March 16, 2007
Anti-War March Madness
Instead of donning green and drinking whiskey in the afternoon, many folks in Washington will be spending Saturday speaking out against the war in Iraq. A march on the Pentagon is expected to draw tens of thousands of people, including veterans and soldiers' families. You may have already seen some of the protesters along Constitution Ave. erecting memorials to the fallen and preparing signs.
The event's primary sponser, ANSWER, says the protest marks not only the start of the Iraq war four years ago, but also the 40th anniversary of the anti-war march which brought demonstrators and military police into direct confrontation at the Pentagon. While playing down the melee that ensued, a spokesman told the Post, "The 1967 march wasn't the biggest, but in some ways it's the most historically significant because of the target. It represented a shift in public opinion."
Whether or not their message has an impact at the Pentagon and Oval Office, one thing is certain: the event will cause a whole host of street closures on Saturday afternon. Marchers will gather at 23rd and Constitution Ave beginning at 8 a.m. and then head towards the Pentagon at 12:30 p.m. At noon, Constitution Ave. between 17th and 23rd Sts. closes. Then, rolling street closures will take place along the protest route, which stretches along the Memorial Bridge and Washington Blvd., ending with a rally at the Pentagon's north parking lot.
Photo by Flickr user Dolinator.
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Traffic is already a mess around the White House. Damn hippies.
"Marchers will gather at 23th..."
Don't you mean "23rd"?
Don't these hippes have livers? Put down your signs and drink some green beer!
The WH mess is hardly the "hippies"... its the President, who had a scheduled departure for Camp David at about the time of that original complaining post. They often block off the vicinity for the approach/departure of marine one or a motorcade, depending on whatever reflexive "threat level" they're at.
>The WH mess is hardly the "hippies"... its the President, who had a scheduled departure for Camp David at about the time of that original complaining post. They often block off the vicinity for the approach/departure of marine one or a motorcade, depending on whatever reflexive "threat level" they're at.
No, some hippie tried to climb the fence.
Great, now the streets will smell not only of booze-filled vomit but of hippies!
Give it up, hippies, no one cares what you think. Also, having a communist group (ANSWER) organize your protest is LAME.
It's sad that by marching under the ANSWER banner, the anti-war folks make their cause seem less and less reasonable.
Why is there an ANSWER-alternative?
Woops, why is there NO answer-alternative?
"The 1967 march wasn't the biggest, but in some ways it's the most historically significant ..."
Because, of course, the MPD and Arlington Police failed to hit Norman Mailer squarely in the head with a truncheon, and he went on to gas about the fact for a couple hundred pages.
One hopes this march is not so eventful.
Ugh. Those of us against the war need a far better representative organization than ANSWER to front this protest.
The one and only ANSWER-sponsored rally I've been to somehow degenerated into a protest against Israel shouting pro-Palestinian-Intifada slogans. I remember saying "did I miss something?" We're protesting against the war in Iraq, not the Israeli occupation.
It seems that there are way too many protesters with ADD out there. Remember radical protesters... take your meds!
I walked by the "tent city" they have set up on 3rd St on the Mall and saw a ton of anti-Israel/pro Palestine signs and even one banner calling for the removal of the US occupation of...Haiti.
They really need a lesson in "staying on message."
The first email I got about this protest was that it was a "Free Iraq/Palestine/Haiti" march.
I think lots of people who might have otherwise gone think that that is the message of the organizers. Big turnoff.
ANSWER is a disgusting organization. They sponsored some big protes in NYC at the Republican convention when I was living there, and half the protesters I saw had anti-Semitic Tshirts and signs, etc. I actually almost beat the shit out of this one guy for spouting some garbage about how Israel should be eliminated, blah blah blah.
Why is it that the left gets sucked into supporting any anti-Western group, now matter how fascistic, murderous, or genocidal? It's like how it was cool in the 80s and 90s to support the IRA murdering children in shopping malls because they were against the "British occupation forces." It's always the same excuse for terrorism and murder, just as long as the violence is committed by the "oppressed group" du jour.
Oh, and for those who don't already know, I'm a raging leftie.
Anti Isreal does not equal Anti-Sematic. One's a State and one's an ethnic group.
Answer sucks cause' they're a hierachichal stone-age marxist group. Pointing out the continuity of US Imperialism in places other then Iraq is what makes sense. Seeing the invastion and occupation of Iraq as an isolated incident betrays an ignorance of American history.
I'd guess most marchers are just there to (re)protest the Iraq War. They probably don't know or even really care much who or what ANSWER is.
Which is just fine, because Bush et al are likely just as clueless to their presence and protest as the marchers are to ANSWER's.
No, colleen, the people I met in NY were justifying suicide bombings against civilians because, since they view Israel as an illegitimate state, then all the PEOPLE in it are illegitimate too. That's disgusting and beyond the pale.
People like this are an embarrassment to those of us who oppose the war, and they make me question whether the left actually deserves to hold any levers of power at all.
In the overall scheme of things, it pales in comparison with people actually dying in Iraq, but I do wish ANSWER would stop filling DC parks with their stupid posters. They paste them onto every available surface in parks on the Hill. Then they just leave them, so six months later Park Service finally gets around to scraping them off. I know they want to get their message out, but their sloppy and inconsiderate way of doing it pisses a lot of locals off.
I went to the march with my video cam and amongst other things got alot of footage of and with counter protesters. I am also chiming in on getting rid of ANSWER. It's recycled 60's Carnival and all over the place dissent. The counter-protesters main sacred cow is the Soldiery and Patriotism as Holy Christian Mission --and ANSWER as repository of commies and "Moonbats"-I heard that word so much, so funny. Afterward I went to the lecture on Blackwater Security and the privatization of war. I think THAT'S what the movement has to focus on. They have got to destroy the illusion of Iraq as a "civilizing mission" and present it as " lawless mercenary operation". They have got to give and SHOW the facts of that if you are going to undo Middle America's conception of all of this as a Holy Crusade and soldiers as the victims of our profane ingratitude. But they have got to show it with focus and dare I say it --ADULT commitment and prosecution. Visit www.sourcewatch.org
there are very good reasons to be opposed to the war, and to many of Israel's actions. Unfortunately Lefty protesters tend to get carried away and forget that effective political action is all about delivering a clear message, rather than getting yer ya-yas out.
Protesting is not about delivering a clear message. It's about people with nothing better to do standing on their self-serving soapbox and pretending that shouting into thin air is a replacement for actual debate. For a mass gathering to be effective, it needs to have a SINGLE, clear message, and actually propose a singular, understandable policy shift. Anti-war protesters are indistinguishable from conflict to conflict and forego any nuance of differentiation, and thus they will be perpetually ignored as irrelevant to the current debate.
It's been my observation that a large percentage of liberal protesters are simply anti-government or anti-corporation -- and it doesn't matter what the issue is or if they thought it through to any logical conclusion. I'm not by any means a fan of this particular war, but that above observation precludes me from ever joining a left-wing protest for anything.
Also, ever been to a right-wing protest? Those things are usually boring compared to their counterparts on the liberal side.
Iraq isn't really a war as much as it is a campaign. Our objective is to occupy and command a strategic territory. Very few people in the US are directly involved in it. It's more a battle of symbolism and semantics for protester and counter-protester. It's as much a part of the spectacle field as college basketball and HBO movies.
"Also, ever been to a right-wing protest? Those things are usually boring compared to their counterparts on the liberal side."
I'd hardly call Rush or Ann boring. Revolting and despicible, certainly, but not boring. Unless, of course, it's your 1000th time hearing the term "moonbat". I guess that would be boring.