few days I've heard plenty about Justin Bieber's exploits, but nothing on Pete Seeger's death. I suppose I always knew the media would largely ignore him, although I somewhat expected facebook and other word of mouth would alert me. But my facebook feed has been surprisingly quite about Pete Seeger's death.
Speaking of Hollywood biopics, here is a list of the top 10 biopics I would like Hollywood to make. Anyone who wants to play along in this game is welcome. I’d love to hear your top ten.
1. Martin Luther King-Really it’s amazing that this movie hasn’t been made already. I think I saw a TV movie on Martin Luther King’s life once, but not a proper Hollywood release. I don’t know what they’re waiting for, it would make the perfect movie. Not only would this be the perfect kind of inspiring movie that would win Oscars and get shown at school assemblies, it would also be pretty entertaining. There would be no lack of interesting material: the bus boycott, the march on Washington, bloody Sunday, his opposition to the Vietnam War, the harassment by the FBI, etc.
The only thing I would be worried about would be Hollywood’s tendency to really sap this up, pile on the emotion and the turbulent home life, throw in a troubled childhood, and make it interchangeable with every other Bi-opic already out there. I mean, you can just see it already, can’t you.
Wife: “We need you Martin, the Children need you.”
King: “The Work I do is important.”
Wife: “We’re important too.”
Lots of crying, yelling, et cetera, and the standard husband/wife fights that are a part of every Hollywood Biopic film. I’m not suggesting King’s marital infidelities be white washed out, I just hate to see the sap become the main part of the story. (Actually, that goes for all the movies following as well.)
2. Emma Goldman-Emma Goldman would be a polemical figure, and wouldn’t get the broad based support of a Martin Luther King Biopic, but it could happen. If Jack Reed could become a big Hollywood movie, why not Emma Goldman? And she led an absolutely fascinating life, as anyone who has read her autobiography knows, from her youthful attempts to assassinate Frick, to her being caught up in the investigation of the actual assassination of a US President, to her deportation to Russia, and her subsequent disillusionment with the Bolshevik regime.
3. Pete Seeger-instead of making movies about musicians addicted to drugs and sex, what about making a movie about a musician harassed by the HUAC and black listed from television for 10 years? Those are problems I’d be much more interested in.
4. Carlos the Jackal-I should make it clear that, unlike some of the other names on this list, I don’t really approve of anything Carlos the Jackal did. But he certainly lead a fascinating life. If you could somehow make a movie about his life that showed his exploits without glorifying them, I think it would make a really interesting 2 hours. Go and read his life story here, and tell me this wouldn't be a fascinating movie.
5. Tom Hayden-I was really excited back when I was in college and the Abbie Hoffman Bi-opic “Steal this movie” came out. But since then I feel like I’ve outgrown Abbie Hoffman. At this point I would be much more interested in seeing a movie about the serious side of the student movement, and I think Tom Hayden’s life would be the perfect starting point. Again there would be no shortage of his material, from his being assaulted in the South while working for civil rights, to the rise of SDS, to the Chicago 8 trial, to his infamous trip to Vietnam with Jane Fonda.
6. Clodius/ Curio-I’m going to indulge my classical history geekiness for a moment, but I've always thought that the gang warfare in the late Roman republic would make a fascinating subject. (You could even get Martin Scorcese to direct it, and call it “The Gangs of Old Rome”). I’m not sure whose viewpoint would be more interesting though, Clodius or Curio. Obviously Clodius would be more central to the story, but there might be problems making him a sympathetic figure.
A story about Curio could have him initially involved in the gangs, but then growing out of it and joining Caesar’s camp, along with his friend Marc Antony. This would give some progression to the story, and also have the unique viewpoint of seeing some of the great turning points in Roman history through the eyes of its minor players.
7. Romulus and Remus-Along the same lines, I always thought this would be a cool movie to do. You could explore the lives of the young brothers growing up and fighting off bandits, to their discovery of their bloodline and their fight against the evil king, to the founding of Rome, and their eventual falling out. I’ve always thought the classical sources never did a very good job of explaining why these brothers ended up killing one another at the end after all they had been through, but a Hollywood movie could try and explore the motivation. Obviously this is probably more mythical than historical, but probably lots of sword and sandal type action and an interesting story behind the origin of the world’s greatest empire.
8. John Brown-I know this has been done before, but it hasn’t been done recently, and it hasn’t been done well. I think Hollywood should take another crack at it.
9. Fredrick Douglas-Like Martin Luther King, I’m a little mystified as to why this hasn’t been done yet. What are you waiting for, Hollywood?
Actually, you know what I think would be really cool? Fredrick Douglas and John Brown actually met once and discussed how to end slavery. They had a cordial conversation, but didn’t really ever see eye to eye on strategy. I always thought it would be really cool to do kind of a double feature. One director works on a movie about John Brown, one works on a movie about Fredrick Douglas, both movies could be released the same year, and the 10-minute scene when they meet could be in both movies. Kind of like a cool crossover, huh?
10. Thomas Paine-Yet another figure whose life is one interesting event after another. For a man who played a central figure in both the American and the French revolution, this would be a fascinating movie about a time when dreams of freedom and a universal republic were at their peak in the Western world. I think if you read some of Tom Paine’s speeches in the French assembly (“I would rather people talked about 100 errors of mercy in our revolution than one error of cruelty”-or something like that, I don’t have a copy in front of me) he still has wisdom for governments and revolutions of today. And the fact that at near end of his life this man who worked so hard for both the French and the American government was abandoned by both of them and just barely escaped the reign of terror and the guillotine by a clerical error is a story worthy of Shakespeare.
Those are my 10. What are yours?
Useless Wikipedia Fact
The Adventures of the Gummi Bears was Disney's first successful foray into television animation (it was released back to back with another show, The Wuzzles, which lasted only 13 episodes). At the time of its first premiere, very few, if any, animated television series were on par with Gummi Bears' production values. It even exceeded the quality of much Japanese animation made for TV at the time. Gummi Bears is often credited by animators and animation historians as having helped jump start the massive boom of television animation in the late 1980s all through the 1990s.
Recently Media Mouse published on their site a book review of “How Nonviolence Strengthens the State” by Peter Gelderloos (their review here).
In the book Gerlderloos argues that “nonviolence requires considerable privilege and that this privilege means that most advocates of pacifism are white…. pacifists encourage pacifism for oppressed people of color because pacifists realize that they benefit from the current system and therefore do not want to overthrow the existing system…pacifism fits into the state’s accommodation of dissent, [and] it’s proponents frequently impose their ideology on others [thus ultimately strengthening the state].
Ever since I read the review it has been sticking in the back of my mind, and I've finally written a few thoughts in response to it.
This post probably falls under the category of “Intellectual Masturbation”. Most people are already in my corner on this already, and Gelderloos is in the minority. Furthermore I don’t think too many people read the Media Mouse book review sections, so writing long posts in response is certainly a waste of energy. I've not read Gelderloos’s actual book, only a review of it, so by all rights I’m not qualified to respond. Gelderloos’s book aside, there is over a century of literature on this topic, and I have not made a thorough study of that either. I probably have nothing new to add to the topic that hasn't already been said a hundred times.
And yet in spite of all those reasons, I couldn't hold myself back from writing this. I just kept thinking of all the things I wanted to say in response to the book review. I waited a couple days to see if the urge would blow over, and then just ended up writing this all one night when I couldn't sleep. I don’t know, something about the way I’m wired I guess. My compulsive blogging or the need to insert my two cents into absolutely everything.
All those disclaimers aside, if anyone wants to take the trouble to read this, I would appreciate any feedback or thoughts you might have. I've sent Media Mouse a copy of this as well, but I don't know what they'll do with it. (Update: they posted it here.)
Thoughts on Non-Violence
This is in response to the posted book review: “How Nonviolence Strengthens the State.”
Like the reviewer, I’m somewhat worried by the lack of concrete alternatives being discussed. If, as the reviewer feels, non-violence is defined too narrowly, than it would appear that Gelderloos is defining violence too broadly.
If we are to abandon the moral ground, and discuss violence purely in terms of its tactical merit, than we need to have an idea of what kind of violence is being discussed, and what are the concrete tactical benefits that we hope to achieve by it.
Does the violence Gelderloos advocate refer simply to an expanded definition of non-violence to include acts of vandalism? Does it refer to street fighting with police? Is it symbolic violence with the intent to educate (or “propaganda of the deed”)? Or is the intent to physically disable the state? Are the targets to be carefully chosen, or, as with the Madrid bombings that Gelderloos cites, acts of broad terrorism against civilian populations.
Or is Gelderloos under the impression that it is still 1848, and that with a few strategic barricades and a few days of street fighting the central government can be overthrown?
Allow me to suggest that the time of this revolution has already come and gone. Even if the United States possessed enough class solidarity for this kind of insurrection (which, I don’t need to point out, it doesn't) the force of the entire military industrial complex arrayed against the any possible proletarian insurrection would be overwhelming.
If the United States were to posses sufficient class consciousness for an organized proletarian revolt, the idea of a general strike would be a much more effective weapon. By simple non-participation the entire capitalist machine could be ground to a halt in a single day. The war in Iraq could be stopped tomorrow if there was enough class solidarity to pull off a general strike, without a single act of violence necessary.
Of course this is still a long way away in the United States, but there are plenty of other examples in 20th century history where a general strike was able to facilitate a revolution. Germany in 1919 and many of the former soviet bloc in 1989, to cite but two examples.
Ultimately one comes back to Lenin’s famous dictum: “A terrorist is a liberal with a bomb.” The liberal thinks he can influence bourgeois government by parliamentary pressure tactics or petitioning. The terrorist is of the same mindset, except the terrorist thinks he can substitute violence as the pressure tactic. Neither the terrorist nor the liberal will be able to influence the government in any more than superficial ways, and neither tactic seeks to take control of the state machinery.
Violent tactics must not be seen as a short cut to old-fashioned education and organization. “Propaganda by the deed” can only succeed among those who are sympathetic to the goals of the movement.
An excellent analysis of this can be read in Emma Goldman’s autobiography. In the autobiography Goldman recounts her and Alexander Berkman's attempted assassination of the capitalist Frick as an act of “propaganda by the deed”, as well as the assassination 8 years later of the President of the United States by a nominal anarchist.
The autobiography shows Goldman’s intellectual progression, and her eventual conclusion that these acts hurt the movement more than helped it. Although similar assassinations in Europe appeared to give strength to the anarchist movement, the United States was unique in that the illusion of freedom was so strong that symbolic assassinations failed to bring people to the anarchist cause. In fact, quite the opposite, the assassinations caused much harm to the anarchist movement in the United States, because the necessary work of education had not been done, and people could not understand the anarchist actions. The only concrete accomplishment of these assassinations was a series of repressive government laws against anarchists, with the full support of the general population. In other words, the state was strengthened, not weakened, by these tactics.
A century later, similar conclusions were reached by members of the Weather Underground. Mark Rudd now believes that their actions actually hurt the cause they were fighting for. He claims that the majority of American people have had it ingrained into them that the only legitimate use of violence is by the state, and that this indoctrination is so strong that the response to even acts of symbolic violence is revulsion.
The mistake of the Weather Underground was that they substituted revolutionary bravado for organizing. If one was not already against the Vietnam War, the acts of the Weather Underground did not serve to convince anyone. And as their actions largely did not rise above symbolic violence, one would be hard pressed to say that they inconvenienced the state in any meaningful way.
Even Bill Ayers, who represents the unrepentant wing of the former Weather Underground, writes in his autobiography about participating in a meeting between anti-war activists and Vietcong representatives. The Vietcong were much more interested in how the students were planning to convert their republican parents than about the students’ commitment to die for the cause. Ayers regrets he did not pay more attention to it at the time.
If an equivalent of the Madrid bombing had occurred in the United States, it would not have had the same effect as it did in Spain. Rather it would have been a gift to the pro-war and pro state forces, just as the first terrorist attack was used to justify two wars and new repressive measures by the state. In this respect I think it can be argued that it is in fact violence, not nonviolence, which strengthens the State.
Of course a case can be made for strategic vandalism. And this would fall within the definitions of expanded non-violence. Pete Seeger has a famous story he often tells. During the 1960s he visited a college campus which the students had taken over until the administrators agreed to negotiate wages in good faith with the black janitorial staff. Many of the students had lost their scholarships in this actions, so Seeger inquired why he hadn't heard about this protest before. The students responded that they had informed the local media, but the media neglected to run any stories on it. Instead the media had said, “give us a call if there’s any violence, and we’ll send someone out.” Seeger said that from that day on he always carries a rock in his pocket, in case a window needs to be broken to get media attention.
While I would agree that the violence in Seattle contributed to the media coverage, and helped to bring the anti-globalization movement to the forefront of the mainstream political dialogue, I would ask which violence was responsible. As in Chicago in 1968, Seattle in 1999 was overwhelmingly police violence. The participation of the activists in this violence was largely just to get their heads cracked.
In this respect, the anarchists of Seattle may find themselves closer to King’s philosophy than they realize. King’s philosophy of non-violence was always based on the violent reaction of the police. This is a detail that has frequently been overlooked, but a close reading of civil rights movement in the 1960s reveals that even the non-violent demonstrations were deliberately designed to provoke violent reactions of the police, which was then captured by the media and broadcast to the nation. King himself was frequently criticized by moderate clergy who, rightly, realized that his philosophy of non-violent confrontation was in fact based on violence. This was why King’s demonstrations were a tactical success in the South, but was a failure in Chicago when Mayor Daley went out of his way to be accommodating to King.
The strength of King’s movement was that it was disciplined. The evening news showed the demonstrators as only the recipients of police violence, and produced overwhelming sympathy for the civil rights cause.
In Seattle, and subsequent anti-globalization protests, this formula has been turned on its head. The Police inflict violence on demonstrators, the media captures this but then blames the violence on the demonstrators themselves, and where ever possible footage shows footage of anarchists violently resisting police. Even if one is aware, as the resulting news reports made clear, that the violence was overwhelmingly from the police, the sympathy for the demonstrators is not as strong if a fraction of them can be shown to have participated in the violence themselves.
So, if non-violent confrontation is more effective as an educational tool, the question then becomes, what is the purpose of the violent action? I think one would be hard pressed to make the case that the capitalist state was hurt, or even seriously inconvenienced by the petty vandalism and sporadic street fighting. The recipients of this violence were not the capitalists who had perpetrated the atrocities of the WTO, but rather the police, who are simply another side of the proletariat. Even assuming one accepts the police as legitimate targets, anyone who was been to a protest and seen the police in full riot gear can attest to the fact that when confrontation between activists occurs, the result is always one-sided. There are never a lot of police in the hospital after a protest.
Ultimately I am not against a “diversity of tactics” per se, but the non-violent form of protest needs to be respected. A demonstration cannot be both violent and non-violent at the same time. I have personally seen in Windsor, Quebec, Washington DC, and Philadelphia violent activists using non-violent activists as a shield. In Quebec for example I was participating in a non-violent sit in, when black bloc activists threw Molotov cocktails at the police from behind the rows of sitting peaceful demonstrators, and then ran away, leaving the non-violent activists to deal with the resulting police tear gas and pepper spray (which the media then blamed the activists for).
If one is truly talking about a diversity of tactics, than non-violent tactics need to be preserved as well. Those wishing to participate in other forms of protest should stay far away from activists engaged in non-violent civil disobedience. They should choose a different date or a different location for violent activities. If they cannot do this, talk of “a diversity of tactics” is hollow. It is also undemocratic.
Link of the Day
In writing this, I was somewhat reminded of Chomsky's 1971 critique of the Student movement, which, ironically was titled "In Defense of the Student Movement". It's not the same thing, and yet I think some of the issues overlap. Here's an excerpt:
"Scientists can organize to refuse cooperation with such projects, and they can also try to organize and to take part in the mass politics that provides the only hope in the long run for countering and ultimately dispelling the nightmare that they are creating. I think that if an organization of scientists to refuse military work develops on any significant scale, then precisely because of the role that this work plays in maintaining the so-called "health" of the society, they may find themselves involved in very serious political action. I wouldn't be surprised if they find themselves involved in what is called an "illegal conspiracy," in a kind of resistance. In general, I think one can expect that effective politics – by that I mean politics that really strikes at entrenched interests, that really tries to bring about significant social change – is very likely to lead to repression, hence to confrontation.
There is a corollary to this Observation: The search for confrontation clearly indicates intellectual bankruptcy. It indicates that one has not developed an effective politics that by virtue of the way it relates to the social realities, calls forth an attempt to defend established interests and perhaps attempts at repression. One who takes his rhetoric at all seriously will work towards serious reforms, perhaps even reforms that have ultimately revolutionary content, and will try to delay confrontations as long as possible, at least until he has some chance of succeeding."
I had not been politically active in High School, although it was not for lack of opportunity. There was an Amnesty group, an environmental group, a chapter of the Young Republicans and Young Democrats and various other opportunities for involvement, but it was not what I was interested in. And truth be told, even if I had been interested, at that stage of my life I would have been more inclined to join the Young Republicans than the Young Democrats.
But my interests changed and when I entered Calvin I resolved to make up for lost time in High School by joining every progressive group I could. I joined them all my freshman year, and then dropped out of them all halfway through my sophomore year.
Because of my reserved personality, I felt like I was simply sitting in on the meetings and watching them take place, without really taking an active part. At first I was happy just to be there, but more and more I began to think that I was contributing nothing to these groups, and that they would function just the same if I wasn’t there.
So I dropped out of everything, and didn't get involved again until my Senior year, when my girlfriend encouraged me to do so. I started re-attending the meetings of the Social Justice Committee. I noticed that all of the upper class men who had intimidated me during my first couple years at school were suddenly gone, and the meetings were filled with friends from my own grade or younger students. I was no longer shy about speaking my own opinion, and became increasingly vocal in the group and started to enjoy myself. Then I rejoined every group I could: the Environmental Stewardship Coalition, the Calvin Liberals and Democrats (after Austin reformed it), and, with my girlfriend's encouragement, I even attended a few meetings of the Calvin feminists.
Although from the latter I kept my distance a bit. It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with what they were saying, but they never embarked on any projects I felt like I could get enthusiastic about. For instance during the Spring there was a protest march against date rape taking place in Grand Rapids, which the Calvin feminists attended. My girlfriend was very excited about this protest, and somewhat upset by my refusal to attend, especially given my willingness to protest just about everything else that year.
I tried to explain my protest philosophy. “I protest government policies that I want changed,” I said. “I don’t protest just bad things that happen. If you had a protest against murder, do you think the murderers would stop? Are you going to protest against earthquakes and hurricanes next?” She couldn’t respond to this, and so I won the argument but there are times, (and perhaps some of you can identify with this) when decisively winning an argument gets you into more trouble than if you had just let it go. She went to the protest anyway and marched down the street chanting slogans like, “Hey hey, ho ho, date rape has got to go!”
But I’m digressing now and probably needlessly offending anyone who was ever been involved with the Calvin Feminists. The point is that I rejoined a lot of these groups, and found the makeup of them a lot different than I remembered.
The Social Justice Committee (it had been known as The Progressives during my Freshman and Sophomore year) now seemed to be dominated by underclassmen, showing that not everyone had to wait until they were a senior before they felt confident speaking out. One of the projects they had undertaken was to attend the annual protests against the School of the Americas. The first trip had been the previous year, so many of the sophomores were already veterans by the time I joined my senior year.
The faculty mentor, a Calvin professor, gave us this word of advice before we set out. “Last year there was a lot of bad things said about the Calvin group to the SOA protest,” he said. “People said some of them were only going on the trip for fun, or to be with their boyfriend or girlfriend, or whatever. If you go on this trip, you need to take it very seriously. There are hundreds of people dead because of this school in Georgia. It’s no joke.”
And so while we were on the trip, I think we all tried to keep a somber and reverent attitude. But in spite of the tragedy we were confronting, our natural inclination was to be up beat. In fact, I think anytime you get a group of young people together, the atmosphere automatically becomes joyful. There were a few people on the trip who could really make me laugh hard, and we did a lot of laughing on the van ride down, and for the whole weekend in general.
For me the highlight of the whole trip was seeing Pete Seeger, who performed at the protest. I saw him play twice, once at the large rally in the afternoon, and again in a smaller auditorium in a workshop on non-violence. It was an amazing thing to be in the same room as such a legend.
His singing voice was pretty much gone, and he couldn’t sing without being accompanied by his grandson. But when he spoke in between songs, his voice sounded as clear as a bell, and it sounded exactly the same as the old records I had listened to growing up. (When I was a child I had a copy of his record “Pete Seeger’s songs about Animals”, which I must have listened to a hundred times. Of course I had no idea who he was at the time, and it wasn’t until I was 19 and bought one of his CDs that I realized the voice on the CD was the same one I had listened to on the record years ago.)
As in previous years, Sunday was the day when people would walk on to the base. Although the protest was entirely peaceful, it was illegal to protest on the actual base itself, and doing so could mean arrest. The previous year thousands of people had crossed the base to protest, and the police couldn’t arrest them all, so they had simply been loaded onto buses and driven away. We were pretty sure the same thing was going to happen, although there were no guarantees.
Opinion was somewhat split among the Calvin group. Some people felt that it was not okay to break the law even if it was in a non-violent way, and so opted not to walk onto the base. Others had class they had to return for on Monday, and so could not afford to take the risk of being arrested or detained by the police. About half of us chose to cross the line and walk onto the base.
We walked in an orderly line with thousands of other people, and proceeded down the road until the police stopped the march. At which point people just sat down on the road, and waited for the police to remove them. Following classic civil disobedience strategy, we were not resisting the police, but we were not cooperating with them either. We would refuse to remove ourselves from the base until they physically removed us.
Or at least that was the plan. But as we sat on the ground, the police continued to walk up and down the road reminding people, “The buses are here. Anytime you want to load yourself on the bus, just go ahead and climb on.”
It was a hot day. We left our spot on the road to sit under the shade of a tree on the grass. We were talking there for a while, until a nun came up to us and said, “We’re trying to get people to stay on the road. We want to keep the atmosphere here somber in order to remember the people who were killed, and we don’t want it turning into a festive, picnic like atmosphere like it did last year. So do you think you could go back to the road?”
I didn’t see how being excessively somber would help the people who were already dead, but how could we argue with a nun? So we returned to the road. But a while later I noticed some of my friends had returned to the grass, and I joined them.
There were literally thousands of people, and we were quite a ways back in the crowd. We knew that if we waitedl for the police to remove everyone ahead of us, we would be there all day. And so eventually someone proposed the idea of voluntarily loading ourselves up on the bus.
On one level voluntary putting ourselves on the bus and removing ourselves seemed to defeat the whole idea of civil disobedience. And yet what difference did it make if the police had to escort us to the bus, or if we came to the buses ourselves? Did it make a real difference if we waited until the police came to our line, or could we just skip ahead of some of the people in front of us?
The point was debated for a little bit. Someone mentioned the classes they had on Monday morning, which, if it was all the same anyway, he would just assume not miss. Someone else said she had traveled all this way with the intent of protesting, and thought voluntarily loading herself on the bus defeated the whole purpose.
I kept silent the whole time. My conscious was with the girl who wanted to be true to the spirit of civil disobedience to the end, but we had already been sitting on the ground for several hours now, and part of me was hoping that the other side would win. When we finally took a vote on it, I abstained, but was secretly relieved when the other side won.
Very similar discussions were going on in a lot of the groups around us. One group of students sitting next to us had been discussing the question in passionate tones for a long time. I didn’t catch everything that they said, but I saw them vote, and then revote, and then argue some more, and then finally agree to voluntarily load themselves up on the bus. They continued singing protest songs as they stood up and left their spot to walk on the bus, singing: “We shall not be moved.” The irony of this seemed to be lost on all of them but one at the back of the line who pleaded, “Guys, guys, can we please sing something else. Guys I really don’t think this song is appropriate right now.” She struggled to make herself heard above their singing, and eventually left her place at the back of the line to run up to the front where she persuaded the song leader to adopt a different tune.
Our group loaded ourselves up on the bus with not quite as much drama. The buses were regularly getting filled up and then driven out of the base. We were dropped off just outside of the base, and then regrouped and left for home later that afternoon.
One of the group later wrote up this article for Chimes. He e-mailed us all for thoughts or quotes, and I e-mailed him back some stuff that ended up getting put in the article.
The following year I was unable to attend the protest because I was student teaching, and couldn’t take an absence. (Yet another example of making politics subservient to student teaching). Instead, I wrote up this Chimes article the week before the protest as my contribution.
