The March 18 protests
Here in the States there were major protests in Los Angeles and San Francisco, significant demonstrations in Seattle and Chicago, as well as hundreds more.
The liberal/progressive blogosphere was conspicuous by its absence, they virtually completely ignored it, an odd stance indeed for blogs that claim to be opposed to the war. Perhaps the thought of getting into the streets rather than continuing to sit behind their keyboards responding to each others posts was too exhausting to contemplate. Of course, if you dig a bit, you'll find many of then aren't that opposed to the war after all, except for how it can be used to hurt Bush. That Iraqis are getting their homes flattened by assault helicopters appears of little consequence. Also, taking a strong antiwar stance might impact their ad revenue, something that mustn't be allowed to happen. Sigh.
The protest in L.A. was about the same size as the one last March (I helped organize both of them.) Numerous reports that the size of the protests were down were made by people who weren't actually in attendance, so one wonders how they 'knew' this. For those of us who were there, these were important protests, and in L.A. we had way more mainstream media than in the past. In fact, mainstream media gave the demos far more coverage than did the liberal blogosphere. Go figure.
One highlight in L.A. was Congresswoman Maxine Waters.
"A reporter was just in my face saying, are you calling the president a liar? Just in case he didn’t hear me, let me repeat it. The President of the United States, George W. Bush, is a liar."
Perhaps one day soon, the US Congress will be filled with people like her.
I happened to find time to
I happened to find time to promote and attend the event, but have so far failed to file a report. Perhaps this is part of the problem.
They do raise a very good point, though... it is often very hard to get bloggers of their arses.
I should add that I'm a
I should add that I'm a blogger too. Over the past several weeks I've realized that while the Net is a useful outreach tool, the bulk of organizing and outreach needs to be done person-to-person, in meetings, forums, tabling, flyering,. etc. That's where the connections really get made.
The two biggest demos in the States on March 18 were in Los Angeles and San Francisco, both primarily organized by the ANSWER Coalition. Here in L.A., we spent 4 months building for March 18, printed and handed out 90,000 flyers, did outreach at dozens of meetings, made at least 1,000 phone calls, etc. We also use the web, but that's not why the protests were sizable, it's the real world work that built them.
I don't see that kind of energy coming out of blogdom. In fact, I'm one of the few antiwar organizers with a blog. Also, Blogs can become self-referential or echo chambers for what other blogs are saying. (Not this blog, I hasten to add - BlairWatch has broken stories and isn't parroting what other blogs say.)
Totally agree that a lot of
Totally agree that a lot of the antiwar marches have been ignored absolutely by the meinstream media and inadquately reported even by the left blogosphere and when the latter did report any of it, the slant was unmistakeably antiBush rather than antiwar and the hidden agenda of this war.
Here in Canada, I have met a lot of murmurings that it didn't do any good in 2003. I can go blue in the face trying to say that its not that 30m+ people around the world achieved nothing in 2003 but that we've taken on a very big fish of corporate crony capitalism that is not going to yield that easily.
Do I see any gains despite the setbacks? Yes, there are some. We have largely cut through the 'wilful ignorance', to use Chomsky's phrase, that allowed the mainstream corporate media to sell the lies to a gullible public. The majority in the USA today does not doubt that the resons given for extending the war to Iraq were false. The majority outside the US never swallowed any of it.
The antiwar movement still has a lot of groundwork to do. It is not as simple as a 'cut and run' as happened with Vietnam. Iraq deserves international aid to reconstruct itself. This is not charity. $23b was mismanaged and literally looted from the Iraqi Treasury and this is not counting other costs.
I do not disagree that the US civic body politic needs to be concerned about the abuses of power that its current administration has so blatantly indulged in. Democracy, however, is not a given. Its preservation requires its citizens to assert and exercise their democratic rights continuously.
We also need to be explicit that democracies the world over exist to serve the aspirations of their citizens rather than further the greed of corporate capitalism and that requires holding elected politicians to account when see our social fabric ripped to shreds to benefit a few.
Antiwar sentiment is
Antiwar sentiment is mainstream now in the US. The disconnect between the people and the rulers continues to widen. The people are moving leftward while the ruling class moves sharply right. People are getting radicalized again.
The ANSWER Coalition is anti-imperialist and we make a point of linking the issues. The same system that ignored the devastation after the hurricanes in New Orleans is the same system that invades based on lies.