Oliver& .while this remains my favorite blog on the internet& let me politely say that you re no Susan B. Anthony.

On thing that those movements (and protests) had in common was that they were single issues and focused on the moral angle of those injustices. When you get a conglomeration of issues not related to the Iraq War (which was supposedly the main reason for the protest?), it is difficult to engender support for large swaths of the American public. If an undecided voter is out there watching the rally and about to change their position to anti-War and then they see the Anarachists in the march or this guy, it is likely that they’ll feel no connection to them and not want to be associated with the movement (ie if this guy is anti-war, I’ll just stay undecided).

Also, in addition to focusing on a single issue at a protest, might I recommend that you leave the drums and the bongos at home? Nothing gets in the way of your chants than drums and bongos. Oh, and as for the chants, make sure they’re easy to repeat. It was hilarious how many times that I saw a speaker at the rally rattle off a 20+ word chant only to be met with mumbles from the crowd.

Regards,
St Wendeler

Well, heck Oliver…I guess you’re right. Those darn women at the turn of the centurty. They annoyed us all because they dared to demand a right to vote.

And those Civil Rights protestors of the 60’s. Petty.

Oliver….while this remains my favorite blog on the internet…let me politely say that you’re no Susan B. Anthony.

Let it be noted, that when I tuned in to CNN/Fox over the past week…they were NOT covering what Oliver Willis said in 1 of 1,000,000 blogs on the internet. They were covering those “ineffectual” protestors marching on D.C.

I was born in 1962. Far too late to be Oliver’s “hippie.” But I protested Nuclear Arms Proliferation in the early 80’s. 10 years later, the Cold War ended.

Don’t let a tiny bit of fame on this far corner of the internet, go to your head, son.

JK

Why don’t you guys get it that a person can: a) work on campaigns, b) hold office and c) go to protests every chance she gets? (oh yeah and read progressive blogs obsessively …)

And why the either/or mindset? I find it far too limiting. My experience has been that when you stand up for what you believe, like I did when my picture was in the paper from the March 2003 protest (back when the idea of war was popular), people only like you more. Even the ones who disagree with you.

I disagree. First of all, it’s hard to understand what you are calling “the early marches” since there have been marches for as long as there has been government in need of correction. Maybe you are talking about the Indians under the British in the 1930’s? As Jawaharlal Nehru explained their rationale for marching, it was because “nothing is more irritating and, in the final analysis, harmful to a government than to have to deal with people who will not bend to its will, whatever the consequences.”

Or maybe you mean the March to the Winter Palace in 1905. When czarist troops fired on the protestors it set off a wave of strikes, eventually paralyzing the government and forcing it to make major concessions.

No, I maintain that the “early marches” were effective simply because they were “early,” i.e. we tend to forget all the flops and failures over time, only the successful ones endure in the history books and popular memory.

What’t interesting to me is this breakdown between the pro and anti-protesting camp. I think it maybe the difference between pundits and peasants. Kos, and Oliver, too, are pundits. They are our pundits of course and we love them, but they are pundits. What this means is that they have some experience of having influence with their voices alone. So for them, this is a reasonable expectation.

But for the rest of us, we are peasants. We have no illusions that we can influence public events with our solitary voices. It’s only when we join together and speak in one voice that we have a chance of being heard.

“We need to have a unified movement to overturn this Bush war machine!! We have to fight for a free Palestine! Let’s fight for Social and Economic equality, not only here in the US, but also around the world! We have to fight to protect leaders like Hugo Chavez from Bush and his CIA henchmen! We have to fight against intolerant, anti-women and anti-gay governments – not only in the Middle East, but also in the White House! Free MUMIA!”

It’s tough to be unified with so many balkanizing issues… Does it make for great theater? Sure… is it effective in persuading others to join you? Not likely…

Um…I was two years old during the Vietnam protests. I’d never gone to a protest before. Neither had my husband, nor my friend who accompanied us. Your superior sniffing that none of us are doing anything besides protesting, and the endless bitching I’ve seen at other sites at how stupid and outdated and smelly all protesters are, is getting really old.

Here’s a newsflash for y’all: the elections system isn’t working. By all means, write to your ‘local’ paper (probably owned by an absentee Republican). Offer some other ‘creative’ solution.

Or go back to the future. If demonstrations and petitions are overthrowing governments from the Ukraine to Bolivia, they ain’t dead yet.

There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t work in the U.S. as well as it does in the rest of the world. Could be more of a problem with the U.S. than it is with the stuff.

Enjoy your youth, Oliver, some day you will realize that 2005 was just another year.

However, as a tool of political influence, they are outmoded. The early marches worked because they were unprecedented. Nowadays, any old group can conjure up 20,000+ people to march on Washington. A well organized interest group can get more than 100,000 with sufficient advanced planning.

There are other means of creating “buzz” in order to advance your cause in the public sphere. The Republican method has been to plant form-letters in newspapers that all start with “As a lifelong Democrat…” and have their talking heads chant the same set of right-wing talking points in unison on pundit shows.

Liberals of all stripes need to find a means of getting their message out to the general public. Petitions and protest marches are passe and don’t create the necessary amount of public attention because they are organized so easily. Other creative solutions to this problem are welcome.

My argument for protesting is that it keeps me sane. I volunteer for campaigns, too. Both are fun, both have their place.

I think ft may be right, this may be an inside/outside thing. Those of us who live our lives outside the beltway have no illusions that parlimentary procedure alone can bring about change. Passion is necessary. It may not be sufficient but it is necessary.

If Mumia’s name HAD been mentioned, however, here’s what most likely would have been the case, because this is what has happened at some rallies I’ve been at in the past. Someone has read a speech that Mumia has written from prison, and guess what, the subject of that speech was Iraq. It so happens that Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of the most eloquent and knowledgeable writers on the left today, as you can find out for yourself by reading his published books or reading his weekly columns in a variety of left publications.

Mumia is also most likely an innocent man, railroaded to a guilty verdict by a racist system (judge: “I’m going to help them fry that nigger”). He also happens to be possibly weeks or months away from execution. When would be an appropriate time to talk about him, exactly? When he’s dead?

Oliver, I dare you to take a look at this picture, which is not carefully selected but rather just one of a grand total of two crowd pictures that I took on Saturday in San Francisco (radical SF, you know, that “left coast” town with all the hippies and radicals) and find more than ONE person who looks old enough to have demonstrated against the war in Vietnam.

konch: if you watched CSPAN you would have seen that the endless onslaught of speakers was booed by those who didn t just leave to start the march.

Horse manure. The crowd wasn’t booing the speakers, they were booing the moderator every time she announced there were still more speakers when they were anxious to start marching. This is quite common, but it has nothing to do with the speakers or what they were saying.

konch: Everyone agrees we need to find a way to break ANSWER s suspicious stranglehold on DC permits.

More horse manure. There is nothing “suspicious”; ANSWER gets permits because THEY APPLY FOR THEM. The Sept. 24 rally was CALLED by ANSWER; only much later did UfPJ first switch the date of an event they were planning to Sept. 24, and then later still join with ANSWER. ANSWER fought very hard for this permit, as they did for a permit to set up a “reviewing stand” during the last inauguration. They apply early and they know what they are doing. AND, I might add, they have a long record of organizing peaceful, legal demonstrations.

One more comment – for anyone who thinks the speeches were boring, or whatever, take a listen (or watch) some of them at today’s Democracy Now!; the fact is there were MANY EXCELLENT speeches at this rally. One I’m particularly recommending is one by Etan Thomas of the Washington Wizards, although I’m sure many out there will be simply aghast because he was talking about the realities of race and poverty in America, and didn’t even mention the word “Iraq.” The horror. Those lefties and their crazy “issues.”