A massive plea for peace
NEW YORK, Feb. 15 — On a bitterly cold day, as the temperature began falling a few hours after sunrise, thousands people came to New York City. They were people of every age, religion, ethnicity and color; people in wheelchairs, carrying signs and flags, holding hands or pushing strollers; people in Islamic veils and labor caps and fur coats. There were people carrying puppets and people carrying signs that were angry and signs that were funny. Many were bearing American flags. They came to declare their patriotism and their right to protest a pending war in Iraq at a time in which our president has intimated that to question his goals and methods in pursuit of Saddam Hussein is to flirt with treason.
THERE ARE FEW transcendent moments in public life, those rare occasions when a diverse array of people share a commonality of values, vision and commitment. Today in New York and in cities around the world, such a moment was shared, as millions of people raised their voices against the war and in favor of a more peaceful alternative to strip Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction.
One great irony in today’s demonstration in New York is that all the efforts to discourage people from expressing their opposition to the Bush Administration’s war plan not only failed, but backfired.
Nation of protest
February 15, 2003 — Anti-war protests were held in cities across the nation today. NBC’s Pat Dawson reports.
Federal Judge Barbara S. Jones had ruled — and the U.S. Court of Appeals had upheld — that because of heightened fears of terrorism, demonstrators could not march to the United Nations. Instead, a permit was issued for 10,000 people to gather at some distance from the United Nations and stand in place. City and federal officials had argued that fears of terrorism made a march too risky, no matter the risk to our Constitutional right to freedom of assembly and speech.
RISING ABOVE BULLIES
Yet in the end those who would protest rose above the bullies, and the authorized rally for 10,000 became something far greater: crowd estimates at day’s end varied from 100,000 to 400,000.
Tens of thousands of people attempting to walk east to the United Nations rally were instead herded by New York City police, often with embarrassment and chagrin and sometimes with barricades and rearing horses, to march north. And so we walked north, sometimes chanting, sometimes silent, occasionally singing. The nature of the march, and the moment, was proud, peaceful and inclusive. This was a peace march: there was no violence. Instead, in unison, half a million people, without losing face or the peace, adapted. Would that the Bush administration could do the same.
Such a moment was profoundly needed as the Bush administration continues to bully its allies into a war that few people want. Just when I thought the administration had reached rock-bottom last week, with Secretary of State Colin Powell’s initial presentation to the United Nations, things got worse. Several days later the terrorist alert level was raised to orange; no doubt the administration was hoping that fear of terror would make their poll numbers might go up, too. Yet by the end of the week their war drums seemed to lack their desired effect: administration officials acknowledged that information about an impending terrorist threat was an informant’s “fabrication” — that’s a plain old lie to the rest of us.
NO APPETITE FOR WAR
France, Germany, Russia and China, all members of the United Nations Security Council, and the majority of the member nations, do not support a war with Iraq. According to a recent New York Times poll, 59 percent of Americans feel the weapons inspectors should be given more time to do their work. Yet the President Bush and his advisors, not to mention the pundit class, engage in an orgy of Europe-bashing. It is as if they regard the nations of the world as merely client states, beholden to obey; and the media respond as if beating the drums for an impending war against Iraq is a smart career move.
Today, surrounded by tens of thousands of people I have never seen before and may not again, the drums of war were muffled. I felt protected and affirmed. It was as if people all over finally realized not how differently, but how similarly we see the world. They understand the in spite of the specificity of all the differences, our belief in the power of negotiation and peace - and our right to both — unites us.
Like most of the people who gathered to demonstrate in New York, I never made it to the rally at the United Nations. Instead I moved for four hours in a sea of people 30 blocks long and four avenues deep, streets filled with people as far as the eye could see.
I heard some of the rally’s speakers — among them Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Harry Belafonte — on dozens of radios held aloft by other marchers. But what lingers in my memory is not what was heard, but what was felt, that transcendent moment when the people really believe that united, we will never be defeated. This is a moment we must make last.
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Jill Nelson is a journalist, teacher and author of books. She is a regular contributor to MSNBC.com. |
