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April 22, 2002
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
April 20, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Drowning in a Sea of Apathy
Kristen
Schurr
Leaving
Nablus
Bernard Weiner
Israel and the Intifada
for Dummies
Jean-Guy
Allard
A
Coup Signed by Otto Reich
Chris Floyd
The "Grandeur" That Was Rome:
A Letter from the Front
April 19, 2002
Eric Flint
Free
the Books!
David Krieger
A Peace Proposal:
Bring in the Children
Jeff Paterson
Advice
to Recruits from
a Gulf War Vet
Jeffrey St. Clair
From Sen. "Lunkhead" to
Bush Energy Czar: A Year in the Life of Spencer Abraham
April 18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Latin
America's Dilemma:
The Propaganda of Otto Reich
Sam Bahour
Bush is Playing Russian
Roulette with Palestinians
M. Shahid
Alam
A
Colonizing Project
Built on Lies
Alexander Cockburn
Austin Cultural Limits:
Willie Nelson, Film and BBQ
April 17, 2002
Norman
Finkelstein
Behind
the Carnage in Palestine
Kristen Schurr
With the Wounded
and the Homeless in Nablus
Norman
Madarasz
Undoing
Chavez:
The View from South America
Brian Wood
Combing The Ruins of Jenin
George
Monbiot
Chemical
Coup: The CIA's Attempt to Undermine the UN's Weapon Inspector
for Iraq
Robert Fisk
Fear and Learning in America
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
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by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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April 22, 2002
A20 in Washington,
DC
Bringing
the Message to the Beast's Belly
By Ronald Jacobs
This was a demonstration I had to attend. The
madmen running the world were in a severe state of psychosis
and threatening to take us all down with them. I'd made plans
to be on one of the buses going to DC a few weeks ago. Then
Ariel Sharon unleashed his military assault on the people in
the Occupied Territories, killing civilians left and right, trashing
their homes, schools, churches, marketplaces and anything else
that his "moral" army felt like trashing in the name
of colonial expansion. I knew I had to go and there was nothing
short of a catastrophic illness that would prevent me. So I hopped
on the bus the night of April 19th.
Speaking of the Israeli invasion of Palestine.
Rumors of dissension in the organizers' ranks of one of the primary
organizations putting this protest together over Israel's actions
had filtered up to us in the northern lands. Supposedly, there
were those in the A20Stop the War coalition who didn't want to
condemn Israel's death and destruction, considering this violation
of every human right justified. If this was true, it meant that
once again the Zionist apologists in the peace movement were
attempting to convince the rest of us that any war Israel fought
was not to be considered a war. How this dynamic works I have
never been certain. What's good for the USA goose is also good
for the Israeli gander if you ask me. Wars of expansion are wars
of expansion. Israel is the US bulldog in the Middle East, no
matter what we are told about it being the other way around.
Israel is immorally occupying territories with US funds and support
in violation of international law. If the situation were reversed,
one could be damn certain that the US would be calling for war
against the Palestinian invaders. To use Washington's reasoning,
Israel's occupation of Palestine is as illegal as Iraq's 1990
occupation of Kuwait. Yet, of course, US bombers are not bombing
Tel Aviv.
On Friday the 19th of April, I showed
up at the meeting place we had been given by the Burlington AntiWar
Coalition. Dozens of other folks were there, as were two chartered
buses and several vans. Young and old and representing a variety
of concerns ranging from peace to opposition to capitalist globalization,
we talked amongst ourselves until the drivers were ready. Then
we boarded our vehicles and headed into the Vermont night. Our
bus stopped at three more Vermont towns to pick up another three
dozen protestors before we hit the open highway. All in all,
close to two hundred Vermonters traveled in this set of arranged
rides. Probably another hundred or so went down in their own
vehicles or on other forms of transport.
After a ten hour ride that went smoothly
except for a bit of a slowdown around New York City due to road
work taking place on the George Washington Bridge, we disembarked
at the New Carrolton Metro stop-a mere six stops from the Federal
Triangle-a point almost in the center of where the four feeder
rallies were to occur. Once out of the metro, I bought a coffee
or two and headed over to the Ellipse with Will Miller and few
other compatriots. This was where the largest of the scheduled
opening rallies was to be held. It was sponsored by the ANSWER
coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism)-a loose- knit
coalition of antiwar, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and Palestinian
support organizations organized under the auspices of the International
Action Center.
The other three rallies were organized
somewhat along these lines: A20Stop the War-a coalition of peace
and youth groups originally called by the Youth and Student Mobilization
for Peace and Justice, the Mobilization for Global Justice-an
adhoc conglomeration of groups opposed to capitalist globalization
featuring many of the folks and groups involved in every anti-
capitalist rally from Seattle on, and the Palestine Solidarity
Coalition- exactly what it sounds like, this rally was organized
by groups in support of the liberation of Palestine from the
Zionist government of Israel. Somewhat secular in nature, it
espoused many of the same demands as those put forth at the ANSWER
rally.
Anyhow, our group arrived at the ANSWER
rally on the Ellipse and made plans to meet back up later. I
headed off to make my rounds of the literature tables that were
springing up on the edge of the growing crowd. When I first arrived
I estimated approximately 3000 people had preceded me. As I wandered
around, more and more protestors streamed into the sunny green
just south of the White House. Some carried signs opposing the
war on Afghanistan and Colombia. Other signs called for an end
to the detention of the those rounded up in the wake of 911 and
in Camp Xray in Cuba. Still others had buttons spoofing the idiocy
of GW Bush and the Puritan fascism of John Ashcroft. The dominant
symbol of the day, however, were the Palestinian flags, stickers,
and t-shirts that simply said Free Palestine. It was becoming
obvious that this day was going to be one of those times when
the events in the world superseded any plans the organizers may
have had-the demand for a liberated Palestine was going to be
the order of the day. The blatant disregard for the humanity
of the Palestinians by Israel's army in the past weeks had finally
been enough. People in the United States were going to address
this issue and bring it home that the occupation and its terror
would no longer be ignored.
The people just kept coming. Muslim families
with the women in full burqa from Islamic centers and mosques
around the country, young Arab and Arab- American men and women
dressed in the current style of American teenagers with the red,
black, green and white Palestinian flag tied around their neck
like a cape, African-Americans wearing the red, black and green
of Africa on their shirt and a small Palestinian flag stuck in
their headgear, Asian-Americans, Latinos, members of Jewish congregations
carrying signs opposing the occupation, and lots of white folk.
They just kept streaming in, occasionally breaking out in chants,
with the most popular being Free, Free Palestine and End the
Occupation, Now! Occasionally one heard Allah Akbar-God is Great,
or a modified version of one of the standard antiwar chants.
The sound came and went like waves in the steamy heat. I think
I can accurately state that I have never been at an antiwar rally
in this country where there were so many shades of skin tone
and cultures represented.
The speeches began around 11 AM and,
after a few of them, I decided to go check out the other rallies.
This wasn't because I didn't want to hear at least some of the
speakers, especially Pakistani writer and activist Tariq Ali,
but because I had vowed to attend as many of the feeder rallies
as possible. So I headed over to the Sylvan Theatre near the
Washington Monument, which is where the rally sponsored by the
A20 Stop the War Coalition was going on. As I ambled over in
that direction I noticed a stage with perhaps 500 people gathered
around it. This was the so-called Patriot's rally. It was sponsored
by a right-wing group calling itself the Free Republic and, from
what I could hear, spent most of its time labeling the antiwar/anti-capitalist
protestors "parasites" and quoting George Washington
and Tom Paine in a context that gave new and most likely unintended
meaning to these men's words. Interestingly enough, as I had
moved out of hearing distance of the ANSWER rally, I heard George
Washington being quoted there, too. The ANSWER speaker was referring
to Washington's warnings against the potential for tyranny by
government. At day's end, the only thing one could honestly say
about this so- called Patriot's rally was that it had the best
sound system and the smallest crowd.
Walking past the lines of tourists waiting
to get into the Washington Monument and the new concrete barriers
all around the structure, I began to hear a reggae beat emanating
from the A20 Stop the War Coalition stage. Upon reaching the
rally site, I was struck immediately by two things-the smell
of burning sage and the difference in the rally's makeup. There
was a much higher percentage of young people, which stood to
make sense since one the original members of the coalition was
a nationwide youth and student organization founded in the wake
of 911 and devoted to opposing war and terrorism. In addition,
there were many older pacifists in the crowd, at the tables around
the edges and on the stage. This was a more traditional US peace
rally-mostly white-skinned, mostly younger, and mostly middle-class.
Nothing wrong with that, for sure, but a remarkable contrast
to the gathering a few hundred meters away. I wandered the crowd
of 20,000 or so looking for familiar faces and listening to the
music for another 30 minutes. Then I headed towards the Palestine
Solidarity Rally. This rally was about a mile further on near
Dupont Circle, which is in the Georgetown District of DC. Unfortunately
I never made it to the rally, for, as I was heading that way,
I saw a march leaving from the rally site and headed towards
the A20 Stop the War rally. Apparently, these two groups were
to meet up there and then converge with the ANSWER rally on Pennsylvania
Avenue. Assuming that since I had missed one feeder rally already
and that I would probably miss the other one called by the anti-capitalist
demonstrators who were in town to protest the war and the IMF/World
Bank spring meetings occurring that weekend, I headed back to
the ANSWER rally, hoping to catch the last few speakers.
When I got back to this rally it had
more than doubled in size. There were easily 50,000 people in
the Ellipse and more were still streaming in. As buses from all
over the country parked and their passengers disembarked, the
crowd grew larger and louder. It was pretty much impossible to
hear the speakers. Too bad we couldn't have ripped off the sound
system from the right- winger's rally across the way. From my
vantage point near the southeast corner of the Ellipse, I could
see both the ANSWER and the A20 Stop the War rallies. As I listened
to clerics from Islamic, Jewish and Christian churches, temples
and mosques express solidarity and support for Palestine and
offer a prayer to the God of Abraham, I watched marchers from
the anti-capitalist and Palestinian solidarity march converge
with the participants of the A20 Stop the War rally. As these
folks begin to line up in 14th street, the clerics held their
joined hands together in a jubilant celebration of humanity's
possibilities. Then, we began to line up on 14th Street ourselves.
By the time all the marches had converged near the corner of
14th and Pennsylvania, the march itself stood forty abreast and
several city blocks long. The chants of Free Palestine! End the
Occupation! and with calls for an end to the terrorism of the
US "war on terrorism" and money for social services
and rebuilding instead of war were heard throughout Washington,
DC. Each corner where the march turned was guarded by police
two rows deep, some on horses and some on motorcycles-all of
them in full riot gear, yet with their visors back and many with
smiles on their faces. It was loud, it was large and it was amazing.
I had not been at a demonstration this spirited and large since
one I attended in 1974 demanding Richard Nixon's impeachment.
I stood on a small hill for ten minutes
watching the parade. I never saw the beginning or the end of
it while on that perch. I figured there were easily 75,000 to
100,000 participants. There were probably more, since the mainstream
media and park police put in estimates of 70,000 and they are
notorious for underestimating crowds of this nature. Either way,
the events of this day marked a turning point in the history
of the Palestinian and American peoples. Never again will the
Palestinians wonder if they have friends in the United States.
This march and others like it around the country have proven
to them that they do. Furthermore, the tremendous diversity
of philosophies- political and religious-amongst the people who
participated (and those that were there in spirit) showed the
world that Washington's war on the world is not popular here
either. As a young friend and organizer summed it up on the bus
back to Vermont: "This was an awesome beginning to what
can be an awesome movement for freedom and justice." I say,
"Let's roll."
Ronald Jacobs
can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
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