I had planned to post a rambling personal narrative today, describing in minute detail my particular experiences in Saturday’s anti-war demonstrations. But when I sat down to it, the idea seemed a bit too self-indulgent, even by blog standards. Here’s the long and short of it: On a rain-drenched day that never climbed out of the mid-40s, an estimated 500-650 Knoxvillians lined the city’s busiest street, stretching in a line of protest across the front face of its largest shopping center. There was a handful of long-hairs and radical-looking college kids in attendance, but most — maybe as much as 95% of the crowd — looked as though they had carpooled to the event in minivans. Hardly a ragtag cabal of jobless anti-Americans, as some would characterize the peace movement. It was pretty beautiful.
One anecdote: During the two-hour protest, only four or five passersby felt compelled to hurl profanity at us, with maybe three times that many making their voice be heard by way of creative hand gestures. At one point, though, a nicely dressed man in a luxury car came to a complete stop, rolled down his windows, pointed to the group of Muslim women standing beside me, and yelled for them to “just go home.” I was stunned and began muttering under my breath, “I can’t believe that happened. I can’t believe that just happened.” Apparently I was saying it pretty loudly, because the woman beside me — a beautiful older woman wearing a head scarf and a “Human Shield” sign — grabbed my elbow, looked up at me, and said, “It’s okay. This is our country, too.” I can’t get her face out of my head — so kind and welcoming, well-worn and somewhat resigned. That’s the memory that will stick.
It was such a treat to go home that afternoon and end temporarily my cable news boycott. On every channel I saw footage of global dissent. As many as 30 million people gathered throughout the world’s cities, small and large, from Alaska to Antarctica to India and all points in between. Pretty cool.
Some notes from around the globe:
“What astonished everyone who marched on Saturday – let’s settle on a million, shall we? – was the apparently limitless variety of those with whom they shared the roads of central London. Not just a diversity of banner-bearing interest groups but of individuality, brought into focus by the single underlying feeling that gave this day its resonance.”
— Richard Williams“On streets of beauty, the warm people inched along or stood and chanted and laughed against a war and for peace and their warmth made the winter temperature irrelevant.”
— Jimmy Breslin“This is not an America we recognize. When we recited the pledge of allegiance in our long-ago scout meetings, it was to a different America, one with different principles. It was an America that lived by the rule of law. An America that was a land of compassion and brotherly love. An America that took seriously a promise to be a good neighbor, both across the street and around the globe. Sure, some of it was myth but we believed in the heart of the story. Others envied our good fortune to be born in America, and we nodded with recognition of that truth.”
— Nancy Capaccio“The whole world is against this war. Only one person wants it,” declared South African teenager Bilqees Gamieldien as she joined a Cape Town antiwar demonstration on a weekend when it did indeed seem that the whole world was dissenting from George W. Bush’s push for war with Iraq.
— John Nichols“But on Saturday, Feb. 15, I emerged from the largest demonstration I’ve ever attended in Dallas with more hope than ever before that our situation will improve. It wasn’t just that 5,000 or so people from one of the most right-wing regions of the world, the former home of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the fictional J.R. Ewing and many others who represent cold-hearted, selfish economic and political policies, had braved the wind and cold and threats and everything else to make a statement to Bush Inc. that a ‘blood for oil personal revenge world domination military boost’ war against economic sanctions – wracked Iraq was unacceptable.”
— Jackson Thoreau