From World Can’t Wait Los Angeles: The Annual Rose Parade Meets the White Rose Coalition
January
1, 2008 began the evening before as tens of thousands gathered in
Pasadena to camp out, securing front row seats to watch the Rose
Parade. World Can’t Wait Los Angeles and San Francisco joined the
White Rose Coalition to spread the message throughout the crowd;
fascism must be repudiated and torture in our name is immoral and
unacceptable.
On New Year’s Eve, we dressed in orange, and
passed out flyers and orange flagging tape to those willing to declare
their opposition to the Bush Regime. Orange was already a prominent
color in the crowd as the Illinois football team scheduled to play in
the Rose Bowl use orange as their team color. Our message was greeted
with a variety of responses. Our brand-new “Torturers: Drive Them
Out!” t-shirts were grabbed up by some, young and old. A few yelled
at us about how they support torture. Some engaged with us about this,
saying that they thought that the US should torture terrorists, and
that they felt that citizens of the US were not in any danger from
their own government and only from terrorists who needed to be tortured
first, before they tortured us. Others we talked to had never heard of
Guantanamo, nor did they have knowledge of the passage of the Military
Commissions Act and its implications. These people took our flyers
with interest and thanked us for informing them.
On
the morning of the 1st , some of us were out in jumpsuits and black
hoods on the parade route before the parade got going, drawing scores
of photographers. The coalition gathered around the Backbone Campaign’s
Bush Chain Gang (people dressed in prisoners” black & white striped
uniforms with large papier mache head masks of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
and Rice) with “torture victims” surrounding them.
Members of the
White Rose Coalition carried a huge banner with the preamble to the
constitution written on it. There were many Impeach Bush and Cheney
banners held aloft too. We joined in at the end of the parade creating
a contingent of over one hundred people. A favorite chant was taken up
in a very spirited way by the contingent “War Criminals! Drive Them
Out!” There were loud boo’s from some in the bleachers as we marched
by, but we got applause from others. At one point, as the chant
echoed in the street, we realized that some onlookers had joined in,
shaking fists in the air as they shouted our chant with us.
At
Pasadena City Hall, a press conference was held with Cindy Sheehan,
Jodie Evans of CodePink, Dennis Loo of World Can’t Wait, Peter Thottam
of the National Impeachment Center and others , that was broadcast
briefly on local TV. Our orange jumpsuited protesters were seen all
over the internet.
One
of the people who camped out with some of the coalition all night was a
woman from South Central whose son just returned from Iraq. She had
never participated in a political event before, and at the end told us
that next to the birth of her son, this was the most exciting thing in
her life.
This is just the beginning. Happy New Year! Drive Out the Bush Regime!