SAYING OUR PEACE
Scenes From the March in Washington
April 12, 2003

On a cold, rainy, foggy New York City Friday night, Hugh, Ana, Kim, Amanda, and I, crammed into a rented white car with Georgia vanity plates that said AMY, set off for our nation's capital with nothing but our moral convictions, a change of clothes, a video camera, a regular camera, blank posterboard, blank stickers, assorted Sharpies (SHARPIE ASS, said the LCD screen on the cash register at Staples), and an Argentinian beverage prepared by Ana which alone probably could have stopped the war. Only the stench of the New Jersey Turnpike made us wonder if we were doing the right thing.

It truly is mesmerizing to arrive in Washington. It makes New York seem organic. In New York you always feel kind of overwhelmed by the willfulness of it all, a city dreamed up by people and wholly fabricated as a deliberate landscape. But Manhattan is manmade by generation after generation of staggeringly diverse people, so it's become an organic fantasia. Washington looks like it was designed by a carefully-chosen committee of four aging white men. Washington as an urban landscape is everything that Washington is not as a political entity -- clean, neat, sanitary, and so easily negotiable that as soon as we realized we were there (the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building were early hints toward this revelation), we got lost. Successfully locating at last the Washington Marriott (Hugh got it on Priceline, so it was very inexpensive, and we all split it, and we are hardcore protesters, okay?) we proceded to tour the parking complex for a considerable time before retiring to the room to order pizza (WHAT? you can't be anti-Establishment and eat PIZZA?) and create propaganda.

The next day, we found ourselves at the corner of 14th Street (whatever) and Pennsylvania Avenue, covered in provocative slogans and, as Amanda said, "ready to lovingly kick some ass."
We had a lot of great signs and stickers. I am particularly interested in this aspect of protest, because one of my favorite compulsions is to create signage, and I was up almost all night getting high on Sharpies. It was all fabulous. Amanda had a sticker on her backpack that said ANOTHER ROCK STAR FOR PEACE, and one on her arm that said WAR is just STUPID. Hugh was particularly taken with two stickers, which wound up staying on his shirt basically all day, which said RUMSFELD: NOW THERE'S A GUY WITH SHIT FOR BRAINS! and BOB DOLE IS NOT THE ANSWER, which was Amanda's refrain during a particular game of Trivial Pursuit. At one point, while we were assembling and before the march began, somebody asked Hugh what Bob Dole had to do with this. Hugh said he was sorry, he couldn't tell him. I said, "But you will concede he is not the answer." No argument.

MY CAT IS OPPOSED TO THE WAR ON IRAQ was a big hit, too, as a large sign carried alternately by Amanda and Kim. At one point during the march, some woman said "Hey, my cat is against the war too!" and Amanda explained about how concerned Phoenix Moscaritolo-DeBartolo DeBardeleben has been about all the Iraqi cats.

One of the stickers on my shirt said TWO EVIL FASCISTS, BUT ONLY ONE HAS WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, and one sign that said WAR IS NO ANSWER - PEACE IS NO QUESTION -- which I'm really proud of; isn't it nice? I think it really has the perfect ring of an authentic antiwar slogan. Well, I like it. I also congratulate myself for FREEDOM IS KNOWING WHEN YOUR COUNTRY IS WRONG, and the delicately subtle BUSH SUCKS.

Our morning tour through a brilliantly sunny, 80-degree Washington was lovely. It was exciting to be there. It feels good to know what side you're on. Or, more specifically, to act the side you know you're on. And to see such a diversity of people who see eye to eye on the notion that you shouldn't kill other people. Ana made signs and stickers with antiwar slogans in Spanish. One of the few failures of the trip was that we never got around to taking a picture of Ana in front of a CVS, which would have been very funny, because there seemed to be a CVS on nearly every corner, and Ana made this ongoing revelation into the golden running gag of the excursion. I sugegsted we could take ehr picture in front of a CVS in New York, but of course that's not the same. I will say that there has probably never been a more provocative event in a CVS than Hugh's nonchalant stride down the aisles with the line about Rumsfeld having shit for brains gleaming vividly from his chest.

So here's one: We're standing outside the White House, and -- no, let me start over. WE'RE STANDING OUTSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE, and at this point we had strayed from the gathering protest and were surrounded mainly by more mainstream tourists. There was one security guard in front of the fence in front of another fence in front of the yard with the fountain and the cherry blossoms and all that. His job was to tell people not to walk on the traffic lane. ("Notice," said Kim, "how the nonviolent protesters are following the rules?" as a bunch of non-nonviolent protesters trampled across obliviously.) Sensing the brewing of history, Amanda took the cell phone and decided to call the White House. After listening for a few moments, she announced, "The White House is closed. The White House line is open for citizen's comments from nine to five eastern time, Monday through Friday. I wanted to ask George if he would come out here and talk with us, but it's closed." We noticed men on the roof of the White House taking pictures, and Amanda held up her sign (GORE GOT MORE VOTES) for them to see with their telephoto lenses. Some slackjawed face in the crowd said, "You think they can see your sign, idiot?" It was a bit of an altercation. "God bless you, sir," was Amanda's reply; this is one of her two standard retorts, now, to ideological conforntation. The other is singing "Amazing Grace," which might have been the backup plan in this case, but the guy had more to say; revealing the full scope of his geopolitical grasp, he yelled, "Why don't you go to Iran?" (I have encountered an alarming number of people who think we're at war with Iran. Or maybe they just go with that because Iran is easier to say.) "I live here," said Amanda, but the conversation apparently had gotten too complicated, and he shut up. Amanda did add, a beat or two later, that the sentence on her sign was simply a historical fact that everyone inside of or on top of the White House already knows anyway.

Back on Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street, after Peeing for Peace in the Port-a-Potty, we returned to the assembled throng and the march began. (They were waiting for us.) The march was great. The whole thing was great. Even I, wary as always of enormous groups of people who agree with each other, felt so happy to see so many people who were against the war. The feeling of being in the midst of 30,000 other people who feel that way has in the last couple of days sustained me through many a New York Post headline accidentally glimpsed on the subway.

The police presence was pretty intense -- rows and rows of them, everywhere you looked, on foot, on bicycles, on motorcycles, on horses, in helicopters, billy clubs out and ready for brutality. At some point, for reasons that we never really clearly understood, ten or twenty police bikes landed in a crash in the middle of the street, and the cops tore down an enormous banner, one stick of which I had been holding a minute before, having volunteered for that responsibility without realizing it. There was a bit of a tense moment, and it looked like things were going to turn ugly; the cops arrested at least one person, and there was apparently some physical action, because the crowd around us started shouting "We're not violent! Why are you?" But the cops backed off and the march continued with a triumphant cheer.

I have more to say, which I'm sure I'll put here, but at the moment I have to go figure out the chords to something that's been in my head today. But I wanted to get a blog up about the protest, which, in summation, really gave me a renewed sense of the beauty -- and not the mythical futility -- of acting within the human community on the ideals which best represent it.

AND: The other night Amanda and I were watching Deconstructing Harry, and I was really struck by the moment when Billy Crystal says, to Woody Allen, "You put your art into your work; I put it into my life." Not that that's how I feel, but hearing that line led me to the thought that if I'm really an artist -- if that's my function and not just my excuse -- I can't make art my life; I have to make life my art. Anyhow, I'll spare you more introspective posturing for the time being. Be well and enjoy this beautiful day.

MESSAGE BOARD
LOVE

NOAH

6:22 PM

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Wednesday, April 16, 2003