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If I never go to another A.N.S.W.E.R. anti war rally it’ll be too fucking soon. Yesterday thousands of us gathered in San Francisco for a march and rally against the war. I was under the impression we were there to protest against the war in Iraq, but apparently I was wrong. According to the people addressing the crowd, we were really there to protest against the war taking place against the oppressed people of the Phillipines. We were also marching in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Union Local #2 in their contract dispute. We were there for the victims of Katrina, to support a living wage, to free Mumia, increase funding for our schools, protest deforestation, speak out against racism and homophobia and take a firm stand against the genocide of Native Americans. In what’s become the ethos of Wartime America, even in our anti-war rallies you can’t tell there’s a war going on.
And like every protest I’ve been to since El Salvador, every speaker sounded exactly the same: the same shrill, strident diatribes, the same spicerack of grievances and calls to action with no ideas whatsoever as to what those actions might be. And rhetoric designed to stir the souls of each and every neo-marxist post-doctoral Maoist intellectual in the crowd. At some point somebody in the anti-war movement is gonna have to bring up the obvious: using opposition to the war in Iraq as a way of promoting The Glorious People’s Socialist Revolution ain’t gonna end the war, and it sure ain’t gonna spark a revolution… at least not until they come up with better speakers.
I don’t know if sticking signs on the freeways is going to end the war either, but at least they say what I want them to.