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CounterPunch
February
17, 2003
Live from New York, It's...
Lizard
Brain on Line for the Log Flume
by ADAM ENGEL
Pyrning in a widening gyre, invoking my ire, began
at 42nd street and 3rd and three hours later wound up on 72nd
and 1st, finally. First avenue was our destination all along.
Every few blocks or so the cops would say "just a few more
blocks then you can turn on to first, " etc. until the whole
parade of us - silly authorities: by prohibiting a march they
created one - wound up on 72nd street, where I had the privilege
of listening to Angela Davis speak - on the radio.
"Where is she? Where are the speakers?"
I asked.
"Fifty-first street," said
an angry woman. "Welcome to the new technology of crowd
control."
Magic Mountain at Disneyland. Log Flume
at Great Adventure. Not so new, I thought. I'd waited on many
such lines as a kid. At least this one was free. And unlike the
teenagers working at Disney and Great Adventure, the NYPD representatives
were very polite - unless you misbehaved. Unless you were a naughty
'protester." An unruly child. Then you got what was coming
to you.
Like the couple who tried to push their
baby carriage, complete with baby, across 49th or 50th street.
I forget. Silly me. I was too dumfounded, awestruck, outraged,
mad to the bone, to write all the details in my notepad. True,
it was a stupid thing to do, confronting the thugs with your
baby as a battering ram, but the four sturdy male cops and two
equally buff females could have easily prevented the couple from
going down the "illegal" street by, well, blocking
them from going down the street. Instead, the Sergeant grabbed
the father and tossed him to three alpha-males who pounded the
guy into the pavement while another cop grabbed the baby carriage
and the two female cops tried to restrain the woman who cried,
"Give me my baby! That's my baby!"
A crowd of about a hundred dropped from
the march toward nowhere for a while to bear witness and plead
with these baby-bashing, family-wrecking brutes who live off
our tax money but not in our neighborhoods (dial area code 516
for Long Island, 201 for New Jersey) to do the right thing, the
decent thing, and let the couple and their baby go.
Question: Why did such a large crowd
allow half a dozen ruffians to get away with such an outrage?
Easy. Because the men and women in blue, our 'heroes,' were armed.
You think we stood there like hushed puppies before the attack
dogs because we respected their "authority?" Authority
to do what, beat up a family for trying to do what everyone assumed
we all had the right to do anyway (especially since this was
not a "march" but a "rally" meeting around
50th and first), just cross over from third to first down any
damn street instead of marching thirty blocks with our little
signs and banners? If they were merely rent-a-cops with guns
we would have done the same thing. On the other hand, if they
were "New York's Finest" without guns, we would have
rescued the couple and their baby, grabbed the thugs and brought
them to the, well, the POLICE!
Which brings up an interesting point.
This whole affair seemed to me to be less about citizens asserting
their right of free speech in a democracy than pleading with
a police state to show themselves and their families in public
and listen to some keynote speakers, even if it meant walking
through a maze of police barricades to do so. The only authority
the cops had came from the pistols in their holsters. How else
would half a dozen "officers of the law" on each street
hold back thousands of marchers? And we're not talking crazed
"radical" elements, but students, elderly women, families
and assorted peace-loving others. Never again will I nod my head
in assent when someone brings up that old, "how can only
three guards with machine guns hold back three thousand prisoners
in Auschwitz?" Same way five or six cops with Glock 9mms
on each street kept away thousands of protesters in NYC, Saturday,
February 15, 2003.
"I don't blame people for wanting
to walk their own streets," a man said.
"It's just one long line,"
a cop answered.
"To where?" I asked.
The cop, smirking, shrugged.
Every street from 42nd to 72nd connecting
third to first was closed by 5 or 6 cops with guns. "We
own the streets" all the nice people cried. No you don't,
THEY do, I said, to myself. If you owned the streets, you'd be
on them.
But it was a nice march, a nice family
affair.
Why would anyone bring a kid to a march
unless they were sure that the cops would keep everything safe?
Of course, they could have believed the march would be safe because
this is America the Democracy and NYC the cultural hub of what-have-you.
It was safe because this is America, the most heavily armed Empire
in history, and this is NYC, the most policed city in the Empire.
Maybe I'm alone in the opinion that,
to paraphrase Malcolm X about the march on Washington, "they
wanted all of those people outta town by sundown, and sure enough
all of those people were out of town by sundown." Or maybe
the cerebral subtleties of the protest went right over my lizard
brain. Cause lizard brain was what I was "thinking"
with as I walked past all these armed cops. Fear. Rage. Desire
for - what? Freedom? Power? Revenge? "No blood for oil,"
the placards said. I couldn't agree more. But no blood for freedom?
Impossible.
Silly me. Still under the romantic delusion
I'd been under since I first started marching in these staged
events at 20, thinking of the movements of the 1960s and 1930s,
that protest meant taking the streets, not borrowing them from
THE MAN and agreeing to all terms of the temporary license or
face nullity and void. Saturday I realized, finally, that this
isn't about peace at all, but power. THE MAN has the power to
bomb, humiliate, control. We The People are more or less powerless
to stop him. Occasionally HE throws us a bone or a rally to make
us think we're doing the democratic thing. As long as we're "outta
town by sundown."
The most prevalent figures on the marchers'
placards, besides the ridiculous, odious George Bush, were heroes
of the 1960s: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and John Lennon.
Photos of Malcolm X and MLK, and quotations from Lennon, plus
that "Who Would Jesus Bomb" thing. Now, what did these
men have in common? They got killed for opening their mouths.
True, Lennon, though a great artist/entertainer, was not a religious
figure like Jesus, or a moral/political leader of Malcolm X or
MLK's stature, but he did open his mouth to say "Give Peace
a chance" as well as a bunch of other stuff that got him
on Nixon's shit list, and he did project himself as a rebel against
THE MAN. After all, nobody ever took a shot at Paul or Ringo.
What all of these men had in common was that they meant business,
and people who mean business are never safe.
Angela Davis said something to the effect
that Saturday's march was the greatest outpouring of public protest
since a million people marched to express their displeasure with
America's obscenely huge nuclear arms stash in 1982. A million
people marching up and down with signs and chanting slogans is
an impressive number. More impressive however, is the amount
of time, money, energy and evil cunning that went into improving
and increasing the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next 21 years.
I don't know how many people were at the rally Saturday. A lot.
Thousands, perhaps many, many thousands. I'm sure was it was
empowering for people, which is nice.
But I never felt so powerless and humiliated.
Like every thug from Bush down to officer Buttcheeks of the NYPD
was laughing at me, at us, at the whole show. And they're gonna
have their damn war anyway.
I suppose it's good for people to march
like this so they can let themselves be heard. Express themselves.
But it seems to me like we're in an emergency situation. Something
that calls for more than taking the family out for a day of waving
signs and chanting rhymes ("One two three four, we don't
want your oily war," etc. along with many old 60s standbys),
then back to The Life on Monday.
No matter how many people turned out,
the entire event was merely that, an event, choreographed by
THE MAN to frustrate, exhaust, and humiliate the majority of
participants. Rallies are great to get people out together, show
them that they're not alone, create a sense of spirit and energy,
like the old pep rallies in high school.
But real change is probably going to
mean changing the way we live. And real protest is going to be
dangerous and frightening. Rated 'X' or 'R' at least. Not something
for the kiddies.
Maybe it's just me. I'm not really into
crowds or marching or shouting pre-fab sing-songy slogans. If
I want to express myself I'll write a poem, or a letter to Dear
Abby. I used to go to 'events' like these because I thought they
were necessary, something that had to be done. Maybe they're
not. Unless we, the alleged protesters, mean business. If giving
peace a chance means not killing people who've never done me
any harm, I'm all for it. But if it means knuckling under to
irresponsible, merciless, armed authority, we might want to consider
other chances.
I went to the rally thinking of the horrible
fate of the Iraqi people and wondering if anything could be done
to change it. I came away thinking of the horrible fate of the
American people, and wondering if anything can be done to change
it.
Adam Engel
can be reached at asengel@attglobal.net
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February 15
/ 16, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Colin
Powell and the Great "Intelligence Fraud"
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
The Whole World is Watching
Edward Said
A Monumental Hypocrisy
Wouter Hijink
Report from Amsterdam
"War: Do Not Feed!"
Linda Heard
At Last! Proud to be British
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Taking a Stand on Iraq
Robert Fisk
The Case Against War
Lev Grinberg
Lessons from Israel
A War Without Legitimacy
Chris Floyd
Cold Fronts:
Bush War Profits
Ahmad Faruqui
Stepping Back from the Brink of War
Norman Madarasz
French Kisses from the Citizens of France
Adam Lebowitz
Scott Ritter in Tokyo
Kurt Nimmo
Bring Us the Head of Osama bin Laden
Forrest Hylton
The Revolt in Bolivia
Col. Dan Smith
Irrelevance and Credibility:
Bush, NATO and the UN
Wayne Madsen
The Lies of Tom Lantos
Ranjit Hoskote
The Invisible Modernities of the Islamic World
Emily Zitter-Smith
Who's Safe Now?
An American in Cairo
Rich Procter
Anybody Remember the Powell Doctrine?
Poets Basement:
Eliot
Katz, Scott Handleman, and Bruce Tomczak
Website of the Weekend
Anti-War
Posters
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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