[Dialogue] Al-Ahram Weekly September 29, 2005

Mon Oct 3 00:02:57 EDT 2005

Bringing it home

Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in the US capital on Saturday,
demanding a prompt withdrawal from Iraq, reports Paul Wulfsberg from
Washington 

Demonstrators from across the country came to Washington on Saturday,
rallying against the war in Iraq, with organisers placing the turnout at
around 300,000, well above their target of 100,000. The demonstration was
the first of its kind since the two-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion in
March.

Students, ageing activists, church groups and parents with young children
filled much of downtown Washington, carrying signs ranging from the
patriotic "Bring them home now" and "Hurricane relief, not war" to the
profane "Capitalism hates coloured people and the working class".

Though 24 September was chosen for the protest since the World Bank and IMF
are convening in downtown Washington this weekend, and over 1,000 protesters
did picket outside that meeting, the main part of the demonstration was more
narrowly focussed on the war in Iraq than previous protests. Nonetheless, a
minority of demonstrators did champion a wide variety of leftist issues,
such as ending "colonial occupation in Palestine and Haiti" and "the threats
against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and North Korea", while many protesters called
for Bush to resign.

Two umbrella coalitions, each encompassing hundreds of political groups
around the country, organised the march. United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ)
has been trying to "make the opposition to the war as broad as possible,
which is why we picked a simple message", in the words of spokesman William
Dobbs. The more radical Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) has a
dual message of ending US intervention in foreign countries and eliminating
racism at home.

According to two polls conducted in mid- September by the Associated Press
and CNN/ USA Today, President Bush's approval ratings have slipped to an
all-time low of 40 per cent. Polls taken over the course of his presidency
show the high ratings typical for a new president slowly fading away to just
above 50 per cent, then jumping to 90 per cent after 11 September 2001 and
the invasion of Afghanistan. His ratings then began another slow decline to
drop to under 60 per cent, receiving a 10 to 15 percentage point boost by
the "rally round the flag" effect with the invasion of Iraq.

Public perceptions of insufficient preparations and a lax government rescue
effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which left more than 1,000 people
dead in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, have also hurt Bush's ratings.
Eager to avoid a repeat of the Katrina PR fiasco, Bush flew to Colorado
Springs, roughly 1,400 kilometres from the Texas coast, to monitor Tropical
Storm Rita.

Curtis Mohamed, a New Orleans labour union leader speaking at this weekend's
Washington rally, and others linked the war on Iraq with the sluggish
government response to Hurricane Katrina, calling for the government to "end
the war against black people and poor people". Among the most popular signs
and t- shirts at the demonstration was one that read: "Make levees, not
war".

Anti-war veterans were also prominent in the march. Harvey Tharp, who served
in Iraq for six months as an adviser on reconstruction projects, was
searching for his contingent of fellow Iraq veterans in the huge crowd. "I
was never in favour of the war, but I always thought it wasn't my place to
question when I was ordered to go there." After being transferred to
military intelligence, "from trying to help Iraqis, to helping to kill
them," Tharp resigned from the Navy.

Though both ANSWER and UFPJ are calling for a withdrawal from Iraq, Tharp
pointed out that this is impossible in the short term, saying for logistical
reasons a pullout would take six months. Conservative anti-protest groups
jumped on the demand for an immediate withdrawal regardless of the
consequences within Iraq as a weak point of the protest's logic. Nick, a
young anti-protest advocate who had flown from California for the event, was
holding up a sign reading "Pulling out now = Iraqi civil war." "I was
hesitant for our country to go into war, but now I just think we can't
leave. Iraq's in chaos and it'll just spiral into more chaos," he explained.

Both ANSWER media coordinator Caneisha Mills and Dobbs dismissed this
scenario in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. "It couldn't get any worse.
The colonial occupation is senseless and the major cause of violence," said
Dobbs.

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier slain in Iraq whose protest
outside President Bush's Texas ranch for three weeks in August drew
nationwide media attention given that Bush declined to meet her, was among
the speakers addressing the swelling crowd near the Washington Monument.
"We're not going home until every last one of our troops is home." Anas
Shallal, founder of Iraqi- Americans for Peaceful Alternatives, told the
crowd, "we're telling the administration we're tired of their lies and to
end the war."

The Reverend Jesse Jackson, who made a bid for the Democratic presidential
nomination in 1984 and 1988, exhorted the crowd, "in the quest for peace, I
know it's dark, but the morning cometh; don't let them break our spirit."

DC-area locals to the area seemed to be a minority at the demonstration, as
participants came by bus, car, train and plane from across the rest of the
country, with heavy traffic on the highway from New York due to convoys of
protesters travelling for the day. Smaller rallies were held in Los Angeles,
San Francisco and Seattle on the West Coast, as well as in London, Paris and
Rome.

Nicosi, a young woman from Washington, was marching with a delegation from
the Progressive Labor Party and had more ambitious goals. "I would like the
end of the capitalist system altogether, because the profit motive is what's
causing all the problems that we have today -- the war in Iraq, what
happened on the Gulf Coast."

The protest remained largely peaceful, with both the police and organisers
eager to avoid a repeat of the 1999 clashes in Seattle. A group of some 370
young anarchists, clad in black and wearing bandanas to protect them against
tear gas, who claimed to be unconnected with any formal organisation,
diverged from the set route for the protest briefly as police watched.
Traffic on I Street was forced back as the anarchists, marching behind a
banner saying, "Fight the rich, not their wars," advanced forward.

Handfuls of right-wing hecklers were scattered along the demonstration's
route, with a confrontation breaking out between the anarchists and four
bible-waving counter- protesters, with the latter yelling: "you're all going
to hell." An anarchist shoved one of the counter-protesters to the ground
before others from the anarchist group were able to re- establish an order
of sorts and move their group on.

About 310 conservative demonstrators were massed in front of the FBI
building, separated from the anti-war demonstrators by a barrier and a heavy
police presence. A number of shouting matches broke out between the two
groups, with the conservatives labelling the anti-war demonstrators "cowards
and traitors", and each side claiming that the other was aiding Osama Bin
Laden through its misguided policies.

Jeff Jatras, a lone 48-year-old mortgage banker waving an American flag and
engaging the anti-war demonstrators in shouting matches, agreed to talk to
the Weekly after establishing that it was not related to Al-Jazeera. "At
least we're fighting the battle over there, and not here in America... [The
demonstrators] are putting our soldiers in danger by protesting against what
the president's trying to do, which is trying to make peace by setting up a
democracy... These people don't appreciate that the Iraqis are so much more
free and better off than they were before."

Peace,

Harry

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