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Recent Stories
March 24, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil:
the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint Them
Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest
for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz--Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier
Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become
an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and
Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats,
Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from
Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The Erosion
of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush:
A Draft Resolution
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March
25, 2003
Bearing Witness
to a Monstrous Wrong
Why Protest?
Why Write?
By BRUCE JACKSON
Most
email I get is from readers suggesting links they think might be of
interest or people submitting articles or ideas for articles. A few
are from morons saying things like "If you don't like this country
go back where you came from!" If I didn't think it might encourage
them to correspond further, I would ask what, exactly, would be accomplished
by my moving from Buffalo back to Brooklyn?
A few have told
me that if I'm not willing to fight for my country I should stop demeaning
patriots who are. I don't know that I've ever demeaned a patriot willing
to fight for his country, but I am convinced that standing up for the
Bill of Rights and the other principles upon which this country was
founded—in a demonstration, a letter or petition to an elected
official, or by writing something that might bring light to the apparently
benighted—is as patriotic as strapping on a weapon or a bunch
of things that blow up and going where they tell you. Anyway, I did
that when, as a kid, I spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps. I
never got shot at, a piece of good fortune for which I remain enormously
grateful to this day.
Lately, the political
website I edit, Buffalo Report,
has published many articles and links to articles on other sites about
George Bush’s war in Iraq and John Ashcroft’s war on civil
rights. I’ve also run several pieces about Buffalo’s Common
Council—mostly on the way the seven white members managed to disempower
the six black members and how eight Council members turned an anti-war
resolution into a request for funding from the federal government. Council
staff members told me that most of the votes against the peace resolution
were cast because the councilmembers were afraid of being labeled peaceniks
in the next election.
How can you not
write about foolishness like that? So I did. And that brought more mail.
I respond to just
about everything that comes in except, as I said, people I don't want
ever to hear from again who write things that do not invoke ordinary
epistolary politeness.
Ordinarily, I don’t
show any of this correspondence to anybody else because everybody who
edits or writes for a political publication gets similar mail, only
with different nouns.
But then there was
this March 22 email from a Buffalo resident who asked what I thought
were two very good questions.
He wrote:
Mr. Jackson,
Two things:
1. Everyone in this
beautiful country has a voice and a choice. I don't agree with you most
of the time but I respect your point of view. What are you attempting
to accomplish with all of these anti-war protests? What is your goal?
2. Since you dislike
so many of the "gutless" Common Council members, why don't
you run for a seat?
Thank you very much.
I responded:
Dear Mr. _________:
Two good questions.
The first I can
only begin to answer; the second I can answer completely.
I can't speak for
everyone else, but I hope to accomplish two things when I take part
in an anti-war protest. One is to indicate to people who might not have
given the matter any or much thought that there are many of us who disagree
with the policy and path our government has taken and seems likely to
continue to take. With the Vietnam war, we who opposed it were at first
a minority and in time we became the majority and Nixon left the war—with
almost exactly the terms he'd been offered his first day in the White
House. As a result of the great public opposition that developed to
the Vietnam war, our government has been far more cautious about involving
itself in long-term land wars between two parties in distant countries.
So the protest had an educational effect.
Equally important
is bearing witness, the simple fact of standing with others and saying,
"We think this is wrong." Even if no one listens, it is important
to name a wrong when you see it.
As for running for
Common Council, I have no temperament for elective politics and I would
be bad at it. When someone does something really stupid or immoral or
unethical I have a difficult time standing by in silence, and a lot
of politics seems to be doing exactly that. I wouldn't attempt to repair
the dents in my car either, but I see nothing wrong in saying that the
shop that did it performed well or badly and I feel I'm qualified to
say to other people "They do good work" or "They do shoddy
work."
We all do what we
can do. I'm a schoolteacher and a writer. So that's what I do. Furthermore,
I think those Common Council jobs should go to young men and women so
people who do well in them can have the opportunity to move up to more
responsible positions, just as Byron Brown [a councilman who moved up
to state senator and who stands a good chance of becoming Buffalo’s
first black mayor] recently did. At 66, I'm far too old to play in that
arena, but I see no reason I can't yell from the sidelines, or even
coach.
Bruce Jackson
is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American
Culture at University of Buffalo. He edits Buffalo
Report.
His email address
is bjackson@buffalo.edu
Yesterday's Features
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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