Two Years

The side of the policeman’s horse was pushing me and I didn’t know why. I was in the street, walking with a bunch of other people and when we got to a spot, the designated protest area, we were herded in, literally. The thousand cops that were there, (I’m not really exaggerating) moved us into this spot and they used the horses to do the pushing. No asking us to move in, not a please, not a thank you, but having a horse push me into the spot. The option of going around the horse was to walk into the arms of a police man who was covered from head to toe like a baseball catcher, and he was carrying a bat. The line of people who were together to recognize the second year of armed conflict in Iraq were ringed with these cops and followed by a fleet of paddy wagons and buses used to carry prisoners. Now I wasn’t sure why I was down in Chicago, my feelings of this war are that we went there on a lie and we are torturing and killing people. If you asked anyone down in the middle of this protest, or march or whatever you want to call it, you would hear a bunch of different answers, but the only thing that united us was the way we were herded by the Chicago Police Department. It was pretty amazing, and it made me angry, not at the war but at whoever decided it was a good idea for a horse to push me out of the street.
I saw people I knew, I saw more people that I didn’t and I saw a lot of people talking about whatever, all while whoever was on stage was trying to address the crowd with a sound system that didn’t reach further than twenty feet from the stage. There was a woman up on the stage telling people about her brother who had been killed in Afghanistan, which would have been nice to hear but you couldn’t. In the rear of the crowd there were a bunch of people showing their political dissent by drumming on empty plastic buckets while the speakers were doing their thing. Another guy did nothing but hacky-sac for about four hours, he probably still is as far as I know. I heard one girl say to another: “That guys sign is so stupid”.
There were young people who had their faces covered with black masks, there were couples with kids in strollers, there were old guys in berets, bunches of signs that defamed President Bush in so many ways, there were people putting down the member of congress who spoke, a woman from Georgia who had voted against the war, calling her a capitalist or something like that. This person was from the socialists I think, some group of complete assholes who are against everything as far as I can tell except maybe the color black. The congresswoman from Georgia was worth the walk downtown. She suggested that the billion dollars spent on military recruitment in this country should go right to the Department of Education. Made sense to me, I clapped. It was hard to hear everything that was said because there were all these people passing out fliers, trying to interview people, or taking a survey. A quarter of the crowd was paying attention to what was being said on stage, the rest were trying to out hate Bush with each other. I liked the woman from Georgia, I’m glad she was in office and it was too bad more people didn’t listen to her, or couldn’t listen to her. She brought up the woman who was in Farenheit 9/11 who’s son was killed in Iraq. I saw that movie and it was inspiring to see this woman, who I didn’t recognize right away walking the walk. It was also neat to see this overweight, normal looking person get up and speak eloquently and simply about her dislike for the policies of our nation at this time. She made it real and reminded me that I too did not think that this violent action in Iraq was a good use of our resources and people. Too bad the people playing drums in the back didn’t hear her.
The speakers went down hill from there. A woman from Iran came up and screamed in the microphone for about twenty minutes, twice as long as the congresswoman about the CIA and how we were going to invade her country next. Then a guy got up and talked about Venezuala, then a lady got up and talked about how shitty the cops were and called them pigs and that we should fight them. I didn’t think that was so bright, and I bet the people with there babies did either, but most people had left by this time and I had started walking around. I am an anti-violent person and I wasn’t comfortable with this woman trying to incite some violence, I left the area where people were listening to her and started picking up all the trash that was now littering federal plaza.
The inconsistencies of the message of this gathering was staggering, I don’t know what the common message was, but I guess we were pro litter. After a few handfuls of this I went across the street to where the group protest warrior was set up. They are like little stormtroopers sucking on Rush Limbuaghs teet, ready to gobble up everything that he and his cronies at Fox News cough up. They were a bunch of kids, early to mid twenties who seemed to love to get peoples goat. One of the guys kept going on about the number oneness of the United States, which was okay I guess but I don’t know how he got his ranking. A guy engaged me, handing me paper telling me that the call for a draft was a farce and that President Clinton had attacked Serbia, and where were the protestors then?
A group of the black clad socialists went by chanting something and a woman with a mega phone pointed at the sky shouted something at them. It reminded me of a high school basketball game, when two different schools clash. The two sides engaged and then about 75 bored cops covered from head to toe with padding went to break them apart.
I didn’t see anyone I knew, things were wrapping up, so I left, stopping to watch an old policeman with a lot of gold stripes and insignia on his uniform talk in front of a bunch of news cameras.
As I walked I wondered what the purpose of this day was and was it time well spent? After two blocks I was just another person, not a protestor, just a person walking, shopping the streets of Chicago. I could stand in the road no problem and not get pushed by a horse, I might get hit by a car, but not pushed by a horse. I wasn’t going to get yelled at by a protest warrior, I could just do my thing. What was the purpose of this get together? How could it be made better?
I reflected on my recent trip to Atlanta and thought about standing in front of Martin Luther King Jr.s tomb and how the movement that he helped lead had worked long and hard to achieve a goal, a reality that could be seen and one that thousands of people not only got behind but went out and sacrificed for. What is the goal of this peace, anti war, anti Bush movement? Drumming? Face-paint? Hacky sac? Right now I see it as a social movement, as a refuge for the odd and starry eyed, I don’t see much intellectualizing about world politics, not in this venue anyway. What I did see was what an organized movement of any kind would face on the streets of Chicago. Tons of muscle who have technique, training and strategy, something that this movement is entirely lacking.