Marching in Washington

I n January, I attended a rally in Washington DC against the war on Iraq, one of many rallies held throughout the world. Some in the media billed the attendance in DC at “tens of the thousands” while organizers estimated half a million. In any case, as the Washington Post put it, this was the largest rally for peace in the nation’s capital since the Vietnam-era protests. But numbers are only a small part of the picture; the diversity and dynamism of this event were life- changing experiences.

There were Koreans in traditional colorful dresses drumming and singing “US out of the Korean Peninsula and the Middle East.” There were Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, and many of other faiths. Secular Jews Against the Occupation were seen next to anti-Zionist Orthodox Rabbis (who had to walk to get to the rally because of the Sabbath). There were anarchists and communists mixing and exchanging greetings with mosque and church groups. There were business people, trade unionists, actors, musicians, professors, and students from hundreds of campuses. There were American and Palestinian flags waving along with other creative flags: the earth, peace signs, and many more. There were signs with slogans like:

• WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
• MONEY FOR JOBS NOT WAR
• WAR HEADS: BUSH, CHENEY, RUMSFELD
• AXIS OF EVIL: BUSH, BLAIR,
  SHARON
• THINK PEACE
• DUMP BUSH NOT BOMBS
• STOP THE GENOCIDE/END THE
  SANCTIONS
• ANOTHER VETERAN FOR PEACE
• END RACIAL PROFILING
• NO BLOOD FOR OIL

There were thousands of signs to End Israeli Apartheid, Free Palestine, End Aid to Israel. There were signs about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the legacy of non-violence for civil and human rights.

In the freezing weather people shared food, clothes, business cards, and networked. They shared their visions and their hopes for a better future based on confronting the facts about the past. There were Native Americans drawing a parallel of their genocide with that of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children killed by the U.S./UK-led sanctions on Iraq. There were African Americans and other supporters of reparations for slavery.

There were family and friends of the victims of 9/11 who had signs calling for peace and speaking out against the racism inherent in new laws and capabilities given to the federal government.

One chant I heard was: “This is what democracy looks like, Bush is what hypocrisy looks like.” There was a sign that read: “The whole thing is so absurd, I could not think of something to write on this sign.”

Indeed it is so absurd that while our economy is in the worst situation since 1974, we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on a military budget. It is absurd that we ignore 200,000 Veterans documented with Gulf War syndrome (8,000 have died in the last 10 years from these illnesses). It is absurd that the U.S. plans to waste $200 billion more this year in attacking Iraq, a defeated country, which lost over 1.5 million civilians due to our blockade (a true weapon of mass destruction).

Can our actions make a difference? Obviously hundreds of thousands of people braving the weather and freely spending their money and time on this clearly believe so. Skeptics need only remember cases in our history where people led the way and governments finally relented: abolition of slavery, pulling our troops from Vietnam, civil rights, the defeat of apartheid in South Africa, among others. This is what democracy looks like.