The Other Protest

I figure there were about 1/4 as many people at the MacAlester protest. As I arrived, they were marching west down Grand Avenue toward the MacAlester quadrangle. The march was led by a loudspeaker truck at the front of a group of a couple hundred Peace Youth. A doughy fella with a very grating voice was leading the Peace Youth in the usual chants - some of them very ornate, of the type that bespeaks lots of prep time. They filed into the Quad to sit and listen to scads of folk musicians who looked as if they'd been transplanted from the '60s - and at least one speaker who actually had been, Jerry Rachleff from MacAlester College.

I wish I'd had either a digital camera or a notepad with me.

• I've observed for the last few weeks that this movement is more about Bush than the war. Looking at the signs in the march, I'd say I was pretty close to the truth.
• Worst sign of the day (with many honorable mentions): "An Imposed Democracy is Dictatorship". Hmm. Please someone tell the Germans, Japanese and Italians.
• Open note to the group of "Native American" Dancers; please do try to learn to dance less like whitebread college kids. It's culturally unbecoming.
• Again, nobody took of their clothes, or defecated. On the other hand, when I got back to my car (on residential Lincoln Avenue), someone had spat on the back seat window, above my little trove of "Liberate Iraq" signs. Classy.
• I was standing in front of Dunn Brothers Coffee when a group of pro-liberation protesters marched by at the tail end of the parade. I heard one Mac student say to the other "they deserve to get beaten up!". Peace, indeed.
• One protester - a college kid who seemed to need Vitamin D - carried a placard with a picture of Paul Wellstone, with a one-word caption: "Accident?"
• Wellstone was very much in evidence at the rally; old green Wellstone campaign posters were all over the place. There was also a table where a woman handed out sheets of photocopied paper with various Wellstone sayings on them. "They're Free!" she told passersby. The backdrop for the table, and one of the handouts, read:

  Paul Wellstone:
  "May your strength give us strength,
  may your faith give us faith,
  may your hope give us hope,
  may your love give us love"
  Bruce Springsteen, "Into The Fire".

  I stood there for a moment, dumfounded, trying to figure what, if anything, to say to the woman; the song (a very important one to me lately) is an elegy to the NYC firemen who died in the World Trade Center. I opened my mouth, but the words just didn't come out.

I'd welcome your observations from either rally.

Posted by Mitch at March 22, 2003 05:17 PM