stopping the war on Iraq

[Kragen Sitaker]

Today, Beatrice and I marched with a quarter of a million other people
in San Francisco.  We marched through the city named after St. Francis
of Assisi, who preached kindness and peace; we marched for kindness
and peace.  In 1945, the people of the world founded the United
Nations in San Francisco, in order to end wars of aggression.  San
Francisco has a monument, the United Nations Plaza, commemorating this
event and celebrating the growth of the United Nations over time.

We walked down United Nations Plaza to the Civic Center, where the
city government sits.  We walked over the words of the Charter of the
United Nations, inlaid in brass in marble slabs.  We stopped to read
these words, words filled with faith in a peaceful future.  I wept as
I read the words of the Charter, because day by day, my government
prepares for a war of aggression against the people of Iraq.

We walked through United Nations Plaza, along with a quarter of a
million other people in San Francisco, with millions of protestors
around the world who marched yesterday.  We walked to stop this war of
aggression and to fulfill the faith in peace on which we founded the
United Nations almost sixty years ago.

The marches this weekend --- perhaps the biggest the world has ever
seen --- portend a better future for humanity, a democratic future
where people make up their own minds instead of following the official
government line, a peaceful future where wars of aggression --- which
may profit the aggressor, but rarely profit his subjects --- cannot be
started.

***

We met our friend Susannah at the Embarcadero, near the beginning of
San Francisco's Market Street.  No huge dove accompanied us; we saw
only one dove this time.  We walked mostly ahead of the main body of
the protest march, arriving at the Civic Center Plaza pretty early.
Perhaps the doves trailed far behind us.

Protestors packed together under the trees.  Many local politicians
spoke, as did Alice Walker, Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, the Reverend
Cecil Williams, some local priests and bishops and rabbis, a peace
organizer from Britain, an American Indian Movement spokesman, and a
number of other people.  Joan and Bonnie sang an a cappella duet.

Alice Walker read a plea for grandmothers (she said it in two words,
with a little pause in between: "grand mothers") to help guide the
world.

Danny Glover, the actor, co-MC'd with the president of the Vanguard
Foundation.  The Vanguard Foundation funded things like toilets, sound
amplification, and promotion of today's march, through the
International A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition.


We met Susannah's sister and her aunt Diane there at the plaza.  We
stood by a small metal box that protected some kind of valve that
protruded from the ground; Susannah and her sister climbed up atop it
to get a better view.  A woman sitting on the edge of the box had a
loud discussion with the sister after they had been sharing the box
for perhaps an hour; each thought the other had gradually encroached
on their space, and they discussed who had been there first.

This incident reminded me of a story the roshi at Green Gulch had told
last Sunday; twelve years ago, a man on his way to some protests
against the previous war against Iraq had stopped by the side of the
road to yell insults at the Green Gulch residents for planting some
trees.  She spoke about the rage this incident had aroused in her as
she stood there planting the trees, and how hard it was for her to
listen to him when they sat and talked about the incident a few days
later.

As I watched the two women yell, women who had come to the plaza to
create peace, I reflected on how it remains so much more difficult to
be peaceful than to want peace.


The organizers had arranged for some volunteers to collect money in
buckets they carried through the crowd, but they had far too few
buckets; one of our MCs appealed for anyone who had a hat to pass it
around, then bring it backstage.  The crowd filled with sudden
volunteers, and their hats quickly filled with money.  I hope most of
it made it backstage.


Beatrice and I rocked in one another's arms as we stood there in the
midst of the crowd.


Early on, we ran into my childhood friend Praveen Sinha, who attended
with our friend Biella and her sister and niece.  We promised to hook
up later, but we haven't yet; we all felt pretty tired after spending
a full day at the march.


After about an hour of watching the speakers, I took a break from the
rally in the square to go back and watch some more of the march and
snap some more photos.

The creativity exhibited by the marchers amazed me.  A sea of
different, creative signs stretched down Market farther than I could
see; one man carried a spoof of the "12 galaxies" sign (which you've
seen if you've spent enough time in San Francisco's Tenderloin), while
a man in a gorilla suit carried a sign reading, "ANIMALS AGAINST WAR".
Sign after sign decried war for oil, our dopey and evil President, the
occupation of Palestine, the inefficiency of our energy
infrastructure, and our habits of supporting terrorist governments,
among others.  Some signs declared the group affiliations of their
bearers: ATHEISTS AGAINST WAR, CHRISTIANS AGAINST WAR, Jewish Voices
Against War, New College, San Francisco State University, YOUTH
SPARTACIST LEAGUE; a few poked fun at this practice --- ANGRY MISFIT
AGAINST WAR, VOTING QUEER RANCHER AGAINST WAR.

Joan Baez commented on this when she spoke; she said it was one of the
big differences between today's antiwar movement and the one opposed
to the Viet Nam war --- our slogans today seem far more creative and
dramatic.

I didn't see as much guerilla theater as last time, but one occurrence
deserves mention.  Along one side of Market Street, we saw a cage with
a cloth over it.  The cloth promised to reveal the link between Saddam
Hussein and Al-Qaeda when it was lifted; then the handlers lifted it,
to reveal a fake gorilla inside, wearing a George Bush Sr. mask.  The
handlers warned us not to get too close, as he was very dangerous, and
they poked him with a stick (labeled, inexplicably, "SARIN") through
the bars of the cage to keep him subdued.

One-man-bands came out in force, and several street corners had three
or four people dancing to the beats of rawhide drums, cowbells, and
various other kinds of percussion instruments.  One woman offered free
cans of some lemon-lime drink to protestors as they passed.  

But most of the protestors remained serious and simply walked together
down the street: men and women and children, black people, white
people, Asian people, Arabic people, Jewish people, babies in
strollers, toddlers, children, teenagers, young, middle-aged, old, and
ancient.


Beatrice's sister Connie had called us yesterday as she marched for
peace in Los Angeles; and her brother marched in London, in the
biggest protest ever held in England.


-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra died in August of 2002.  The world has lost a great
man.  See http://advogato.org/person/raph/diary.html?start=252 and
http://www.kode-fu.com/geek/2002_08_04_archive.shtml for details.