I wasn't marching with a single communist- unless you're going to count nuns as communists. If you count nuns as communists, then there were several. I'm sure there were some real communists there, but I didn't meet them. I did meet the lesbians for peace, and the fiddler's for peace, and the middle class for peace, and several middle class families.
Does it matter to me that some of the people in the peace parades are communists? Nope. There were 200 to 250 thousand people there. Most of them non-communists. All those people just want to give peace every chance. They don't believe Saddam is a danger to anyone at the moment. They don't believe he is going to use WMD's against anyone. They DO believe there are other leaders and problems facing us that are more dangerous than Iraq, and they are worried that we are focusing on Saddam, while we are distracted from other huge problems.
I understand that some people fear communists. They don't seem to me to be a very viable group. If you want to have them for a bugaboo, enjoy them. But don't imagine, even in your wildest dreams, that those people marching were communists. It would be easier to dismiss them if they were, but they weren't. Sadly, for you, they were people who are not committed activists. I haven't been to a big rally since Mondale ran with Ferraro. I still have my poster from that rally- I was in college. The people I met at the SF rally were like that. Coming in from the suburbs on BART, there were moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, and lots and lots of kids. Many of them dressed in red, white and blue (as I was) to show how much we love our country, even if we think it would be wrong to go to war at this time, unilaterally. |
