Today, I was in front of the White House with the Voices for Creative Nonviolence folks. A group had come from Minnesota to join us and to engage in a civil resistance action in front of the White House. The group had come well-prepared for the action. They brought decorated shoes and t-shirts. I was given one of the shirts. On the back, it said “Minnesotans for Peace.” On the front were red handprints. They looked like bloody handprints. They could have been Lady MacBeth’s handprints. She had lots of blood on her hands.
We also have lots of blood on our hands as a result of the actions of the U.S. government.
I can no longer keep track of all of the wars that the United States has fought since the end of World War II. I’ve never understood the point of all of those wars, probably because no one has given me an explanation that I can accept. I’ve heard:
- We have to protect our way of life.
- We are protecting our freedom.
- They have weapons of mass destruction and will attack us.
- They want to kill us so we’d better kill them first.
The first one doesn’t make any sense whatsoever because I don’t know what this way of life is supposed to be. We have homeless people but I don’t think that we’re fighting to protect the right of homeless people to live on the street. We have millions of people who don’t have health insurance but I don’t think that we’re fighting to protect the right of people to go to emergency rooms because they can’t find a doctor who will provide them with preventive health care. We have inadequate mass transit in much of the country but I don’t think that we’re fighting to protect the right of people to sit in traffic jams and not go anywhere because there are too many cars with one person in them. We have people who graduate from high school unable to read but I don’t think that we’re fighting to preserve illiteracy.
I could go on and on but I think that you get the idea.
All right, I’ll go on to the second one. This one really annoys the heck out of me. We are fighting in (enemy country du jour) to protect our freedom. I am not sure of which freedom needs to be protected with remote control bombing (drone attack), depleted uranium, and other weapons. Oh, wait. Isn’t depleted uranium a weapon of mass destruction (see excuse number three for attacking the enemy du jour)? Never mind. I’ll get to that later. At any rate, this is the one that seems to be the juiciest propaganda of all of the excuses. I actually hear this nonsense in the mainstream media. This is what passes for news reporting: (Someone far too young) made the ultimate sacrifice in (name the foreign country) to protect our freedom. All too often, that can be translated to (Someone far too young) was killed when the truck that he was riding in came into contact with an roadside bomb. That someone far too young probably joined the military because he was promised money to attend college after he left the service. Or perhaps he was an illegal immigrant and he was promised citizenship, instead of deportation.
That has nothing to do with my freedom. My freedom is not protected by guns and bombs; it is protected by the U.S. Constitution. And it is not threatened by some foreign power. It is threatened by my own government. I am told where I can stand or sit when I want to criticize the government’s policies. Most of those places (“free speech zones”) are places where the governmental officials who need to change policies never frequent. How can I petition governmental officials for a redress of grievances if the governmental officials can’t see me? So I break a few rules. I have no desire to protest just for the satisfaction of having protested. If I wanted to protest for my benefit alone, I could make a picket sign and march around my house, all by myself. But that’s not what I want. I want governmental officials to know that I am waiting for the change I can believe in. I am waiting for an end to war and to torture and to secret CIA prisons.
I speak out and I write my viewpoints, as I am doing now, and I don’t give the military permission to kill in the name of my “freedom.” I’ll protect my own freedom, thank you.
How about the third excuse: They have weapons of mass destruction and will attack us. Has anyone noticed that we have more weapons of mass destruction than any of our “enemies”? We have nuclear weapons and depleted uranium and who knows what other types of weapons of mass destruction. We could kill every man, woman, and child on the earth several times over. We have so much weaponry that I can remember thinking, as a little girl, I will not live to be an adult. We will have a nuclear war and everything will be taken away by a huge mushroom cloud of death.
Of course, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were fictitious so we don’t hear that one any more about Iraq.
Ahh, but Iran has a nuclear program.
Darn! We can’t put out the fires fast enough. Of course, when you’re trying to put out fire with fire, you might get a few flames.
So. The last excuse that I can think of. We’ve got to kill them before they kill us. That seems to be applied to “terrorists.” Terrorists are people who target civilian populations. I could mention the drone attacks that killed civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan, except that it was “us” that did that act of terrorism. Ooops. Did I just call the U.S. government a terrorist?
Never mind.
So, back to the original topic. The protest against the war that’s supposed to protect our freedom to do something or not do something but I don’t know what. Yes, we wore shirts with bloody handprints. We symbolically threw shoes at the occupation. Then we sang and marched around in circles on the sidewalk in front of the White House. People started lying down for the die in. They lay on the cold hard cement to represent the war dead, both military and civilian. But that was a problem for the police. They have deemed that an illegal protest. We can protest in that “picture postcard zone” all we want, as long as we keep moving. We just can’t have any stationary protests. The government is probably trying to ensure that we get our exercise when we protest. Um. Maybe. If we stand still or lie down, we get arrested for having a stationary protest. I guess that it’s not freedom of speech or assembly that we’re fighting these wars to protect because I’ve been arrested twelve times for trying to exercise these rights where someone can see me, not in a “free speech zone” for the benefit of other protesters or for no one at all.
As I was marching, I noticed that the cops had started putting crime scene tape up. Uh oh. Was I going to be arrested by accident. The cops then gave a warning and I skedaddled. Fast. Apparently, that was the cops’ second warning. They give three warnings before they start telling us that we’re in violation of some ordinance prohibiting free speech and that we are about to be arrested for unlawfully exercising our first amendment rights, which apparently are only symbolic and not real but seem to be worthy of sending our young men and women to be killed.
Once I got to the non-arrest side of the yellow crime scene tape, I resumed singing but not marching in circles. I waved to the White House but doubt that President Obama was looking out the window. He’s too busy increasing the defense budget and sending more troops to Afghanistan. I wish that he wouldn’t do that. Would he listen to me? I’d like to think that he would. He used to be a community organizer. Well, now he is the community organizer in chief and I am part of his community so I’d appreciate having a minute with him to express my concerns.
But, instead of talking to the president, I talked to police. I noticed this one cop was a member of the uniformed secret service. He had the word secret printed really big on his shoulder patch. The word secret was also printed really big on the police car. I had to ask so I did. If I can’t ask the president about the war, at least, I could get some of my questions answered. And one of them was if the word secret is printed all over the place and the secret service police officer is in uniform, how is it a secret? The officer just started giggling. Another police officer laughed when I told him that I had been arrested three times in front of the White House.
These exchanges make me happy and give me home. The experience is never a protester vs. police sort of thing. I have never once protested against police. They don’t set policy. They are put there to keep me separated from the people who do set policy.
It’s the government that creates the us vs. them policy, who tells us that we have to kill the “enemy” so that “the enemy” doesn’t kill us.
I was thinking about all of this outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, in front of the White House. I was thinking about the oil that we lust after and all of the other natural resources that we lust after. Of course, we don’t fight wars for oil. Do we?
We sang “courage brother, you do not walk alone, we will walk with you and sing your spirit home…” and then we sang “courage sister, you do not walk alone, we will walk with you and sing your spirit home” to the thirteen folks participating in the die in as they were tied up with plastic handcuffs and taken to be patted down before being put in the police wagon.
At this moment, the group of them is in Washington, D.C.’s Central Cell Block. It is a holding facility… two to a little cage… um, cell… the walls are metal, the bed is metal, the toilet and sink are metal… the only food and beverages that are offered are one bologna sandwich and one plastic cheese sandwich (both with mayonnaise) and bug juice. No water. Just bug juice. It’s very hot. You feel like a rotisserie chicken when you’re in there. Yes, I was in there last week for a different protest. I’ll write about that protest later. Central Cell Block is an experience that’s not exactly on the official Washington, D.C., tour. It’s not so terrible. We survive.
But those wars are a different story. Many people don’t survive.
Maybe, if we protest enough, we’ll get the attention of someone in government and we can tell that someone that too many people are being killed for… um… I don’t know. People I know keep telling me to stop protesting, that no one will listen to my criticisms.
I don’t think that I can do that. I can’t stop protesting because no one is listening but I could stop protesting because someone is listening and is implementing changes. That’s all I want: to be heard, to feel as if I really do live in the democracy that the media keeps claiming I live in.
I’ve learned a lot lately. I’ve learned about the mystery of the secret service not being very secret and I’ve learned about pretending to be on a great adventure in a submarine when you’re spending the night in Central Cell Block because it really does look like a submarine but I still can’t figure out why we are having these wars and letting our talented young people and the talented people of Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan get killed for nothing at all. I don’t understand that and I don’t accept that.
So that’s it for today. My musings about the not-so-secret service and war and lies and free speech that isn’t all that free after all…
