Jaded Times

I spent Saturday on the National Mall with the anti-war protestors at the Operation Ceasefire March and Concert. I should preface this with two things:

1. I’m not sure if I believe that immediate withdrawal from Iraq is the best option. We shouldn’t have bombed the hell out of it, but now that we have, I don’t know if we can abandon it.
2. I was mostly there to see Ted Leo+Pharmacists.

I got to the mall around 3:00. The march had started much earlier and I expected that everyone would be at the stage for the concert, but there were still marchers along Pennsylvania Avenue. I was immediately struck by how DIY everything seemed. At most protests I’ve attended, organizers were everywhere handing out stickers and pre-made signs. Here, the organizers were still signing up volunteers to help out the concert and most of the signs were homemade. I took note of some of my favorites – “Bush has Iraqtile Dysfunction,” “Make Levees, Not War,” and “Dick Cheney Eats Kittens.”

The event took place between the Washington Monument and Consitution Avenue, which separates the National Mall from the White House Elipse. There were tables set up along the perimeter closest to the Monument where organizations gave away literature and progressive entrepreneurs sold buttons and bumper stickers advocating a littany of liberal causes. The stage was set up next to Constitution Avenue. To the right of the stage, near a small grove of trees, there were more tables, occupied mostly by the event sponsors and some of the more well-known anti-war groups. Camp Casey, the Cindy Sheehan camp that had previously been located in Crawford, was in place a bit further down the mall, surrounded by small white crosses and cardboard coffins draped with American flags.

I went right to the stage where Jello Biafra (of Dead Kennedys fame) was rambling obnoxiously about something before introducing Joan Baez. She looked great and her voice is as lovely as ever. The crowd sang along to “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and her rendition of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” Her presence there captured a feeling in the crowd that I recognized from many protests – a wish for the simplicity amidst chaos of the 1960s, where liberals were fighting powerful odds but they knew they were right and were willing to stand up and fight.

The crowd was mostly white and mostly young, although there was a sizeable minority of middle-aged and older there. Most bizarre sighting? Matthew Lesko in his purple suit covered in yellow question marks. He does infomercials on how to get money from the government, and is apparently anti-war.

I wandered around the tables, which were full of buttons, bumper stickers, and magnetic ribbons (including a timely “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People” pin). There were also several left-wing publishers hawking books and many organizations looking for people to take literature, sign up for listservs, and add their names to petitions. Along the very edge of the action, I spotted a group of 8 people silently holding signs that criticized the federal income tax – they held the Thoreau-esque notion that they should not have to pay for war.

Things were relatively, and somewhat surprisingly, quiet. There was action on the stage, of course, but there were also people quietly talking and some taking naps on blankets spread on the grass. I’m not sure what I expected – perhaps more anger. It was there, evident in the abundance of “Fuck Bush” (or cleverly coded “Buck Fush”) buttons and T-shirts, but it wasn’t as palpable as I thought it would be.

I walked out to Camp Casey, where a small sign noted the number of Americans dead and wounded in Iraq so far (1910 and 14700, respectively). There was a sense of camaraderie there, as many of the people with Camp Casey have been together since its inception in August. They took donations for food and gas.

At this point, I met some friends and went back to the stage to see Steve Earle. Then we grabbed food and sat to eat on the steps of the Commerce Department Building, watching protestors meander about. We walked back to the stage, where there was still a crowd, now waiting for the concert’s heavy-hitters: Ted Leo, the Theivery Corporation, the Bouncing Souls, Le Tigre, and others. We sat and watched a DC a capella group called Sweet Honey of the Rock and the Evens, a new project of Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye. Jello, after taking a break for dinner, was back and going strong, to my general annoyance. We moved into the crowd, which at this point was almost exclusively young, and seemed largely high school and college-aged. Ted Leo came out for his set. After he played, my friends and I left.

It is difficult to capture the mood of the event or even accurately describe my feelings about it. I felt largely detached, maybe because I don’t agree with all the positions the speakers were advocating. On the whole, it was sprawling and largely disorganized, both literally and figuratively. While the overarching message was anti-war, there were, as at all liberal events, many, many submessages, including “protect the environment,” “fight racism,” “protect the right to choose,” and “free Palestine.” Again, I found myself wishing that we liberals could learn to focus and put out a single coherent thought. Though many issues of the day are interconnected, it might be best politically to whittle some things down to bullet points. Once we get power, we can govern based on complexity.

Speaking of focus, read a better and more coherent account of Operation Ceasefire here (registration required, but shouldn’t you already have it anyway?).

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