J20 Afterthoughts
Four years ago we were chanting: “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, GEORGE BUSH, go away!” “Hey, Dubya, what do you say—How many votes did you steal today?” While these themes, and cheers, stood the test of time, the new chants were even more direct: “1-2-3-4…We don’t want your fucking war,” Ariel and I shouted, “ 5-6-7-8… Stop the violence; stop the hate!”
Often there is a ringleader, with a hand-held PA system, who is reading off the chants, leading the herd as if we are back in a high school pep rally. The microphone crackles when it inevitably gets too close to the small speaker, but the crowd keeps chanting as they are instructed, until a new pair of lines is introduced. Memories of high school gymnasium assemblies might also be conjured up when assessing the polarity of the whole shebang: On one side are the formally dressed Bush supporters, and on the other side are the liberal protesters. The Chiefs versus the Jaguars. Only in this version, the cheerleaders for the opposing team have exchanged their pom-poms and jerseys for cardboard signs and all black (or all pink, the new black) attire. Instead of pins on lettermen jackets, they affix buttons bearing political slogans to worn-in bags.
The eerie part of this scenario is when you zoom out to see what happens after the game, when both sides of the bleachers empty into the streets and go home. On the one hand, each side goes home to seemingly different circumstances: The Chiefs return to white upper-class suburbia in sleek new cars where they send their children to private school and their charity checks to Unicef at Christmas time. Once they have made it out of the police blockades and through the crowded channels of public transportation, the Jaguars scatter to their various corners of the country, making a living however they can, and pursuing activism in what time remains available, because they believe it is the “right” thing to do.
Or is this really the truth? This seemed to be the way the scene was set up four years ago. What Jonathan Franzen described in an essay as “seeing yourself seeing yourself,” when you return home and “peel off the thermal layers, still damp, of the long day’s costume, and you see a wholly different kind of costume hanging in your closet; and in the shower you’re naked and alone.” In truth, the work we have to do goes much deeper than the sensational protests of January 20th. We are just getting started:
I refuse to be silent
I refuse to refrain
We inaugurate the second term of the peace and justice movement
We begin again
Often there is a ringleader, with a hand-held PA system, who is reading off the chants, leading the herd as if we are back in a high school pep rally. The microphone crackles when it inevitably gets too close to the small speaker, but the crowd keeps chanting as they are instructed, until a new pair of lines is introduced. Memories of high school gymnasium assemblies might also be conjured up when assessing the polarity of the whole shebang: On one side are the formally dressed Bush supporters, and on the other side are the liberal protesters. The Chiefs versus the Jaguars. Only in this version, the cheerleaders for the opposing team have exchanged their pom-poms and jerseys for cardboard signs and all black (or all pink, the new black) attire. Instead of pins on lettermen jackets, they affix buttons bearing political slogans to worn-in bags.
The eerie part of this scenario is when you zoom out to see what happens after the game, when both sides of the bleachers empty into the streets and go home. On the one hand, each side goes home to seemingly different circumstances: The Chiefs return to white upper-class suburbia in sleek new cars where they send their children to private school and their charity checks to Unicef at Christmas time. Once they have made it out of the police blockades and through the crowded channels of public transportation, the Jaguars scatter to their various corners of the country, making a living however they can, and pursuing activism in what time remains available, because they believe it is the “right” thing to do.
Or is this really the truth? This seemed to be the way the scene was set up four years ago. What Jonathan Franzen described in an essay as “seeing yourself seeing yourself,” when you return home and “peel off the thermal layers, still damp, of the long day’s costume, and you see a wholly different kind of costume hanging in your closet; and in the shower you’re naked and alone.” In truth, the work we have to do goes much deeper than the sensational protests of January 20th. We are just getting started:
I refuse to be silent
I refuse to refrain
We inaugurate the second term of the peace and justice movement
We begin again
posted by rae @ 2:14 PM
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