“March 19: Seeds of A New Resistance”
Attention, you who are waiting until things get worse and
you are truly needed: You are being paged. Things are worse, and you are
needed right now. That comfort zone you are standing in is really a blind spot
on the highway to hell; step out of it, and into the roadways of resistance.
That is the message put out across the country on March 19,
by way of actions-some organized by The World Can’t Wait, some by many other
groups – called to protest the start of the sixth year of the Iraq War and
occupation. From San Francisco to D.C, Honolulu to Tacoma,
there was a fresh smell in the air; a spirit of resisting crimes against
humanity in new, bold, and creative ways, both big and small. There was a hunger to go beyond merely
gathering in a town square chanting, holding signs, and then going home, and a
willingness to sacrifice personally in order to make the resounding statement:
“No Business as Usual!”
Actions in many cities demonstrated the power of these new
forms of opposition to shatter the distorted prism of relativism through which
far too many people in society continue to view war, torture, and
repression. Through fearlessly
repudiating the Bush agenda, and unapologetically challenging others to
themselves speak out, activists throughout the country showed those on the
sidelines that torture and genocide are not “matters of opinion,” but rather
sick realities we must either resist or accept.
A few themes that emerged from nationwide March 19 actions,
and through media coverage of protests in different cities:
A Hunger for New Forms of Resistance
Greg Barber, a reporter for Express-a smaller publication of
the Washington Post-began a March 19 blog post this way: “So I think I just
witnessed someone getting water boarded. In front of the White House. But I’m
not quite sure.”
(Barber apparently had trouble getting to the front of a
crowd viewing the demonstration, so he didn’t see exactly what happened; later,
journalists from Agence France Presse filled him in).
In his post, Barber describes traveling to the Washington
Post building near McPherson Square
for a meeting, when he happened upon protests marking the fifth anniversary of
the war. He decided to check out the scene, and at first, sized it up as
protest as usual: “Guy on loudspeaker making impassioned speech. People with
signs milling about. A tent covered in peace symbols,” is how Barber described
it.
But then, he overheard two of the protesters talking about
the upcoming water boarding demonstration. 
“My ears perked up,” Barber wrote. “So off to the White
House I went.”
Barber heard the back and forth of the “interrogator”
haranguing the “detainee” for information. And then, Barber recounted
dramatically: “I could clearly hear the woman shout, “Well, let’s give him a
drink!” and the man make the kind of noises that someone who was drowning would
make as the crowd grew hushed and lurched further forward. I didn’t see an
actual water boarding with my own eyes, but what I did see and hear was still
pretty disturbing.”
Barber was not the only journalist whose attention was
captivated by the water boarding demonstration. According to the D.C. World
Can’t Wait report: “Even seasoned journalists were heard to gasp at the
inhumanity of this slow, intentional drowning. One was heard saying he
had no idea it was like this.”
After the water boarding demonstration, the protesters in Washington took their
denunciation of war criminals straight to the home of the war criminals
themselves: they attempted to wrap the White House in crime scene tape. Elaine
Brower, of the World Can’t Wait national steering committee, was arrested
during the action. Activists with Iraq
Veterans Against the War chained themselves outside the National Archives. A
visually-arresting “March of the dead” procession, consisting of more than 100
demonstrators dressed in black with white masks to symbolize the Iraqi and
American lives lost in the war, marched through downtown D.C. stopping at the
headquarters of murderers-for-hire Blackwater.
Other demonstrators trampled on a 30 x40 version of the Constitution to
symbolize the Bush Regime’s shredding of civil liberties. Earlier in the day, about 40 people were
arrested for crossing the barricades in front of the IRS, to protest the use of
tax dollars for crimes against humanity. As police arrested protesters, other
demonstrators chanted, “This is a crime scene.”
In Chicago, students began circulating a new, powerfully-
worded petition that cleverly takes off on the concept of “fighting crime” by
demanding the administrations of Columbia College, and DePaul and Roosevelt
universities support efforts to “restore our campuses as centers of education
free of criminal activity”- the criminal activity of military recruiters who
lure youth into committing murder and carrying out torture. The petition,
drawing on the inspiration of the Berkeley
anti-recruitment movement, deems the recruiters “unwelcome” and demands the Columbia College recruiting center be shut down.
In the past few months, the Berkeley Marine Recruiting
Station has become an ideological
battleground of the anti-war movement: the
City Council’s initial declaration of the recruiters as “unwelcome intruders,”
the rabid right-wing response, the Council’s subsequent abandonment of that
characterization, and the controversy at each of these stages has made the
issue of whether or not to support the troops a central question of struggle.
On March 19, that continued, as dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the MRS
holding pictures of Iraqi civilians massacred as a result of the actions of
troops and of military recruiters, and these protesters were joined by an
orange jumpsuit contingent.
Later, more than 100 Berkeley High School
students went on an un-permitted march through the streets. The San
FranciscoShattuck Avenue.” Later, these students
arrived outside 
UC Berkeley challenging college students to cease their
complicity. “Cell phones down! I-pods down! UC Berkeley stand up!” report reads: “Joining others when we got
there, we took over the whole street in front of the recruiting station and
parked the Bush “international war criminal” jail cell right in the middle of Shattuck Avenue.”
Across the bay in San
Francisco, more than 150 people were arrested as they
marched throughout the streets of the city, blocking traffic, or chained
themselves to buildings. Video posted March 19 on CNN captured images of police
in riot gear violently scattering and arresting protesters. Video posted March
19 on CNN captured images of police in riot gear violently scattering and
arresting protesters. The World Can’t
Wait led demonstrators in conducting multiple die-ins during an evening march
of 5,000.
In Tacoma,
Washington, Students for a Democratic
Society organized a demonstration at a mall recruiting center, leading to a
tense and polarized showdown between anti-war and pro-war demonstrators. As in Berkeley, the Tacoma
demonstrators boldly challenged the “support the troops” rationale, holding
signs with pictures of murdered Iraqi civilians. As a report from the Seattle
World Can’t Wait chapter describes it: “We stood firm and held the pictures up,
saying, “Is this what we should be supporting?””
In Los Angeles,
too, demonstrators gathered in front of a military recruiting center with
photos of massacred Iraqi civilians, handed out postcards of recent Winter
Soldier testimony, and displayed an enlarged eviction notice.
Die-ins. Demonstrations at military recruiting centers. Un-permitted
marches. Blocking traffic. Wrapping the White House in crime tape. The
procession of the dead. A petition to rid campuses of the crime of military
recruiting. All of these are examples of
the sort of eclectic resistance that will be necessary to truly Drive Out the
Bush Regime and reverse its fascist program.
These actions also exemplify the enthusiasm felt throughout the country
for moving beyond “protest as usual.”
This spirit was captured by Barbara Baeden, of Peace Action,
who was quoted in an article on CNN.com: “This is the first time coordinated
actions of direct civil disobedience are happening. People who have never
done this kind of action are stepping up and deciding now is the time to do
it.” [emphasis added].
“Stepping It Up” and
Making A Sacrifice
March 19 actions showed the willingness of a growing number
of people, across the country, to increase their level of resistance to
the horrors being perpetrated in their names. In many places throughout the
country, this took the form of people being willing to get arrested. In Tacoma, protesters at a
recruitment center braved the vicious wrath of counter-protesters who had
threatened physical violence against them.
In other cities, high-school students risked angering school
administrators or their parents by cutting class. Other times, sacrifice meant simply
reordering priorities in accordance with the gravity of the situation facing
the world.
Said a man from Milwaukee who
joined in March 19 actions in Chicago:
“What do you have to do that’s more important?? Look, I don’t even know
how I’m going to get home tonight. But if we each continue with our lives as
usual we’ll never stop this war.”
This “enough is enough” sentiment even made it onto the
pages of mainstream media. For instance,
the Milwaukee
man’s words echoed those of several people interviewed by the Contra Costa (CA)
Times. Siri Margerin, a 56-year-old San
Francisco resident, was quoted as saying, “”For five years some people have struggled to end the war,
and some gave up in despair. We have to keep doing everything and we have to
keep doing it all the time.”
Meanwhile, in a piece on insidebayarea.com-the online
home of several Bay Area newspapers, including the Oakland Tribune-Jamie Jones
said, “It doesn’t seem like our voices are being heard. We need to take it to a
different level.”
A Spirit of Exuberant
Defiance – i.e. “Fun”
Standing up for the people of the world, resisting those who
cause their suffering, and being a part of history in the process” All this may
be a difficult task, but that doesn’t mean it should be a chore! While
there are certainly many tense moments inherent in repudiating a powerful and
well-organized criminal regime, and while there is inevitably a great deal of
anxiety that goes with constantly assessing obstacles to mounting sufficient
opposition to said regime, all of this can and should also be fun!
On March 19, we began to see glimpses of what an inspiring
culture of resistance might look like: In Honolulu, a march triples in size
after it is joined by crowds that include surfers and tourists. The march is
characterized by drumming, clapping, and store owners coming to their doors to
check out the commotion.
In Washington
DC, SDS organizes “Funk the War,”
-a collective of hundreds of high-school and college students dancing in the
streets as they block those same streets and protest at recruiting centers.
In Tacoma,
a large black puppet symbolizing death appears outside the recruiting center,
and demonstrators begin ironically chanting, “U-S-A,” “U-S-A”” and then revel in the hilarity of
clueless reactionaries taking the chant seriously and joining in with it.
In Chicago,
people show their resistance to war crimes through the medium of art, setting
up a canvas outside a recruiting center. “The cacophony of color was
magnificent,” reads the Chicago World Can’t Wait chapter’s report. “And with
music going, we were showing how fun it could be to resist the militarization
of America.”
Finally, there were three words written in bright neon
letters on the skateboard of a youth in Berkeley.
These three 
words go a long way towards capturing the sort of alternate
morality that can and should be created in opposition to the total immorality
of Bush and Cheney, and they also succinctly describe both the opportunity and
the necessity before the people of this country: “UNFUCK THE WORLD”.
Taking A Clear Stand
& Setting New Terms
One of the most powerful things March 19 actions
demonstrated is the power of resistance grounded in moral clarity. In short,
the more boldly and unambiguously atrocities are called out, the more likely
that others who are themselves opposed to these atrocities will feel emboldened
and compelled to challenge them. And, along similar lines, the more clearly
crimes against humanity are exposed and denounced, the more apparent will
become the immorality of those who continue to support these crimes and the
complicity of those who continue to stand on the sidelines.
This point perhaps came through particularly strongly in Tacoma. Right-wingers had gotten wind of SDS plans to
shut down a military recruiting center, and they had responded with
threats-including death threats, in some cases-against the protesters. “From
the start,” notes the Seattle World Can’t Wait report, “we knew the powers that
be were trying to conflate a legal, non-violent demonstration with terrorism,
and we weren’t going to let them set the terms of things.” [emphasis
added]
Indeed, counter-protesters were already on the scene when
World Can’t Wait, SDS, and others arrived at the recruiting center. In the face of being hit with the label of
“betraying our servicemen,” the anti-war protesters took this on directly, by
displaying photos of murdered Iraqis, asking, “Is this what we should be
supporting?” Some people among the anti-war protesters were nervous about
accusing U.S.
soldiers of war crimes, or displaying photos from the Iraq War as evidence to
support these accusations. This became the source of struggle within the
anti-war protesters, and again, those who correctly labeled the actions of U.S. soldiers
as war crimes stood their ground.
“At first people didn’t want to be offensive,” notes the
Seattle World Can’t Wait chapters” report. “Our response was, “You know what’s
REALLY offensive?” TORTURE!”
Later, an activist argued with a member of the military who
said it was acceptable for protesters to challenge the government, but not the
troops. “We don’t need people calling us baby killers,” the soldier said. After a certain amount of further discussion,
the activist said, “But let me ask you this: Did you kill babies?” The soldier replied, “Well, we gotta do what
we gotta do,” before taking a flier.
One of the things that clearly came of this conversation-as
exemplified by the soldier’s response of “we gotta do what we gotta do”-is that
because the activist refused to back down from accusing the troops of war
crimes, the actual implications of what the troops are doing, and of the
soldier saying that it was unacceptable to criticize the troops, became a lot
more clear. And the basis was laid for the soldier himself to confront these
implications.
In general, by sharply and matter-of-factly condemning those
who carry out murder and torture, activists enabled those within and outside
the protest to more easily confront what was being done in their names, whether
that happened during the protest or (more likely) after people had more time to
process what they had seen and heard.
After one speaker finished,
the crowd took up her chant of “Murder, rape, torture, war: that’s what they”re
recruiting for!” Earlier in the
day, a fellow protester approached World Can’t Wait activists upon seeing
right-wingers gathered around the recruiting center with American flags, and
asked for an orange bandana. “They have their flag to unite them,” the protester
said. “We have orange to unite us.” 
More broadly, across the
country on March 19, actions showed the potential to set the terms on which
war, torture, and the Bush agenda are discussed by the majority of the American
people: from viewing these policies as strategic “mistakes” to identifying them
as crimes. For instance, in an article
written by Sarah Karush of the Associated Press, which was picked up by CNN.com
and other major media outlets, demonstrator Craig Etchinson was quoted as
saying, “I”ve watched with horror as Bush has lied about this war. I’m appalled
at the number of civilians we”ve killed, just as in Vietnam.”
It is a sad but true
commentary that, five years after the U.S.
first attacked Iraq, the
mere acknowledgement, in the major media, that the U.S. is killing Iraqi civilians is
striking in and of itself.
Planting Seeds Amidst
A Drought
Of course, another major theme put forth in mainstream media
coverage of March 19 is the much smaller sizes of anti-war protests on the 5th
anniversary of the Iraq War, compared to the demonstrations leading up to the
war in 2003. And indeed, it is a sad and infuriating reality that, where once
there were millions across the country who took to the streets in resistance,
there now are thousands.
But it need not be a permanent reality.
The March 19 actions-and those who, in various creative and
inspiring ways, did put themselves on the line that day-represent the seeds of
a new kind of resistance that, once flourishing, can dramatically alter the
social and political landscape. They are being planted in fertile soil, yet, these
seeds need water and tending to grow. People
who see the entirety of the Bush program, and its ongoing direction – with
confidence that we are right in refusing to be complicit with it, and in repudiating
it can act to turn these “moments of resistance” into a movement of resistance.
The seeds have been planted amidst the drought of passivity,
and surrounded by the weeds of illusions created by the presidential
elections. Only through an independent political movement can we bring this situation to a halt.
Let the rain fall. Then, it will be time for some gardening.