It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
In 2001, some friends and I attended an anti-war protest in Durham, North Carolina. At least we thought it was an anti-war protest. It turned out to be an anti-war, free Mumia, farm workers', Senate candidacy, school issues, prison reform rally, as cause after cause took five-minute segments on stage to push its cookie. The highlight (or perhaps it would be better to say the low point) arrived as a man walked toward the stage carrying a sign that declared in large red letters "Fire Bad."

I wasn't sure whether to laugh off this smorgasbord approach to protest or to be offended. Although we gathered to protest a war, our numbers were being exploited to create the appearance of support for a wider variety of causes.

This weekend, June 5, International A.N.S.W.E.R. seems to be taking a similar approach, calling for people to gather in Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles. At least International A.N.S.W.E.R. is being upfront, making explicit the following statements and demands:

* Bush and Rumsfeld Are Guilty of War Crimes
* All foreign troops out of Iraq
* End the Colonial Occupation of Palestine
* Support the Right of Return
* U.S. Hands Off Haiti
* U.S. Hands Off Korea
* U.S. Hands Off Afghanistan
* U.S. Hands Off Saudi Arabia
* U.S. Hands Off the Philippines
* U.S. Hands Off Colombia
* U.S. Hands Off Cuba
* U.S. Hands Off Venezuela
* Money for Jobs, Education, Housing & Healthcare - Not for War
* Defend Civil Liberties & Civil Rights

Well, then: don't be modest, now!

Seriously, all power to International A.N.S.W.E.R., but I won't be making the trip. When a rainbow of causes is advertised as the reason for a march, attendance at the march can be reasonably portrayed as support for those causes, and I resist being stuffed into the role of a supporter for U.S. withdrawal from Korea and the Philippines just because I show up to protest a particular war in Iraq. For the I.A. people, it's all part of the same struggle, and that's fine for them. But you're never going to find a majority of Americans agreeing with I.A.'s gazillion-point plan. If I.A. were interested in accomplishing the most achievable political aim -- rallying a broad (meaning including people who disagree with I.A.) coalition against the Bush administration's pursuit of war in Iraq -- then it wouldn't introduce these multiple other hurdles of purity for all of us to have to jump over. The really big, attention-grabbing marches have almost always been focused around a few broad, practical political aims.

The bottom line is that with this kind of line-up of demands, I.A. won't get but a few thousand of the regulars out to protest. With nothing but a few thousand of the regulars, the rally won't get but a smidge of press coverage. With nothing but a smidge of press coverage, I.A. will be able to go home complaining about being censored by the synarcho-capitalist-racist-sexist-homophobic-peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich media-warmaking complex, but won't have appreciably moved either the general public or institutionalized political interests in the direction of an actual solution.

If that makes a racist-sexist-homophobic-imperialist-elitist-synarchocapitalist running dog of me, well, then, woof.

Posted by James Cook at 2:23 PM. # (permalink)




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