community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
My thoughts on April 3rd
by DJ Sylvis
Friday, Apr. 04, 2003 at 5:58 AM
deejbard@telerama.com (email address validated)
Not exactly journalism, more like nonfiction prose. But my thoughts and observations on the silent march yesterday.
At five o�clock Thursday afternoon, I sat on a street corner, trying to stay in the shade. Black was an appropriate color to wear for the march that would begin in a half-hour, but it certainly didn�t make the day any cooler.
While the sweat trickled down my back, I watched three police officers across the street. They were unloading from their trunk an extensive array of gear, strapping it about themselves while they furtively watched the marchers gather. I couldn�t help but wonder, are those handcuffs for me? Is that club to wield against my peaceful protestations? Who is more paranoid; we who don�t trust the government as our savior, or those who see our presence as a threat?
As more people gathered, I shook some hands and learned some names (which I immediately forgot), and the rumors started to spread. The police had asked all the merchants along our route to close early. The police had warned people that a violent protest was planned. Some of the people close by had been arrested in previous actions the past Sunday, or the week before, and were wary of this news. �Man, I really can�t chance going to jail again.� But they stayed, even as the police presence started to build.
We began to crowd in at our corner, free-haired hippies and mothers with children and Raging Grannies. We talked, friends found each other, people distributed underground newspapers and letters of protest, all the while sneaking glances at the stone-faced officers across the intersection. And they stared back at us.
A half-sheet of paper was passed around, defining our march. Unlike the usual protests we had been taking to the streets, this was to be a silent march, an expression of mourning for all the dead of this war. �We march to emphasize our common respect for war victims,� the paper read. �We march with deep grief over the violence in our world, yet clinging to hope for a better and brighter world.�
As copies continued to circulate, a respectful hush started to fall amongst the crowd. Many people were obviously thinking, not talking, and those who held conversations kept their voices down. Two groups of four young people lifted cardboard coffins to their shoulders and moved to the front, the crowd parting around them. We fell in line, four or five abreast, behind them on the sidewalk. From somewhere came the beat of one muffled drum, and we began to walk at a funereal pace. By this time, the streets were lined with police officers and vehicles; but even that seemed somehow less threatening, as if they were providing an escort to our bereavement.
Marching slowly is more difficult than marching quickly, at least in the short term. Within the first block, my feet, ankles and shins ached from shuffling along. I continued to sweat in the late afternoon sun. I moved, but the air seemed to hold place around me. The silence was only broken by the traffic in the street beside us.
With no voices chanting, no colorful signs, we seemed to become more anonymous. We could have been the destitute on the road fleeing Baghdad, or the homeless seeking refuge in Afghanistan, or the line of ash-dusted New Yorkers I remember from a photograph on September 11th.
We felt like victims. And as I continued to walk, falling into step with the muted drumbeats, my thoughts wandered back and forth from the marchers around me to the casualties I had been reading about in the news of the war. They were so easily interchangeable. The woman in front of me, of the same age as my mother, could have been one killed in a truck near Najaf simply for panicking and failing to stop as she fled with her family. I turned my head as I heard laughter in the line behind me � little girls playing at hiding from their mother. They left me in tears at their resemblance to the children cut in pieces by a U.S. cluster bomb only days ago. Row by row we became corpses, killed in hospitals and markets, shot as we fled with our families or bombed as we crouched trembling in our homes.
And I thought back to the young, clean-shaven man who had spoken about going to jail before we set out on the march. He became a soldier, rifle fallen from his hand, his blood spilled across a poorly-paved road outside of a city. He became that man, pressed to this fight by a power-mad leader, afraid of what might happen if he should refuse, a United States soldier afraid of killing almost as much as dying. Another human being who was called to the front lines of a war steeped in atrocity.
I barely noticed my surroundings for the rest of the march. The police might not have been there altogether. All of my thoughts were with the people surrounding me, and by extension through them with the lives � every one ended too soon � which we were mourning. Even after we dispersed, with evening taking over the sky, it was hard to pick up the pace, to let my mind move on.
We marched that afternoon, and should be marching always, for all victims of this war. For the Iraquis, civilian and soldier, adult and child. For the troops of our country, whatever their feelings about what they have been ordered to do, who have served and lost their lives.
And we marched for ourselves, for our hope and our faith, for our trust that the truth will win out. For, as long as our leaders pay blood to buy oil, while they save lives by cutting them short, while they wage a war founded on lies ... every one of us is a victim.
We marched for the victims of war.
Matt
by Nice...
Friday, Apr. 04, 2003 at 9:22 AM
Walkster1@aol.com
I really enjoyed that. Great work.
Well done
by Dick Marshall
Friday, Apr. 04, 2003 at 9:32 AM
rnm44@aol.com 412 922 7782 118 east crafton ave
Thanks for putting into words so many feelings that are hard to describe. I shared many of those feelings yesterday along with you. I had to drag myself there yesterday because I wasn't feeling well but felt it was the most important thing I did all week. Opposing this war can feel isolating...words like yours and actions like yesterdays create some reassuring support. I'm deeply grateful to you.
building the movement
by mark mccolloch
Saturday, Apr. 05, 2003 at 2:57 PM
mdmhist@pitt.edu
As one who has attended most of the anti-war demonstrations in Pittsburgh this Winter and Spring and as the father of one those brutally assaulted by a policeman and then arrested at the March 30 demonstration, I wish to make a comment:
While I am deeply grateful to those who have taken the time and energy to organize the anti-war marches, and, while i believe that some sort of demonstration is better than nothing, and while I believe that the blame for the arrests lies overwhelmingly on out-of-control police, I still have some tactical problems with the current trajectory of marches.
I feel very strongly that we should seek to get permits for our demonstrations. If we are denied permits we can make a fight over that and march anyway, but it is counter-productive to not obtain one if we can. Not having a permit gives an excuse to the most violent and aggressive police to attack. It makes arrests and assaults very likely. Contrary to what some have said, it is not building our movement by radicalizing people, (although I admit it may do so for a tiny number), it is, instead driving away hundreds of people who know the war is wrong, want to make a statement about it, and are brave enough to do so in the midst of of war hysteria, but don't want to get arrested or maced in the face by a rogue cop.
This is one of the main reasons why our demonstrations have NOT been anywhere large enough. What is needed now is for a very broad list of speakers/sponsors for a short and peaceful march, followed by a rally. This should be on a sunday, very soon. This should be an event that shows our strength and encourages more people to come out the next time, not visa versa. Unnecessary arrests also waste a huge amount of time, energy and money in their aftermath. Please think this over in the spirit of solidarity from which it comes.
Ummm.... You are an idiot
by Solius
Tuesday, Apr. 08, 2003 at 5:19 PM
The cops have to be there. They are there for your and everyone else's protection. Any time there is a large gathering there are police there. There is always a chance that something could break out.
Your comment about them trying to intimidate people is true. They do, it is to make sure that something doesn't break out. What happens when your "peaceful" protest runs into a bunch of people that are prowar and start trouble with you. The police are there for just that reason. Everyone in the world is not against your "alternative lifestyles". I liked the fact that a silent vigil for the dead was held. Thats great. Its the first demonstration that I think actually made sense. Great demonstration, but you were completely off about the police, they are doing their job.
3,000 to 300?
by Jan
Tuesday, Apr. 08, 2003 at 5:55 PM
It sucks that the number of people invoilved in the anti-war marches have gone to around 3,000 (Jan. 26) to around ?300? (April 3)
I like what you wrote DJ. Thats how I felt, but I couldn't have put it any better! THANK YOU!
Permits?
by John
Friday, Apr. 11, 2003 at 3:17 PM
While permits may cause some less radical folks to come out, I believe that this permit garbage is an infringement by the city of Pittsburgh upon the rights we have as human beings that are recognized by the first amendment - namely the right to free speech and peaceable assembly. Having to go through some ridiculous legal hurdle that is designed to limit speech the authorities don't like revulses me. If we apply for permits, we are sending a message to the city that we will voluntarily give up our rights, and that the city of Pittsburgh has authority to overturn the bill of rights. They do not.
Furthermore, I've been to plenty of permitted and unpermitted events, and I believe that they cops will do whatever they want regardless of whether or not there is a permit - witness unpermitted marches before the war started being subject to very little police harassment versus Edgewood cops macing marchers who were on the sidewalk without provocation.
I AGREE
by Jan
Tuesday, Apr. 15, 2003 at 2:42 AM
I agree with you!! We shouldn't have to get a permit to exercise our freedoms of assembly and speech. It's just an excuse for them and a way to slow down everything. It does prove that the country is not free and that people are bitched down by the system of control.
They control us everywhere--- in school, at work, in the car, on the bus, and even in our own homes.
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