Perhaps the Nobel laureates’ statement should be understood as an indictment of our age. We could be living in an era so stupid that even the most intelligent among us are cement-heads. Possibly the laureates’ statement is a simple proof, if proof were needed, that nothing good ever comes out of a committee. But maybe the statement contains a deeper message. Maybe the Nobel laureates are speaking, more powerfully than they realize, for radical democratization and perfect egalitarianism. Nothing in their statement indicates that the opinions of common men are worse or more foolish than the opinions of Nobel Prize winners. Let us have our international actions truly “legitimized by democracy.” When it comes to questions of “What is to be done?” (to quote Lenin, as José Saramago might do), let’s ask any old person. Let’s ask Mom. Mom says, “Global warming or no global warming, it’s cold out. Wear a hat.”
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WASHINGTON, D.C., DEMONSTRATIONS
April 2002
“I’ll keep the mohawk until we stop killing people abroad. “
—musician Eddie Vedder, quoted about his hair in the April 11, 2002, issue of Rolling Stone
The Palestinian Solidarity March had almost all the elements of a classic modern American political demonstration. On April 20, in downtown Washington, a constituency previously not heard from (or not listened to) turned out in impressive numbers. Its representatives looked respectable. They conducted themselves with dignity. They had a grievance. The only thing missing was an intelligible demand.
At least the Nobel laureates had silly ideas; the Palestinian Solidarity marchers wanted the people of the United States to … what? Abandon one of our few allies and take up the cause of Arab regimes that hate us? (And when an Arab regime, such as Saudi Arabia’s, does profess friendship, it is the Eddie Haskell to our Wally Cleaver.) Should we, as more than a few placards suggested, GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST? Then the frontline Arab states could have a free hand with Israel and recapture the glories of 1949, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982. Are we supposed to invade the region and sort things out? We did in 1991 and were soon to do it again. Support a Palestinian state? We’ve done that. Maybe we’d better continue to apply combinations of diplomatic pressure and aid incentives, keep formulating Oslo plans that settle everything (in Oslo), and go on folding and refolding that darned Road Map to Peace until it finally fits into the glove compartment of amity. Yet no one mounts a demonstration supporting current policies: the Million Muddlers-through March, with the masses chanting, “Five, four, three, two / We don’t have a doggone clue!”
Israel stubbornly insists on existing. The foolish, despotic, and corrupt governments of the Arab countries stubbornly insist on various alternatives. The political and economic situation in Arab lands is so bad that it seems as if the only sensible thing for an Arab to do is get out and go someplace with freedom and opportunities. The people in the Palestinian Solidarity March had done so. Now they’d become a successful immigrant group exercising political power—exercising it to denounce American Zionists, a successful immigrant group exercising political power.
We are in the postmodern era of American political demonstrations. The Palestinian Solidarity March, an indignant crowd opposed, in a way, to itself, was marching around with little hope of achieving an objective—assuming there was one. This struck a chord. Thousands of other protesters joined in. They held a neo-demo, parodying the actions of the suffragettes, Cox’s Army, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War protests. Seeking a clear political response has been replaced by consulting a Magic 8-ball of activist demands: “Reply Hazy, Demonstrate Again Later.”
There were, in fact, three additional pointless marches in Washington on April 20. The Colombia Mobilization Festival of Hope and Resistance gathered at the Washington Monument. The U.S. drug-eradication policy was opposed. Millions of Americans have opposed that policy more effectively with mirrors, razor blades, and rolled-up dollar bills. The Colombia Mobilization also wanted the U.S. Army School of the Americas eliminated, although it has been and is now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. This can no longer be called a training ground for Latin American dictators, because Castro is almost the only dictator left. And to judge by the number of Che T-shirts in the crowd, the Colombia Mobilization is on Castro’s side.
Then there was the Mobilization for Global Justice, gathered in front of World Bank headquarters. This mobilization was claiming that World Bank development policies were all wrong. A little late. One of the World Bank’s own economists, William Easterly, had already published a book in 2001, The Elusive Quest for Growth, claiming that World Bank development policies were all wrong.
And on the Ellipse, behind the White House, the U.S. war on terrorism and Israel’s West Bank incursions were being denounced by ANSWER. Act Now to Stop War and End Racism is a group that awes any fan of acronyms. I was distracted from covering their event by an urge to scribble in my reporter’s notebook, trying for a one-up: Quotidian Undergraduates Eagerly Supporting Terrorist Internment on Neptune.
The Palestinian Solidarity March began on Connecticut Avenue, at the Washington Hilton, where the somewhat acronym-impaired AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was holding a conference. Many of the Arab-Americans arrived in family groups. Mothers and daughters were modestly garbed. Men wore crisp sport shirts and creased trousers. The other protesters, not all of them young, came dressed as young protesters. Covering of hair mingled with exposing of midriff. I didn’t see anyone doing both, but a number of non-Arab marchers had kaffiyehs inexpertly plopped on their heads. A middle-aged man who was obviously not a Pakistani sported a shalwar kameez and walked down Connecticut eating from a box of Wheatette crackers.
According to the Sunday, April 21, Washington Post, “Organizers at the march privately urged participants to strike swastikas from their posters.” They didn’t comply. But many of the protest signs had the swastikas turned backward, perhaps in an effort to soften the Nazi reference: = SHARON = . Thus some placards could be construed to mean “American Indian decorative motif = Prime Minister of Israel = Hindu good luck charm.” Jews were among the marchers. JEWS FOR PEACE, read one sign. JEWS SAY NO TO ISRAELI STATE TERROR, read another. A chant went up nearby: “Two, four, six, eight / Israel is a racist state.” Diverse advocacies mixed in the crowd: THE RICH MUST SHARE; DOWN WITH CORPORATE CAPITALISM; DESTROY ALL BORDERS; and a giant cardboard turtle labeled MOBILIZE. Everyone got along fine. A young man carried a crude birch-bark mock-up of a television captioned, “How much of your life is lived through a screen?” Another young man, a representative of something called the Independent Media Center, pedaled through the march on a bicycle equipped with a homemade duct-tape-and-PVC-pipe rig that held a video camera. Messages ranged from the disprovable (WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS) to the dumbfoundingly true (TREES ARE NOT TERRORISTS—although the day before, in Washington, a tree had blown over in a thunderstorm and killed a passenger in a van.)
Some messages conveyed no sense: GIVE ME FREEDOM OR GIVE ME PALESTINE. Some conveyed too much: PRO PALESTINIAN AND PRO ISRAELI HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES. Some messages were open to interpretation. A young woman carried a picture of herself smiling broadly and embracing a large, happy mutt. Written beneath was “My dog has more rights than Palestinians.”
Relations between the police and protesters were cordial. When the march reached the Connecticut Avenue tunnel under Dupont Circle, some of the marchers balked at entering, not without reason. The ventilation shafts rising from the underpass into the park were unguarded stink-bomb invitations. Washington police chief Charles Ramsey stepped in and led the way through.
The Solidarity March went down Eighteenth Street to the World Bank headquarters, where it was greeted with cheers and shouts of “Free, free Palestine!” There was pogo dancing at the Global Justice rally, and bare feet, and dissonant beating of drums, pots, and empty five-gallon plastic buckets. The effect was Riverdance if Ireland had been conquered by the deaf instead
of the English. A baby carriage without a baby was pushed around with bongos and tambourines bungeecorded onto it and a sign reading RHYTHM WORKERS UNION. A couple was parading on stilts carrying GROW posters. The man’s beard was braided. An American flag was burned, and so was a flag with yellow, blue, and red stripes. I asked what flag it was. No one seemed to know. “Colombia?” said someone. Two women in their twenties, festooned with buttons and stickers for various causes, ran toward the demonstrations holding hands and uttering squeals of gleeful anticipation.
I wasn’t getting much information from the demonstrators. I have reached the stage in life when there’s nothing I can do to keep from looking like a fifty-some-year-old man who should mind his own business. I had brought along Max Pappas, who does research work for me. Max, at twenty-six and with a couple of days’ worth of stubble, can pass for an activist of some kind. Although, personally, I thought the cloth cap and olive-drab short-sleeved sport shirt that Max had selected, to blend in, made him look like a sports-car enthusiast on the way to bowling league. Max spotted a pack of bouncy coeds in yellow MOVEMENT T-shirts and immediately went to interview them. They were from Colby College, and the purpose of their organization was to go to lots of demonstrations. “If anyone has an idea,” said one of the coeds, “you just come to the group and everyone will support you.”
Other collegians had an even more supportive environment. An item in the Sunday Washington Post noted:
Students from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Milwaukee Area Technical College said their schools paid most of their expenses because they belong to a campus group, Students Peace Action Network. The schools provided vans for the trip and paid for hotels.
While Max was talking to the Colby coeds, a young woman with a tape recorder thrust a microphone in my face. She had a black hankie tied across her nose. I suppose she didn’t mean this as a parody of a Muslim woman’s veil. “Why are you at this protest?” she said, in a necessarily muffled voice.
“I’m a reporter,” I said. She backed away.
Max talked to a man who was carrying a placard showing rainbow stripes, a peace sign, and a suggestion to “Envision a World.” He was walking a tiny Pomeranian that did or did not have more rights than Palestinians. “Yeah, man,” said the man, who appeared to be over forty, “when I get older, I want to join Greenpeace.”
A fifteen-foot-wide balloon had been erected by the Rainforest Action Network. The balloon was decorated like a globe with a FOR SALE banner across it, but it was shaped like a small-town water tower or, maybe, a mushroom cloud. On one side of the balloon someone was speaking to not many people in Spanish while a young priest with blond streaks in his hair and wearing a fashion-forward sport coat got ready to take the mike. On the other side of the balloon was a protest against Citibank, whose Washington office is catty-corner to the World Bank. A speaker asked Citibank to “finance solar mortgages.” The small group of listeners chanted—though not, I gathered, as a response to the speaker’s request—” Hey, Citi, not with my money.”
Max found campus feminists to interview. One admitted that the Taliban’s treatment of women was terrible and said the United States should have done something earlier, “in the name of women.”
“Wouldn’t that involve war?” Max asked.
“Yeah, it’s a tricky one,” the feminist said. “There might be some nonviolent approach such as micro-lending.”
A man stood inside an enormous, ill-made papier-mâché head of George Bush. The head did not bear a label. A bad portrait of George W. seemed to be the point. Other points being made in front of the World Bank: MORE WORLD/LESS BANK; PEACE THROUGH PEACEFUL MEANS; FUCK YOU CIA; NO MORE BHOPALS; REFUSE WAR/CHALLENGE DEMOCRACY; WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS (on cartoons of Tibetan monks being beaten by Chinese soldiers and Vietnamese peasants being beaten by GIs); KEEP INDIA SECULAR; WE ARE COMPLICIT; and STOP THE COMMODIFICATION OF WATER (in a crowd where almost everyone was carrying a brand-name bottle of same). There was also a placard announcing that the carrier was a representative of an organization, “Suffering for African People,” which critiqued the IMF’s “structural adjustment programs.” Both protester and protestee are in dire need of acronym consultation.
The Mobilization for Global Justice smelled of cats and patchouli oil and body odor. It joined with the Palestinian Solidarity March, and everyone moved in ragtag formation along H Street and down Thirteenth to Freedom Plaza, on the far side of the White House.
Counterdemonstrators were few. A Dockers-dressed mom and dad stood on H Street with their ten-year-old son. They held signs: GO BUSH and u.s. IT OR LEAVE IT. A few college-age protestors came out of the march to argue, though not with the parents, just with their child.
Some of the marchers—though none of the Arab-Americans—affected threatening attitudes. Their faces were masked. Their body language was angry. They shouted. But they didn’t do anything. Several hirsute and not very clean young people wore bicycle helmets and MEDIC armbands. They hopped around nervously, giving, perhaps, a preview of some future socialized medicine. A kid waved an American flag that had corporate logos instead of stars on the blue field. He was wearing Adidas shoes, a Swiss Army watch, and a Mountain-smith backpack. Four of the Palestinian Solidarity marchers carried a makeshift litter bearing a girl wrapped in bandages and pretending to be injured or dead. The day was growing muggy, and the girl’s companions sprinkled Evian on her face. A tourist bus got caught up in the march at Thirteenth and New York Avenue. Someone bobbed around in the crowd wearing an enormous gold-fringed Trojan helmet. The fur hats of a group of Hassidim were almost as large. I tried to talk to them, but I couldn’t get through a coterie bearing USA/ISRAEL AXIS OF RACISM/WHITE SUPREMACY signs. I must rely on my reportorial betters at The Washington Post:
“The Palestinians here in the crowd look at us mistrustfully at first,” said Rabbi Yisroel Weiss, 45, of New York. “But then they speak a few words with us, and they show us respect and friendship.” … He said his group favored dismantling Israel and returning it to the Palestinians.
A sign reading PRO-PALESTINIAN IS NOT ANTI-SEMITIC was carried next to a sign reading SHARON MAKES HITLER PROUD. A delegation of Iranian women in chadors was preceded by a delegation announcing LESBIAN, GAY, BI & TRANS PEOPLE SAY STOP THE WAR. One of the LGBTP was wearing, with panache, a Palestinian flag as a cape. A middle-aged Arab-American man sipped from a Starbucks cup. A college student held a placard: STARBUCKS SUCKS. Enlarged wire-service photos of Palestinian casualties were held aloft, as were THE MEDIA LIES posters. And one banner stated CANNABIS SMOKERS ARE NOT CRIMINALS. A woman ran through the march with a dollar bill dangling from the brim of her baseball cap. On her T-shirt was printed IN PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
At the edge of Freedom Plaza a young couple had brought their baby in a stroller and several sheets of cardboard decorated with crossed American and Israeli flags, and slogans: SUPPORT ISRAEL and U.S. AND ISRAEL, BROTHERS UNITED.
“You can’t just do nothing,” the husband said. Arab-Americans politely ignored them. The rest of the protesters steered away. The only tension on April 20 came from excessive support.
A dozen members of the New Black Panther Party marched (in the military sense) into Freedom Plaza. They were dressed in black fatigues, black motorcycle helmets, and combat boots. They scowled and did drill maneuvers, about-facing and attentioning. The New Black Panthers carried pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Their picket signs were professionally printed: THE STATE OF ISRAEL HAS NO RIGHT TO EXIST; THE AMERICAN/ISRAELI WHITE MAN IS THE DEVIL; JIHAD. They hollered, “Death to Israel,” “Holy war, holy war, holy war,” and “Kill every Zionist in Palestine.”
For a moment the other demonstrators were silent. They fidgeted. They backed away. “Excuse me, I’m so sorry,” said a courteous Arab-American teenager who stepped on my foot. Then a chant began in the crowd: “Killing is not the answer, killing is not the answer.” The chant grew louder. Demonstrators raised their fingers in peace signs
and began to press in on the New Black Panther Party. Cacophonous drumming came from the Global Justice mobilizers. They shouted, “No more hate!” A woman about my own age began screaming into a bullhorn: “Jews and Arabs unite!” The New Black Panther Party, with somewhat less military élan than before, marched away.
(As it happened, the old Black Panther Party was holding its thirty-fifth reunion that weekend, at the University of the District of Columbia. Former chairman of the party Bobby Seale attended. “I like the methodical way it was done,” he was quoted as saying about the war in Afghanistan. “That’s how you judge the operation when you’re dealing with a bunch of terrorists such as they are.”)
The crowd in Freedom Plaza grew and pressed against the front of the National Theatre. Emerging patrons were trapped beneath the marquee. A pair of older women stood patiently, staring at the protesters. “I gather you’re not a part of the demonstration,” I said.
“No,” said one woman, “we came to see a matinee of Mamma Mia!”
“But all of America is part of this turmoil,” the other woman said.
“How are you going to get out of here?” I asked.
“We’ll just go back in,” said the first woman, “and see another show.”
The Colombia Mobilization joined the ANSWER rally on the Ellipse, and thousands more protesters pushed toward Freedom Plaza. They looked familiar. If I took off my bifocals, they could have been the same denim-pantsed, T-shirted, funny-coifed, oddly shod, beard-attempting kids with whom I’d protested at this very place a generation ago. It was a startling continuity in youthful fashion—as if I’d arrived at my anti-Vietnam War protest in Washington in 1970 and found everyone wearing zoot suits. One thing, however, had changed in thirty-two years. Regular folks felt no desire to kick these young people for the way they looked. The kids were so thoroughly tattooed and body-pierced that, whatever pain someone might want to inflict on them, they’d already inflicted it on themselves.
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