From James Wolcott:
The absence of debate is undeniably a sign of shame and cowardice, yet I can't blame high-profile Democrats from absenting themselves from yesterday's antiwar demo and march in DC. Steve Gilliard confessed that he watched about an hour of the rally and was so p.o.'d that he wanted to do an Elvis to his TV screen. I'm a less patient hothead than Steve. I only lasted about ten minutes watching the rally on C-SPAN, which made Stepford Wives selling Christmas kitsch on QVC--no fooling, at QVC the "Christmas Countdown" has already begun--must-see viewing by comparison. Here are the problems with mass rallies and marches on TV.
1) They all look alike. They're interchangeable pedestrian jams. If you didn't know what year it was, you wouldn't have known whether this demo was taking place in 2003 or 2004 or spring of 2005, because apart from Cindy Sheehan and a few others, it was the same cast of characters you always get at these protest smorgasbords, which remind me of WBAI at its most doctrinaire PC, where every faction and caucus has to be represented and heard no matter how boring or splintery or tangential to the event they are. What you get is an event that seems to have been exhumed from a time capsule buried in some aging ponytailed radical's back yard.
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2) The scale is all wrong for TV.
To be heard before thousands of gatherers, speakers feel they have to shout into the mike and every every phrase sound STENTORIAN. But for the larger audience at home, it's like being harangued, and who wants to be harangued, especially by speakers pounding you with played-out slogans? And no matter how large the crowd, on TV it looks like congested clutter, a sea of tiny, ugly billboards. It really doesn't help that so many of the signs are homemade and hackneyed. As the camera panned over the crowd yesterday, I saw placards featuring Mumia and Malcolm X, and I thought, What have they got to do with what's happening now in Iraq? The placards looked as dated as punk Mohawks in the East Village, and watching protesters wave them around as if they were in the studio audience trying to get Monty Hall's attention on Let's Make a Deal didn't help.
With her vigil near the Crawford ranch, Cindy Sheehan carved out an original protest space. The magnitude of yesterday's protest miniaturized her. It was as if she was swallowed up inside a whale aslosh with flotsam. I don't know what the answer is to the lack of adversarial energy against this accursed war, but what I do know is that yesterday's flea circus wasn't it.
From Steve Gilliard:
You know, it's time for the campus radicals to go home and take ANSWER with them.
I watched an hour or so of the rally and I wanted to smash my screen.
Why can't they have adults who can speak in words, not slogans.
Here's a hint, Palestine is really unpopular in the US, even among liberals. You do not gain support for the Palestinians by having some campus clown talk about the injustices of the Palestinian people. You know, why not have a real Palestinian from Palestine who doesn't speak in slogans. You know, but a human face on it. And leave the support of terrorists like FARC at home, after all, you can't call Israelis terrorists when you're praising drug dealing terrorists.
This is serious shit and I had to listen to someone say he was a communist. Now what in the fuck does that have to do with Iraq? Too many people on the left glom on to any protest and use it as their hobby horse. You know, the only people I wanted to express solidarity with were the families of the soldiers, the soldiers and the people of Iraq suffering from US occupation. It may be cute to have diversity, but it takes away from the seriousness. You have a rally where only soldiers and their families speak, with a few pols, and even Bush couldn't ignore that.
One of the most effective protests of the Vietnam War was the Winter Soldier Hearings in Detroit. They talked about the war and their role in it. That is something people need to see more than once a week on FX.
As long as you prattle on about anti-imperialism and other college campus radical causes, you don't get taken seriously. ANSWER in their own way is as bad as the Chickenhawks. Both are amazingly selfish. The chickenhawks refuse to serve, the ANSWER crowd uses people like Cindy Sheehan to promote their own agenda. Mumia's ass is in jail, and you couldn't more than 10 minutes on black radio about him. And that's a cause?
I just want to see a protest where there is only one topic, Iraq, the only speakers are talking about Iraq and all the signs are about Iraq. That anyone who mentions some nonsense like the "Popular Front" is shoved off the stage with a flying tackle. Talk about Iraq. But leave the other causes at home. I don't really care about what a Israeli refusenik has to say if the topic isn't Iraq.
Look at this list of speakers:
Jessica Lange, actor
* George Galloway, British Member of Parliament
* Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general
* Cindy Sheehan*
* Dolores Huerta, Co-Founder, United Farm Workers of America
* Malik Rahim, New Orleans community activist who survived Hurricane Katrina
* Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
* Ralph Nader
* Mahdi Bray, Exec. Dir., Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
* Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, attorney/co-founder, Partnership for Civil Justice, National Lawyers Guild
* Elias Rashmawi, National Council of Arab Americans
* Brian Becker, National Coordinator, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
* Lynne Stewart, human rights attorney
* Rev. Al Sharpton*
* Anita Dennis, mother of Iraq War veteran / resister
* Clayola Brown, President of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Vice President of UNITE HERE*
* Ben Dupuy, Former Ambassador At Large for the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
* Jos Williams, President, President of the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO
* Michael Berg, father of Nicholas Berg
* Christine Araquel, Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines
* Andy Thayer, Equality Campaign
* Curtis Muhammed, Community Labor Union of New Orleans
* Margaret Prescod, Global Women's Strike
* Hadi Jawad, founder of Crawford Peace House
* Chris Silvera, Teamsters Black Caucus
* Musa Al-Hindi, Al-Awda National
* Michel Shehadeh, L.A-8 defendant, a Palestinian activist framed COINTELPRO-style
* Nancy Wolforth, Executive Vice President, AFL-CIO
* Manuel Santos, Socialist Front of Puerto Rico
* Brenda Stokely, Million Worker March, New York City Labor Against the War
* Peta Lindsay, Youth and Student A.N.S.W.E.R. Student, Howard University student
* Mounzer Sleiman, National Council of Arab Americans
* Macrina Cardenas, Mexicanos Sin Fronteras
* Jeanette Caceres, Spoken word artist from New York University
* Gloria La Riva, National Committee to Free the Five
* Riya Ortiz, Network in Solidarity with the People of the Philippines, Campaign for Justice Not War
* Larry Holmes, Troops Out Now Coalition
* Chuck Kaufman, Nicaragua Network
* Women's Anti-Imperialist League
* Representative of Bayan USA
* Eugene Puryear, Youth and Student A.N.S.W.E.R. Student, Howard University student" link
Let's face facts. ANSWER are parasites who use our good intentions to push their agenda. So instead of rejoycing about the massive turnout, a hint that Bush's war is extremely unpopular, we're debating the speaker list and their abuse of their audience.
The reason ANSWER does this shit is because no one stands up to them. They get the permits, but UFPJ draws the crowd. If Leslie Cagan said no to their antics, ANSWER would have like 3000 people.
There is nothing wrong at being angry at ANSWER, but remember, other people use them to make their points and swallow the polemics.
That needs to stop. If people are sick of ANSWER's antics, call them on it. Bitching about them isn't enough.
I mean some of the speakers were in fantasyland. The slogans were from the 1970's.
Nader, Galloway, even the ANSWER people don't bother me. But Mexicanos Sin Fronteras? Lynne Stewart? Uh, she was convicted of aiding a terrorist. She may be innocent in the end, but isn't she a distraction now?
A lot of people want to downplay their role, or ignore it, but the reality is, that every minute of CSPAN devoted to them and their message is going to dilute the anti-war message. A lot of people saw them, and thought that was the rally. Remember, news is about showing what will interest people and if some campus radicals upstage the show, guess what people talk about.
Because CSPAN will be the record of the event, not pictures or news reports, but CSPAN.
And what's even more special is that ANSWER people think that can convince people by bringing up Palestine as an issue and linking it to Iraq. Winning strategy, if you're Osama Bin Laden. For Americans, it doesn't work so well.
Let's just call it the spoiled child, tone deaf approach to politics.
The next protest should have two sets of speakers: veterans and their families.
Leave the Palestinian flag waving anti-imperialists at home.
Why?
Because this is about politics and one clear message works really well. The left parade doesn't. Even if the press ignores it. AIPAC didn't. Which kept the Congressmembers away. And they were right to point out that the groups there would bash Israel and forget about the senders of child suicide bombers from Hamas. It's an ugly two way street and raising the issue was stupid as all hell.
People can pretend that the CSPAN coverage didn't matter, but it did. It mattered to millions of liberals who saw that circus and said they would pass on the next protest. It mattered to people who financially support such protests. It mattered to polticians and their staffs. It matters. How you conduct yourself matters and what you represent matters.
Think about this: do you have a school prayer protest at an anti-abortion rally?
Fuck no. One message is clear, Fifteen are not.
To comment on Wolcott's point #2 (“...speakers feel they have to shout into the mike and every every phrase sound STENTORIAN”), the speakers at small rallies are usually quite clear and the center of attention. At large rallies, I usually can't even see the main speaker. At a demonstration in New York, we assembled at a place that included a medium-sized stadium and so were able to get a good show out of it (No, the speakers didn't have to shout) but it only showed to a small fraction of the people assembled for the march.
So I agree, as the speakers at a large demonstration are only going to reach a small fraction of the marchers in any event and are more likely to be speaking to “the choir” as only the committed will go up close to the stage, organizers of a large protest should choreograph the speakers for a television audience. Steve is absolutely on the money for that. Assemble a tightly focussed group, set them up for a small stage, have them speak softly and have them concentrate on persuasion. Anybody wants to bring in side issues, let them pass out leaflets.
