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CounterPunch
February
18, 2003
An Afterward to February 15
Breaking Through
the Panic
by BENJAMIN SHEPARD
As the week before Feb. 15th march progressed,
things only got weirder. The Bush Administration sent attorneys
from the Justice Department to file a friend of the court brief
backing the City of New York's case that the march represented
a security threat. After the Office of Homeland Security put
the country on "orange" full terrorist alert, the New
York Dailey News ran a headline with an ominous black cover
with the words, "SHOW OF FORCE, Officials warn of stepped-up
security will jam city streets, crossings, subways," on
February 10th,. By Tuesday, the New York Times' cover
showed a picture of police officers with automatic riffles in
Times Square (where activists planned to converge during the
march) with the headline, "Alert on Terror." The paper
reported that courts had rejected United for Peace and Justice's
appeal for a permit, arguing, a "Stationary Rally Poses
Less Risk." The same edition published the administration's
guide to preparedness for a chemical attack: duck tape, plastic
sheeting, and fresh water, in a message which seemed reminiscent
of the cold war warnings for school children to hide under their
desks if attacked by an atomic bomb. In the years before, such
warnings had been considered a nonsensical joke. The following
day, papers showed long lines of people stockpiling duck tape,
as hysteria took hold nationwide. In the meantime, FOX news
ran "Homeland Security: Terror Alert High" graphics
during evening programming about the new Bin Laden tape broadcast
around the world; silly putty in his hands.
As the week progressed, news became more
and more Orwellian, "You're not afraid during an a code
orange. Ok, how about a code red? Now are you scared?"
the news programs seemed to taunt after the codes were pushed
up again. "Better not go to the protest." Protestors
at the rally responded to the sentiment. "We're already
at War with Iraq. We've always been at war with Iraq. War is
Peace!" one placard read. Riffing on1984, another stated,
"Support the Military Tribunals. If you've done nothing
wrong, you have nothing to fear." Countless others played
on the duck tape warnings. It was clear that in the interstices
between the warmongering, a backlash was unfolding. The Saturday
march offered its culmination. By Saturday, the administration
was acknowledging that the information they had about the immenent
attack was not quite as solid as first thought and was back peddling
that it didn't really wanted people to start ducking tape their
homes, just yet.
The day of the rally, the City of New
York had withheld permits, cut off the UFPJ's phones, escalated
terror alerts to discourage marchers, and shut down trains and
transportation routs from Brooklyn to Manhattan and throughout
the city--all contributing to a climate of panic. Despite the
state imposed barriers, activists from all walks of life descended
on city. The day of the march, the police sent horses to break
up the marches, sought to separate crowds from each other, pushed
marchers off sidewalks with batons, and tear gassed those in
the streets. My father, a 66-year-old retired pastor, who was
in town over the weekend observed, "We started out at 51st
St, then 57th, then 62nd, and then 68th up 2nd Avenue. At 68th
Street, we realized we were being pushed out of town. Every time
we'd try to turn down to go to the rally, the police would push
us up away from the rally. It was perfectly clear that was what
they were trying to do. It was crowded like a VE day. They
brought out batons to push us and we chanted, 'Let us through!!!
Let us through!!!' Every time it would calm down, the police
would try with to stop us, yet most of us broke through anyway.
I was just a citizen trying to gather with other citizens to
have a conversation with the President. I was trying to communicate
how I felt about this. I'm a citizen. I pay for this war.
My friends are going to go get shot for it. I'd like to have
a say so. I don't want to have my head patted or told what to
think, being told my opinion doesn't count. Being told to pay
attention to people who know what they are doing like Kenny Boy
and Dick Cheney, the important people. We're going to war. Bush
says, Trust me. I've got a memory long enough to remember the
last time a president said, trust me, I have a secret plan.
Nixon's secret plan to get us out of Vietnam was to invade Cambodia.
All Saturday, it was quite clear they were running the marchers
out of the streets, like a defense used to run Tony Dorsett out
of bounds. They were running people away from the rally."
By the end of the day, this 66-year-old retired pastor had engaged
in direct action, working with a crowd to push up through a police
line to get past police to get to the rally. And he was not
alone.
Over a half a million marched through
the streets of New York, in coordination with protests held around
the world; 700,000 mobilized in London, one million in Rome.
All weekend long, the protests were the top news story. Many
described the day as the largest day of simultaneous peaceful
protest in world history. Two days later, the New York Times
cover story compared the weekend's mobilization with the Velvet
Revolution of 1989 and the Revolutions of 1848. "The fracturing
of the Western alliance over Iraq and the huge antiwar demonstrations
around the world this weekend are reminders that there may still
be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world
public opinion. In his campaign to disarm Iraq, by war if necessary,
President Bush appears to be eyeball to eyeball with a tenacious
new adversary: millions of people who flooded the streets of
New York and dozens of other world cities..."
Chills run through my body as I think
about the possibility that the weekend created. Seattle is no
longer the baseline for protest. Out of the ashes of an extraordinary
backlash, we have created a new organizational possibility for
a global peace and justice movement.
Benjamin Shepard
is co-editor of From
ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the
Era of Globalization (Verso, 2002) and author of White
Nights and Ascending Shadows: An Oral History of the San Francisco
AIDS Epidemic (Cassell, 1997). He can be reached at benshepard@mindspring.com.
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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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