Washington, dc
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
three days
I've been wondering what to write about the anniversary of the war in Iraq. This is the best I can do.
-----
10 years ago I stood in the rain watching the ticker tape in Times Square flash across a giant lit-up billboard. Something about bombs and shock and awe. I don't think it said, "shock and awe" but those words hung around us, a three-word summary of all the crass jingoism and carnage to come.
It was raining. I got off the subway in a hurry. headed for that protest scheduled for the day after the war started. Somehow I was afraid I would miss it. Afraid I would arrive to empty streets, the cries of defiance already dissipated.
Dissipation conjures the decline of action. This was not action. At a block cordoned off from the life of Times Square, I walked into a cage, which we had all become so familiar with, even I, political and protest novice that I was. People were on light poles. There was some kind of stage, but no one really cared. I don't remember any words coming out of the loud speaker. I do remember police, looking as indifferent and defeated as we did. Even when an anarchist or somesuch radical picked up a barricade in a half-hearted attempt at rebellion, the cops seemed to be going through the motions in throwing him to the ground.
They danced almost, push the cage back and forth, before the act withered like everything else did that day.
It wasn't just that I felt powerless and sad and angry. We all just watched, fearing what would come, and what might not come.
I was afraid we would get away with it. I was afraid the ability of the U.S. to blithely wage war would go unpunished by history. I was afraid our protest was not only ineffective, but that we would be wrong.
Maybe it would all go swimmingly, the dead limited to people unseeable from fighter jets above, and a lesson learned that open and unilateral war in the pursuit of political ideals is an effective tool to be used happily in the future.
I took pictures. I think. They're somewhere in a box filled with piles of badly framed photos of those early protests, when I still used film and developed my heartfelt documentary at CVS. The box has been slated for destruction, and now sits in the back of my car waiting for a windless day to drop them in my parents' burn barrel. Like so many parts of my life from those years, I don't really know why to keep them.
I don't remember leaving the protest that day. I don't remember what I did after.
---------
5 years ago I stood in the rain at the subway entrance in front of the muddy hole that was slowly rebecoming the World Trade Center.
I handed out wilting copies of The Anti-War issue of the activist rag I worked for throughout those years. It had been quite an effort, putting out The Anti-War issue. We had bumped up the page count from our usual 12 or 16 to a whopping 24, maybe. It might have been 20. There were disputes about this.
There were disputes about many things regarding this important issue. 5 years. Such an opportunity to call attention to the unabated violence, to pool all the evidence and reporting and first-person accounts we could squeeze from our rolodex of leftist writers.
This was our scream to the world, mine at least. We had to make the best of it. Cull together all the right people, with the right ideas to say both "I told you so" and also "Follow us, we know the way." And also, for me at least, to show that the death was real, and we were sorry. I think that might have just been me.
I had nothing truly valuable or useful to offer the anti-war effort. Except my voice, and some wet paper. Here, at least, was a record that I said no, and that some of us had known better 5 years ago in the rain.
The Wall Streeters were not amused, or worse, amused, at my presence. Papers littered the steps, discarded by some who felt resignation enough to take one.
I was slightly embarrassed, as I always was when I prostrated myself to the public with a printed record of a world outside what I assume was most New Yorkers' comfort zone.
Usually I choked it down, feeling that this was the price paid for defiance. And also, what else could we do? We had papers to get rid of.
That day, it didn't matter. I let the papers go.
I gave up. I remember pushing a cart around downtown Manhattan, still full of hundreds of copies of the paper I had worked to put together. Stayed up all night to put together. Haggled with wills stronger than mine to get unwieldy content into it.
I think I ended up in the upstairs of a ratty bodega where -- when I had shilled as temp on Broadway or Wall Street -- I had regularly eaten my lunch, or didn't eat it, depending on my brokeness that week.
I don't remember when I left or where I went. I don't remember what I did after.
----
I drove around Michigan in my car today, hopping from one railroad to the next. Public radio, which emanates fairly reliably throughout the state, played interviews with war veterans returned with their authentic scars. The Iraqis journalists knew in 2003 reappeared for reflections on the war.
Neal Conan got choked up listening to a caller read his poetry about fighting the war. Iraqis spoke about washing the dead.
It's 10 years so we remember this horror now. I say this not with a roll of my eyes, or a finger pointed. It's just true. I don't walk around every day breathing the sadness of a war I experienced only through media.
The presence of hypocrisy, and the wash of disillusionment are not excuses to ignore a moment of mourning.
It's been 10 years. I don't have much to add to the conversation. My connection to the horrors of war is vicarious at best. With or without my participation in society, this war happened. And I am sorry.
So, like everyone else. I mark the day.
-----
10 years ago I stood in the rain watching the ticker tape in Times Square flash across a giant lit-up billboard. Something about bombs and shock and awe. I don't think it said, "shock and awe" but those words hung around us, a three-word summary of all the crass jingoism and carnage to come.
It was raining. I got off the subway in a hurry. headed for that protest scheduled for the day after the war started. Somehow I was afraid I would miss it. Afraid I would arrive to empty streets, the cries of defiance already dissipated.
Dissipation conjures the decline of action. This was not action. At a block cordoned off from the life of Times Square, I walked into a cage, which we had all become so familiar with, even I, political and protest novice that I was. People were on light poles. There was some kind of stage, but no one really cared. I don't remember any words coming out of the loud speaker. I do remember police, looking as indifferent and defeated as we did. Even when an anarchist or somesuch radical picked up a barricade in a half-hearted attempt at rebellion, the cops seemed to be going through the motions in throwing him to the ground.
They danced almost, push the cage back and forth, before the act withered like everything else did that day.
It wasn't just that I felt powerless and sad and angry. We all just watched, fearing what would come, and what might not come.
I was afraid we would get away with it. I was afraid the ability of the U.S. to blithely wage war would go unpunished by history. I was afraid our protest was not only ineffective, but that we would be wrong.
Maybe it would all go swimmingly, the dead limited to people unseeable from fighter jets above, and a lesson learned that open and unilateral war in the pursuit of political ideals is an effective tool to be used happily in the future.
I took pictures. I think. They're somewhere in a box filled with piles of badly framed photos of those early protests, when I still used film and developed my heartfelt documentary at CVS. The box has been slated for destruction, and now sits in the back of my car waiting for a windless day to drop them in my parents' burn barrel. Like so many parts of my life from those years, I don't really know why to keep them.
I don't remember leaving the protest that day. I don't remember what I did after.
---------
5 years ago I stood in the rain at the subway entrance in front of the muddy hole that was slowly rebecoming the World Trade Center.
I handed out wilting copies of The Anti-War issue of the activist rag I worked for throughout those years. It had been quite an effort, putting out The Anti-War issue. We had bumped up the page count from our usual 12 or 16 to a whopping 24, maybe. It might have been 20. There were disputes about this.
There were disputes about many things regarding this important issue. 5 years. Such an opportunity to call attention to the unabated violence, to pool all the evidence and reporting and first-person accounts we could squeeze from our rolodex of leftist writers.
This was our scream to the world, mine at least. We had to make the best of it. Cull together all the right people, with the right ideas to say both "I told you so" and also "Follow us, we know the way." And also, for me at least, to show that the death was real, and we were sorry. I think that might have just been me.
I had nothing truly valuable or useful to offer the anti-war effort. Except my voice, and some wet paper. Here, at least, was a record that I said no, and that some of us had known better 5 years ago in the rain.
The Wall Streeters were not amused, or worse, amused, at my presence. Papers littered the steps, discarded by some who felt resignation enough to take one.
I was slightly embarrassed, as I always was when I prostrated myself to the public with a printed record of a world outside what I assume was most New Yorkers' comfort zone.
Usually I choked it down, feeling that this was the price paid for defiance. And also, what else could we do? We had papers to get rid of.
That day, it didn't matter. I let the papers go.
I gave up. I remember pushing a cart around downtown Manhattan, still full of hundreds of copies of the paper I had worked to put together. Stayed up all night to put together. Haggled with wills stronger than mine to get unwieldy content into it.
I think I ended up in the upstairs of a ratty bodega where -- when I had shilled as temp on Broadway or Wall Street -- I had regularly eaten my lunch, or didn't eat it, depending on my brokeness that week.
I don't remember when I left or where I went. I don't remember what I did after.
----
I drove around Michigan in my car today, hopping from one railroad to the next. Public radio, which emanates fairly reliably throughout the state, played interviews with war veterans returned with their authentic scars. The Iraqis journalists knew in 2003 reappeared for reflections on the war.
Neal Conan got choked up listening to a caller read his poetry about fighting the war. Iraqis spoke about washing the dead.
It's 10 years so we remember this horror now. I say this not with a roll of my eyes, or a finger pointed. It's just true. I don't walk around every day breathing the sadness of a war I experienced only through media.
The presence of hypocrisy, and the wash of disillusionment are not excuses to ignore a moment of mourning.
It's been 10 years. I don't have much to add to the conversation. My connection to the horrors of war is vicarious at best. With or without my participation in society, this war happened. And I am sorry.
So, like everyone else. I mark the day.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
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