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Five Reasons Why I'll March on Jan. 27 (and You Should Too)

Saif Rahman | January 18, 2007

Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco, IPS

Foreign Policy In Focus

www.fpif.org

A few times a year, thousands of people break out their tied-dyed t-shirts, collect all of their peace buttons, make snarky yet provocative posters, and hop on a bus to what has become a political and social ritual: the protest.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Not being silent has in fact become a staple of the American people’s diet, and one can see that with the consistent anti-war activities that have been organized over the past four years.

On January 27, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is holding a massive protest against the Iraq War in Washington. We (I’m a member of the coalition’s steering committee) will once again not be silent. Buses and vans are coming from at least 30 states and 111 cities packed with people who will bestow a historic welcome to the new Congress that we just helped elect and aim to change the trajectory of this war.

Since even before the war started, UFPJ and its more than 1,400 member groups have organized countless events, both nationally and locally, demonstrations large and small, have educated millions of people, and helped to mobilize and make visual the citizenry that is actively opposing this war. The coalition has led and expanded the peace movement and provided a steady, consistent anti-war message, which has been the major force behind the swaying of public opinion from supporting this administration’s decisions in the wake of 9/11, to the realization that this war was and still is illegal and immoral.

In the wake up 9/11, the president had the highest job approval rating since Franklin D. Roosevelt, at 90%. Today, the Presidents approval rating stands at lowly 34%. The public’s approval on the Iraq War has virtually flipped from the beginning days of the war when 71% of the country approved of Bush’s war, to now 70% disapproving of it. Public sentiment is a powerful thing and the drastic change can be attributed to the constant message of the peace movement – that this war is illegal, immoral, and destroying our country and the world.

Now that the majority of the country shares our opinion, The Jan. 27 peace march will trumpet UFPJ’s unwavering message once again of “Bring All the Troops Home Now” to the streets of Washington, and we are going to make the new Congress listen.

Why March?

Most wars have two things in common: a few people make the decision to go to war and the majority of the people suffer from those decisions. There has been this divide in this country for too long, and we need to consistently fight it. Young American soldiers are the ones who have to fight the war and die. Veterans are the ones who have to come back from war and be abandoned by their governments. Military families are the ones who day in and day out have to worry about whether their loved ones will come back. Young people are the ones who can’t go to college because money for student loans has gone to pay for the war. The people of the Gulf Coast are the ones who see everyday first handedly what it looks like when their own government invests more into immoral wars than rebuilding our communities.

That is just in the United States. The Iraqis are suffering on a massive scale. An estimated 600,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since the March 2003 invasion and many people across that country have no clean water or electricity. This madness has to stop.

Even if you, like most Americans, oppose this war, why march? Why protest? Why hold up signs in the middle of winter and walk around in a big circle? And how is that going to end the war?

Plenty of critics of mass peace movement mobilizations say that this practice is outdated and stale. Essentially, they are asking, “Why bother?”

Sure, it’s hard to see sometimes how a public demonstration helps to achieve any political goal. But for me, a protest is not only one of the various means that activists can use to achieve a political end. It’s also is something deeply and sincerely personal.

Here are the reasons, both political and personal, that I will be marching with thousands of others on January 27th. I hope you are convinced that you should be there too…

1) Build on political momentum: The political moment is now. After the remarkable election last November, in which people overwhelming voted for a change in Iraq and therefore a change in Congress, we as the peace movement need to build on that momentum. Although public sentiment completely disagrees with President George W. Bush and agrees with UFPJ on ending this war, the commander-in-chief intends to send more troops into Iraq. Voting and public opinion are evidently not sufficient to change Bush’s course. We have been right all along, not the Administration or the 108th and 109th Congress. We have helped to change the overall sentiment about the war in this country. We have a new Congress, which will only do something about the war if people from across this nation come to their doorstep, knock loudly and demand they end the occupation and bring the all the troops home now.

2) Strengthen Community: It is a truly amazing sight to see thousands of people, from every corner of this country, demonstrate for peace and justice. The endorsers of this march include everyone from the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition to Grandmothers for Peace, from religious organizations like Pax Christi to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, political organizations such as the Progressive Democrats of America and MoveOn.org. This is, with certainty, a community of people fighting for the same thing. People save up money, take days off from work, organize buses from their towns and when they get here, they sleep on couches and floors, all for a cause bigger than their individual selves- for peace. We do it to build a community that consistently comes together to resist those who send ordinary young people to war. It is extremely important that this community of dissenters remains constantly visible, not only to the rest of this country--but also to the rest of the world.

3) Learn from People: My father always told me the best way to learn is from other people. Whenever I go to a demonstration I meet some of the most intelligent and altruistic people I have ever met. Literature is distributed with information that you can’t read in newspapers, events are planned that you can’t attend elsewhere, and bright people, eager to engage in conversation, are in abundance. From the 22-year-old Iraq veteran, to the mother who tragically lost her daughter in the war and Iraqi-Americans against this war, from the first-time protester, to veterans of the Vietnam War era protests--it’s a privilege to hear those perspectives with one’s own ears. A collective grouping such as this is bound to have valuable information and ideas exchanged that will further propel this movement.

4) Be Part of History: Thirty-nine years ago Dr. Martin Luther King led a group of protestors in Chicago against the Vietnam War. Seventy-six years ago, Gandhi led the Salt Satyagraha where he and his followers marched to Dandi to protest the unjust taxation of salt by the British Empire. And 87 years ago Helen Keller protested by marching with actors for labor rights. It is because of that tradition that I love to march, knowing that I am part of something much bigger than myself. The consistency of photographs of people expressing themselves in the streets is vitally important to have in our history books. When people look back at January 2007, they should remember the march on Washington as the defining moment of our time, just as Dr. King’s, Gandhi’s, and Helen Keller’s marches did during their time.

5) Have Fun: Lastly, and most importantly--it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It is almost like being a rebellious kid again. You get to yell and scream, hold up signs and banners, bang on random objects--all aimed at people in power. At the same time you have opportunities to learn, meeting interesting people, be part of history, all while playing a part in the movement for peace.

Effectiveness

I believe when people question the effectiveness of these marches, they do have a point. It’s hard to measure the impact of demonstrations. Immediate policy outcomes aren’t the only factor. How do you measure how much thousands of people might have learned? How do you measure bonds being built and communities strengthened? How do you know how history would have unfolded if people did not consistently organize and mobilize against injustices?

Ending a war is no easy task. If one were to size it down to a simple plan, the peace movement has completed the first few steps: 1) We have helped drastically shift public opinion against the Iraq War; 2) We have helped fundamentally change the composition of Congress, which as Senators George McGovern and Mark Hatfield proved with the Vietnam War, has the power to end this quagmire.

All we have left to do is make this new Congress end this war…now.

How is this demonstration going to help accomplish this last step?

Iraq Veterans Against the War member Geoff Millard (who served in the Army for more than eight years, and spent 13 months in Iraq) I believe answered that question best at a United for Peace and Justice organizing meeting for the demonstration,

“When members of Congress say that cutting funds for this war and immediate withdrawal is ‘off the table’ – they are dead wrong. They don’t set the table. We set the damn plates down. We set the damn forks down. And we tell them what is for f’ing dinner. And if thousands of people come to their door, sit down at the table, and tell them that--they will listen.”

It is because of people such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Geoff Millard that I am helping to mobilize this demonstration, and why thousands of us will march in Washington. It is because of them, and your need not to be silent, that I think you should march on January 27th too.

Saif Rahman is the Movements Coordinator for Institute for Policy Studies and Youth and Activism Editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is on the Steering Committee for United for Peace and Justice.

For More Information

To find out more information on the March on Washington on January 27, visit United for Peace and Justice.

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Recommended citation:
Saif Rahman, "Five Reasons Why I'll March on Jan. 27 (and You Should Too)," (Silver City, NM and Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, January 18, 2007).

Web location:
http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/3915

Production Information:
Author(s): Saif Rahman
Editor(s): Emily Schwartz Greco, IPS
Production: Saif Rahman, IPS

Latest Comments & Conversation Area
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Name:

ivan, quixotic1.com

Date: Jan 18, 2007

Since the pre-war demonstrations, I have been to relatively few marches (though to be fair, there have been few demonstrations to attend). This is pretty significant considering I was active nearly full-time prior to the start of the war and was a part of several national anti-war organizations. Moreover, I am not the only person who has had such an experience. I appreciate the points you make, and I will probably go to this demonstration. However, I think there are few important things you need to consider:

1. Has the anti-war movement changed the opinion of the country?

I find little evidence to suggest that it has. This isn't to downplay our effectiveness -- the Feb. 15, 2003 marches were the largest demonstration for anything in the history of the planet, and may well have delayed the war (allowing a lucky few in Iraq to escape). Yet as soon as the war began, demonstrations quickly dwindled and support for the war shot up.

The primary reasons I think support for the war has dropped is because a) it has gone on for so long, and cost so much in lives and funding; and b) all of the reasons for going to war have been thoroughly discredited. The first is largely inevitable -- public support drops for most wars over time. The second reason was supported by the anti-war movement (in particular organizations like After Downing Street) but by and large disconnected from the demonstrations themselves.

The anti-war movement may have begun the conversation about disbelieving and discrediting the reasons for war, but the reason the public doubts the efficacy of invading Iraq is not because of public demonstrations, it's because of articles in The New York Times. Again, in some cases the anti-war movement helped spur those articles to be written, but not through demonstrations. I don't believe public sentiment has turned against the war due to public demonstrations, either before or during the war.

2. Are public demonstrations the most viable way to promote change -- to end the war?

You hearken back to demonstrations from the 1930s, '40s and '50s. But the world, and the United States' role in it, has fundamentally changed since then. I'm not sure that large public demonstrations are effecting much change any longer. The March for Women's Lives turned out nearly one million supporters for a woman's right to choose, yet two anti-choice Supreme Court nominees were approved with relative ease. Hundreds of thousands took part in gay rights marches in 1993 and 2000, yet public sentiment stayed relatively strongly against equal rights and same sex marriage -- until marriage bans began being passed, to which there seems to have been a public backlash (national support for the bans dropped more than 10 points in two years, and failed for the first time this year in Arizona).

It's not clear to me that national marches are actually effective in directing policy. The analogy is often made to LBJ and Nixon, who publicly disavowed the anti-Vietnam War marches but were privately shaken by them. But the comparison is inapt, as the current war is quite different from Vietnam. There's no draft, meaning that many families -- especially those with more economic power -- remain unaffected. There are far fewer protests, and those that occur are far smaller. There were dozens of marches in Washington against Vietnam that drew hundreds of thousands of people; by my count there have been four or five to date -- and most of them occurred before the war. There are no comparable events to Kent State or the Chicago Democratic National Convention -- moments when the oppression of the war was brought into high relief. Largely, I believe, this is because of the state's generally successful maneuvering post-Seattle, that relegates large rallies to the sidelines, out of the press and in "free speech zones." There has frankly been very little push-back from the anti-war movement on this issue -- we seem to be content marching down side streets, away from government buildings or fragile Central Park grass.

Finally, there are no allied civil rights movements pushing for racial, economic or personal equality as those that developed in the 1960s. Opposition to the war seems to have become a private affair, manifesting itself, at best, only at the voting booth -- rendering large protests somewhat adrift.

3. What kind of community are we trying to build?

You are right to identify community-building as one important aspect of large demonstrations. At times -- the 2004 Republican National Convention comes to mind -- large demonstrations have served to re-connect activists in important ways. But marches in Washington DC are notoriously disconnected from the local community, and I see no evidence that this demonstration will be any different. In the past there have been some efforts to "reach out" to community activists around issues of economic development, racial justice and electoral representation. But this is precisely the wrong approach -- the march organizers need to be accountable to the local community, not the other way around.

After the Hurricane Katrina disaster, radical and anarchist organizers like Common Ground built an incredible mutual aid system in New Orleans. They were largely abandoned by the mainstream liberal organizations and anti-war movement, which seemed to prefer to stick it to Bush and other Republicans, and bide their time waiting until the next November. In a historical moment in which the possibilities of radical community organizing were dramatically realized, most in the anti-war movement were caught looking the other way, trying to score cheap political points rather than making the connections between the war at home and the wars abroad.

4. Do we have a long-term solution?

In 1967, Martin Luther King, whom you quote from, said the following in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech:

"There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy."

UfPJ and allied groups, which seemed early on to have strong connections to the global justice movement, seems to have been transformed -- in the hopes of attracting more "mainstream" participants -- into not an anti-war organization, but an anti-Iraq War organization; not a pro-peace movement, but a pro-better-war-policy movement. Few connections are made to "the soul of America," as King would describe it, and much attention is focused on those things that are at best cogs in the system -- individual policies on the war, planning or lack thereof for the war, and particular Republicans in Congress and the White House. The problems go considerably beyond Bush and Republicans.

Now, personally I believe there is a place for a mainstream, liberal-reform organizations, and perhaps UfPJ can fill that role. If we move some conservative folks into a liberal-reform mindset, and we move some liberal-reform folks into a radical justice mindset, we can create the space for social change.

But because of the changes in US society I noted in #2, I don't believe that public demonstrations have the potential to attract many mainstream folks anymore. That's simply not how they connect their anti-war beliefs with effecting social change. Simultaneously, because UfPJ has moderated its message, it has lost the support (or at least the enthusiasm) of the committed social justice activists, who see much greater potential for social change in approaches like Common Ground. So UfPJ is caught in a bind -- its best supporters abandoned, its ideal supporters uninterested.

Given that, I think UfPJ could still accomplish a lot. If it wants to stay a mainstream organization, it could focus on local organizing -- an approach that, as the Feb. 15, 2003 demonstrations and the subsequent MoveOn national vigil showed, has the potential for both widespread coverage and deep popular support. Folks are more likely to demonstrate in their home town than after a bus ride to DC, and ultimately it's those communities that we want to try to reconnect. US society is so atomized, so disconnected, that we really need to start at the local level. A coordinated campaign of demonstrations could help to build that.

Alternatively, UfPJ could return to its original principles and attempt to effect some radical social change. By this point in the Vietnam War, there were large numbers of people engaging in civil disobedience, including leaders like Martin Luther King. And that cost them a lot of "mainstream" support -- Time magazine called King's speech at Riverside Church "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and The Washington Post said King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people." If UfPJ truly wants to follow in the footsteps of King, it may have to risk some of its "legitimacy."

Or, there could be other options. Massive creative nonviolent demonstrations -- departing from the model of marches and rallies. A national boycott. Flooding congressional switchboards with calls, not just on one day but day after day. Picketing recruiting centers. War tax resistance. Yes Men-like media events.

There are a lot of options, and I hope people involved in UfPJ will really take the time to consider them rather than simply planning yet another march and rally every few months. But to begin with, I think we need to take a hard look at these questions listed above and figure out where we are and where we want to go.

Name:	AA	Date: Jan 20, 2007
Saif, I think you need to listen to the Iraqis inside Iraq who don't agree with the main ground of this demo. I am an Iraqi, by the way. Dying to go back to Iraq. But, I don't think US troops should be out of Iraq now. WRONG, Simply.

Name:	jan	Date: Jan 22, 2007
Jan 28th, We the People are going to Meet the Press http://alaskafreepress.com/msgboard/board/375

Name:	Kevin	Date: Jan 27, 2007
Osama bin Laden, The Grand Mufti, and Irans Ahmadinejad love what you people are doing. How does it feel to be part of a movment that is helping to bring down freedom. I hope you people Like living under Sharia Law. Because if you have your way it will mean the end of freedom and democracy world wide.

Name:	Tickle	Date: Jan 31, 2007
I hate to sound like an emotionless warhawk but... WE CANT leave Iraq right now. It sickens me- seeing the amount of support this war originally had. Regardless if we were betrayed in terms of intelligence 70% supported it despite the opinion of the UN and others. Now when blood hits the fan we decide securing the lives of millions of Iraqis ISNT such a great idea? We cant play with peoples lives like this. We dont have the right. We cant leave untill peace and stability.

Name:	Tantor	Date: Feb 02, 2007
The March on Washington was FABULOUS! I wrote it all up with pix here: http://conprotantor.blogspot.com/2007/01/ufpj-march-on-washington-jan-27-2007.html Enjoy! Tantor

Name:	Laura	Date: Feb 04, 2007
War supporters mistake the taste of boot leather for freedom. Don't they know George Bush has torture chambers around the world, that at this moment are torturing and murdering many innocent suspects? Haven't they noticed that we no longer have habeas corpus? They are delusional and lying to themselves, and they are marching us straight into fascist tyranny--and calling it freedom. Soldiers coming back from Iraq are telling stories of how the U.S. now deliberately targets Iraqi civilians and journalists. One soldier recounted in "The Ground Truth" how his CO asked him, upon his return to base, "How did it go today." "It was a bad day, sir. We killed a lot of civilians." "No, it was a good day," the CO replied. Another told of how they hung a suspect by his hands for three days until they turned gangrenous and had to be amputated. He was released two weeks later. Opps. They made a mistake--wrong guy. The atrocities against civilians pile up daily. In a couple years, the guns will be aimed at us. No one is accountable for ruining lives. We are creating more enemies than we can kill. And these Republican fools call it fighting for freedom, while they give our freedom away. Our freedom is gone, folks. The Bush administration took it from us while we were playing with our play stations. And marching around inside a cage and shouting at each other in the social safety valve that our government calls a "free speech zone," is not freedom. Congress wasn't there, the streets were blocked from traffic, and the windows were all empty. Jan. 27 was not much of a demonstration because we were talking only to ourselves.

Name:

arn

Date: Feb 11, 2007

For all the pro-war people out there, I have good news. The outfit that organized and led this antiwar protest (United for Peace and Justice) has a political agenda that you would probably approve of. Though it may spout a lot of progressive or even leftist-sounding rhetoric, the underlying agenda of United for Peace and Justice is to coopt and steer antiwar sentiment into safe, domesticated political channels ... namely, into the stifling embrace of the *other* war party, the Democrats. So, if you were concerned that United for Peace and Justice represents some kind of radical, revolutionary Leftist challenge to America (you know, like actually confronting the American system that by necessity requires wars in the first place), you got nothing to worry about. This disingenous agenda of UFPJ is prolly why Foreign Policy in Focus promoted this organization and protest to begin with, and why the pro-war Washington Post gave this protest prominent news coverage even though this rag has ignored equally large--but more radical--antiwar protests in the past.

"Organizers channel antiwar protest behind Democrats" http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/01/353136.shtml?discuss

"Regulated Resistance: Pt. 2 - The Gatekeepers of the So-Called Left" http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/05/316865.shtml

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