2010.03.15 On the March 20 Demonstration in Washington
In the last few days I have posted several comments on the upcoming (March 20, 2010) demonstration in Washington on OpEdNews.com.
March 13, 2010
March 20 Demonstration in Washington
Why Is this not being more widely promoted?
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I don't understand why the demonstration planned by IndictBushNow is not being more widely promoted. This is a chance to send an unmistakable message to the wimps in Congress and the White House. Heck, you can even meet other people who are not brain dead! Am I missing something? I am allergic to organizations asking for money, but you don't have to donate. Just go. (Unfortunately, I can't because I live in Germany.) Hitting the streets is just about the only thing that can make a difference, and -- so far at least -- it's legal.
I don't understand why IndictBushNow.org is not promoting it more, either. Where is the list of speakers and prominent people attending? There should be hordes. This is something tens of millions of Americans support. Something is wrong here. Please give me a clue if you have one.
There was no comment to this, but on March 13 Margaret Bassett wrote a short piece referring, among other things, to having learned (from her standpoint of 88 years of age) "what impeachment is good for," to which I responded:
Greetings, Margaret
On impeachment and what it's good for, I have to comment, I guess for the third and last time, here on my own Diary below, now demoted from the headlines. Every time I am surprised and disappointed again I wonder how it happens, proving I guess that hope springs eternal. But you (or one of your colleagues) did headline this one and it still got zero response. It truly puzzles me. I am actually wondering if that demo on March 20 has been cancelled and I just haven't heard about it and people are just too polite to tell me. Of course Bush and Co. will not be indicted, just as they would not have been impeached, but what is the effort good for? As I said, I was flabbergasted in 2006 to find myself trying (in vain) to explain this to people like Janice Matthews of 911truth.org and Paul Zarembka. How can it not be obvious to anyone with the slightest notion of what "political process" means in a society which is at least trying to be (or become) democratic? My God. We do what we can. We can -- still, but who knows for how long -- gather in the streets and protest. We can try to get media attention. We can try to impeach. We can try to indict. All of these things are still legal and still (I hope but am seriously beginning to doubt) part of our culture. How can people possibly argue that none of it is "worth trying" because it "won't work," or "even if it worked we'd only get another puppet"? They see no value whatsoever in the political process, in the value of organizing and mobilizing people, of getting them to, as you say, hang together rather than separately.
As I said -- and of course I do not mean you or OpEdNews; you at least headlined my little blurb -- I just don't believe most people feel that way, and I am frankly suspicious of the people who take this defeatist attitude (for that is exactly what it is). And I do not understand why no one has not commented on what I wrote; I really don't. I don't know what to conclude. This is not good. My own disappointment will pass. I can retreat into my cocoon. But it is a very bad sign, I'm afraid. Whether it is really the people who are so destroyed that they have no will to resist, or -- as I suspect is more likely -- it is the result of Big Brother's media manipulation, it is bad in any case.
I won't say another word about it, lest I break into profanity, but I had to have one more go at it. When we celebrate St. Patrick's Day, let us remember that the Irish struggle for freedom is part of the universal struggle of man to overcome, and to become. And sing those rebel songs. They still apply, though now more in Americay than in old Erin.
On March 15 I posted this:
March 15, 2010
Websites NOT promoting the March 20 protest in Washington
Are we really that stupid and demoralized, or is Big Bro at work again?
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As I wrote a few days ago (here and also in my comments here), I am astounded at the failure of "alternative" websites to promote or even mention the March 20 protest in Washington. I hasten to pronounce OpEdNews not guilty, since they have announced it here, and even headlined my note for a day -- to which there was no response from the readership whatever, which again astounds me.
Also not guilty, and in view of the situation I guess I should say heroic (gulp, if that's what things have come to), are the following, according to a quick survey I did yesterday:
ANSWER Coalition with list of endorsers here
US Green Party (Cynthia McKinney et al)
There are others, but this is just a random sampling of the sites I happened to visit. In that random sampling, however, lies my astonishment, because otherwise I rely on sites like these for real news, as opposed to the Crimestop and Doublethink force-fed pablum we get from the mainstream. Here are the pages where I saw NO MENTION of the March 20 protest in Washington at all, in the random order that they happened to occur to me:
antiwar.com
greenparty.org
libertarianparty.com
911truth.org
commondreams.org
truthout.org
salon.com
rawstory.com
MoveOn.org
UnitedforPeace.org
sagaw.org (Service Academy Graduates Against the War)
CodePinkAlert.org
infowars.com
prisonplanet.com
globalresearch.ca
informationclearinghouse.info
wsws.org
At that point, I stopped and sent an email to Kurt Nimmo of infowars.com, asking him why the Alex Jones org (I think he has literally millions of listeners and readers) was not promoting the March 20 demonstration. I said his answer would be seen (at least accessible) to my ca. 2000 Facebook friends, so he knows it would be public. He wrote back: "If you want to write an article about it, we will post. Unfortunately, I am but one person and do not have time to write about every event."
I answered: "If it takes an article from me to get you to promote such an event, it's a lost cause. You don't have time? Do you really expect anyone to believe that?"
Kurt did not respond to that, not surprisingly. I don't mean to pick on him or infowars.com or Alex Jones, or any of the sites above. I admire and respect the work of all of them. I am just trying to register my astonishment, disappointment, and sincere perplexity at their non-interest in this event.
I'm not a neophyte. I've been around awhile (64, therefore well into Old Fartage for most of you probably), been involved in a lot of protests and demonstrations, so it's not so easy to surprise me, and of course I'm not surprised at all by the lack of mass media coverage. But I am not talking about the mass media here. I am talking about US (you and me), the "alternative" media. I just don't get it. Are people -- again I do not mean the sheeple but the people who run, read, and contribute to websites like those above -- just too stupid or too demoralized to realize that this is an opportunity to protest against many things, not just the war, not just indicting Bush, not just health care, not just the economy and the bank bailouts, not just 9/11, not just the Patriot Act, not just the McCain-Lieberman Nazi bill, but virtually everything inflicted on us by the previous administration and being continued by the current one?
I just can't get my head around this. So many smart and well-informed people -- the "alternative" media folk -- and yet somehow they fail to understand the most basic principle of politics, which is mobilizing and organizing people, fail to understand that the most effective way to do this and be heard by the powers-that-be is to hit the streets, and fail to understand or even appreciate the value of this form of protest, public assembly and non-violent mass protest, which for the time being at least is still legal and (I hope but am beginning to doubt) part of our culture?
I can hear readers saying, if not like Kurt Nimmo that they "don't have time," saying all sorts of things, none of which amount to anything more than irrational excuses for whatever the real problem is, and which I honestly do not understand. No reasonably intelligent progressive person is really going to sit back and say it's not worth protesting because it won't do any good anyway, or isn't focused enough, isn't exactly the way I would like it, I'm too worried about the economy, about losing my house, about the stock market, etc.
So I ask again: What's going on here? I have two choices. Either my opinion of the human race, including the "alternative" (by now very large, according to various polls) portion of the population, goes down another big notch, or something more sinister is going on. I don't know what the latter could be, exactly, but the obvious possibility that comes to mind is that Big Brother has got his hands firmly around the balls of "alternatives" as well as the mainstream. So firmly that the result is this: the "alternatives" can write and publish and youtube whatever they like, but when it comes to hitting the streets, NO! Yeah, it's (still) legal, and yeah, it is (or used to be) a time-honored American tradition, yeah it's our constitutional right (and DUTY!), but NO! Talk is ok, but no bodies (live ones, I mean) in the streets. That is just too effective. Too emotional. Too invigorating. Too inspiring. Too unpredictable. That just might actually get Big Brother and the Inner Party to feel some fear themselves rather than just keep dishing it out to us 24/7 -- and this why it is a NO-NO.
Either one of these conclusions would be a sad one. At the moment I see no other alternative.
On March 16 I posted this as a comment to the above:
I first heard about this event in a mailing from IndictBushNow.org, formerly ImpeachBushNow.org, Ramsey Clark's organization. Now I notice that these two orgs, which I thought were organizing the thing, are not even listed on ANSWER's list of endorsers (although Ramsey Clark is).
I had to search to find a mention (among many other events) of March 20 on the United for Peace and Justice site. It is certainly not on the homepage, and this is hardly what I would call promoting it, but much more like not promoting it.
Later the same day (March 16) I posted a second comment:
Letter sent to above websites
I have already reported on my letter to infowars.com. I have just sent the following to the other websites, and will report their response, or (more likely) non-response:
Why are you not promoting the demonstration on Sat. March 20, 2010 on your website?
Please read and respond to the following, preferably as a comment to the article at OpEdNews.com:
Websites NOT promoting the March 20 protest in Washington
I will make public your response, or non-response. People have a right to know why you are not promoting this event.
Michael Morrissey
The recipients are:
rgingras@salon.com
matt@antiwar.com
info@greenparty.org
pr@lp.org
press@911truth.org
editor@commondreams.org
editor@rawstory.com
editor@moveon.org
editor@truthout.org
membergroups@unitedforpeace.org
sagaw@sagaw.org
info@codepinkalert.org
crgeditor@yahoo.com
tom@informationclearinghouse.info
info@wsws.org
info@moveon.org
info@truthout.org