THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE
Reflections on the September 24th Peace
March in Washington
by Steve Cohn
Chanted to a Latin beat:
"Tell
us what De-mo-cra-cy looks like; (rest a beat);
This
is what De-mo-cra-cy looks like; (rest a beat)
Tell
us what De-mo-cra-cy looks like (rest a beat);
This
is what De-mo-cra-cy looks likeÉ"
Chanted by 150,000 to 250,000 people marching in the streets
of Washington in the biggest anti-war demonstration since the Iraq War
began.
Last Friday (9/23/05) myself and four other Galesburg residents drove to Washington D.C. to take part in a march against the Iraq War. The march was sponsored by a coalition of anti-war groups
under the umbrella of the "United for Peace" organization and the "A.N.S.W.E.R.
Coalition." This article
recounts and reflects on our experience.
We
left Galesburg around 3 PM and arrived in D.C. about 16 hours later. We rested for a few hours and then
took the subway to the assembly point for the march. Crowds were converging on the mall area near the Washington Monument
from all directions.
There
was a sense of shared purpose and an immediate friendliness among people. On the subway we happened to stand
beside a father and his daughter.
They had driven to D.C. from Chicago, where she attended college. She had a friend at Knox College. A middle aged woman on the other side
of us in the subway car lived in D.C.
She was participating in her first antiwar march. She said she thought we needed to do
something about Al Qaeda, but the war had nothing to do with that and was a
terrible waste. She thanked us for
coming.
The
crowds were very large. The
percentage of people that appeared 40-70 years old was much greater than my
recollection of the demographics of peace marches during the Vietnam War. The latter had been dominated by
college aged protesters. The
profile of this march was more diverse. The spirit of the march seemed less "impulsive"
and more measured than some earlier peace marches. There was also a lot of energy and determination, and a
sense of anger at and betrayal by the Bush Administration.
The
signs told much of the story.
"Make Loaves not War," Make Levees not War,"
"College not Combat," "War Leaves Every Child Behind."
The signs also captured the tremendous waste involved in
this war: the loss and maiming of life (1,911 U.S. soldiers killed, 14,641 U.S.
troops wounded; and perhaps 25x-50x higher Iraqi casualties), and the squandering
of hundreds of billions of dollars.
The City Council in Chicago recently called for removing all U.S. troops
from Iraq. If enough cities send a
similar message we might begin to achieve that goal. We might have additional resources available for aiding towns
like Galesburg and the victims of national disasters like the Gulf hurricanes.
The
echoes of Vietnam were strong, with signs like: "Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam," and "Anything
Look Familiar?" followed by columns noting similarities between Iraq and
Vietnam.
There
were quite a few signs expressing opposition to the war from military
families. Like Cindy Sheehan's
protests, these were especially moving.
One man had a picture of his son in military uniform with the words
"Proud of My Son" above his picture and "Ashamed of this
War" below his picture. Another
poster had a young man's picture with the words, "My Hero, Send Him
Home." Other signs said: "This Marine Family Does Not
Support the Mission: Aggression," "Marine Mom Says Bring Them
Home," "A Marine for Peace, They Lied."
Many
signs had strong personal criticism of Bush. A large number indicted him for lying about the reasons we
went to war. Among the signs were:
"Bush It," "Bush Lies, Who Dies?" "The U.S. got Neo-Conned," "This War
is an AmBush, "Visualize Compassionate Impeachment," and "It's all
About Oil." There were Pinocchio Bush dolls with
long noses and people with unflattering Halloween masks of Bush. A few signs asked why Bush's daughters
were not among the soldiers in Iraq. The same question could be asked of most of the
children of the political and economic leaders promoting this war. Recent research has revealed a similar
lack of military service on the part of the political supporters of the current
war during the Vietnam era. As one
sign said, "At least Bush had an exit plan for Vietnam."
The
five of us from Galesburg marched near a group of 15-30 West Virginians who
carried cloth or poster materials inscribed with the names of the U.S. troops
who had died in Iraq. We had to
wait several hours before we started to march due to the large numbers of
protesters. The march began and
ended at the same location. We
marched 35-75 abreast for about two and a half hours. People at the front of the column had been marching for at
least 2 hours by the time we began. We were sometimes able to see them ahead of
us, marching in the opposite direction, when we came to cross streets. There was at least an hour of people
behind us when we finished. The
crowd was enormous. The D.C. police
chief estimated it at 150,000; the march organizers put the total at more than
300,000. There is a history of
over-estimation by protest organizers and under-estimation by the D.C.
police. It seems likely that the
true number was in the neighborhood of 200,000-225,000, counting people who
participated in at least in part of the protest over the 4-6 hour period.
It
is expensive and time consuming to go to D.C. With current gas prices and a reasonable calculation for
wear and tear on vehicles, the 1700 mile round trip to D.C., for Midwesterners like ourselves, costs at least $500 a vehicle
or ~$100/person (without including
potential hotel and meal costs).
Special roundtrip bus tickets for this march cost at least as much. For every person who was in D.C. there
were many more who could not spend 30 hours driving in a single weekend or
could not afford the financial cost of the journey. Thus the size of the turnout suggests strong political
sentiment. Comparing the
demonstration to earlier marches in Washington against this war and for other
causes also implies strong sentiment. People need to know this.
There
were very few counter demonstrators, and it would appear that the media gave
them disproportionate attention. The
Washington Post (the leading
newspaper in D.C.) estimated that there were 200 counter demonstrators along
the march route. The ratio of
protesters to demonstrators was therefore in the neighborhood of 750-1000 to
one. The Washington Post and the one TV report I saw after the march, however,
gave ~10%-15% of its coverage to the
counter demonstrators' views and activities.
While
the degree of overall attention given the protest in the Washington Post seemed reasonable, the apparent lack of media
coverage in general was very troubling.
The New York Times' front
page on Sunday, for example, had no reference to the protest in the edition we
looked at near Columbus, Ohio.
Friends of ours reported a similar lack of coverage in some other print
and broadcast media. For the press
and other media to downplay the largest demonstration against the Iraq war
since it began is very troubling.
This is because in a country as large as ours it is impossible for the
average citizen or political leader to know how the population as a whole feels
about important political issues from direct experience. We all have to rely on the images
offered by the media. For our
democracy to work a lot of attention has to be paid to citizens' political
activity.
It
is ironic that if you review the world wide web for international media
coverage of the march it appears that the foreign press may have given the
protest more thoughtful coverage than our own media. It is troubling that foreign observers may have had a better
assessment of the war's nature and the war's merits than American citizens when
we went to war. It is even more
surprising and dismaying that foreign citizens might have a better
understanding of current American political sentiment than Americans relying on
our own media.
Where
do we go from here? I feel good
about the march and the community of opposition it helped express and
consolidate. But I think opponents of the war need to find new mechanisms to
register our dissent. I am not
sure what these might be. A
general strike, say a day or half a day, when people don't go to work, or leave
early from work, would register opinion.
Perhaps massive turnouts at the local offices of political leaders would
get their attention, or a chain of joined hands stretching from Galesburg to
Washington, passing a message from ear to ear (as in the game of telephone-but
hopefully more clearly) that calls for an end to the war.
One
last comment. Many people who are
appalled by this war, who reject its moral legitimacy, who see it as
strengthening rather than weakening Al Qaeda, who see it as encouraging states
without nuclear weapons to pursue them, who see it as wasting enormous amounts
of human life and economic resources, and as lowering America's standing in the
world, still ask the following question: even if going to war was a mistake, should
we just leave? Don't we have an
obligation to the Iraqi people to clean up the mess we created?
This
is a good question. We do have an
obligation to try to repair the damage.
The real issue is how do we fulfill this obligation and how do we prevent
this kind of concern being used as an apology for more of the same policies
that created the disaster in the first place. The first thing to realize is that the current policy is a
dead-end. We do not fulfill
our obligation by maintaining permanent war in Iraq. We need an exit strategy and not one like the Nixon
Administration's Vietnam policy.
The latter prolonged the war and dragged many U.S. and Vietnamese into
death and injury to minimize domestic political losses for the Republican party.
Many
people worry about a potential Iraqi civil war if we leave. This is an important concern, but our
present course does not appear to be reducing that risk. For example, we have sometimes used one
ethnic group, such as the Kurds, as our agent against insurgents from other
ethnic groups. This increases the likelihood of
future ethnic violence. In place
of this strategy we need to turn people's attention to planning for a post-U.S.
Iraq. The only way to do that is
to make it clear that we are going to get out. Hopefully we can encourage some international body, the UN
or regional organizations, to help in a transition. If we signal we are really getting out and these
international bodies will not be acting as proxies for American policy, but as
honest brokers trying to avoid a civil war and establish the most humane
government achievable, perhaps the Iraqis will give them a chance.
In
order for this exit strategy to work, the United States needs to renounce the
Bush Administration's current plans to maintain large permanent military bases
in Iraq and privileged American access to Iraqi oil and economic assets. To be sure, even if we do change
course, Iraq may succumb to civil war.
Nevertheless, a strategy that presumes American withdrawal seems a
better gamble than the present course. We have a leader who has led us into quicksand. There are no
attractive options, but as someone once said, if you venture into quicksand it
is still better to go in feet first than head first.
Steve Cohn has lived in Galesburg for 20 years and thanks
Konrad Hamilton, Tony Prado, Magali Roy-Fequiere, and Peter Schwartzman, who went
with him on the march, for help with this article.