Mostly, I am ashamed to say, I have been the protesting counterpart to a soldier of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders. That is to say, most of my anti-war activities have come while my ass is firmly planted in a rather uncomfortable chair, here in front of my computer.
But, the depths of deception that have been practiced by this Batshit Loopy Leader of the Free World and his minions, and the Siren’s call of Cindy Sheehan to combat the continued senseless deaths in Iraq, have penetrated by lethargy.
I started out with the candlelight vigil for Cindy Sheehan last month. I am going to Washington. And, last night, I attended my first meeting of a local anti-war group. It is this last venture into activism that I must report to my fellows here at Booman, after the flip.
Being a blogging activist is easy. It is pleasant. The people here are almost invariably in the really deep end of the gene pool as far as intellect goes. At least that is my perception. This place is erudite. It is like the ivory tower of activism. I come to this assessment by comparison of course.
I do not mean to diminish my local anti-war group. These are people (over twenty of them at a regular meeting) who have been coming together for over two years now to try to put a stop to this insanity that has engulfed our country. For that alone, they should be heralded as heroes (though, it is far more likely that they are scorned as villains). But, as a community, they are not the Booman Tribune.
At the front lines of activism, much like the front lines of war I suppose, you can smell the humanity. Twenty people crowded into a hot room, getting their dander up does not an antiseptic smell make. I wouldn’t call the odor unpleasant. But, it is obviously human.
There are no quarterbacks or prom queens on the front lines of activism. No one looks like a frat boy, or a sorority sister. These are real people. Aged. Young. Marginalized in appearance (myself included). They are disabled. Gay. Women. Elderly. Multi-cultural. It was a carnival of diversity. But, there are no apparent bankers. No NASCAR dads that I could see. No car salesman, or insurance adjusters from the looks of things. All this is not to say that the middle class was not solidly represented. It was, I think, in as much as one can take in such data with one’s eyes and ears. It was just that this place did not look like people in a Gap commercial, or a McDonald’s advertisement. At least not to me. It was gritty.
There is that old line about Mussolini, that as a dictator he could at least make the trains run on time. Whether such a thing is true or not, I do not know. But, it leaves one with the impression that at least in fascism, you can have order. But there, on the front lines of activism, I found the polar opposite of that old adage. Activism, at least what I could gather of it in my first taste, is a very messy and inefficient process. Leadership was almost non-existent. It was a group of people, their chairs circled like a kindergarten class, talking to (or at) one another. There was little consensus. Little by the way of action. It was not a boardroom. Or a courtroom. There was no process for birthing peace into this world, as so many of these people obviously desired.
It is this last observation that troubled me most, I think. I was a newcomer. So, it is probably very harsh of me to judge. But a revolution without leadership, seems to me, to be headed for chaos. And this was little better than loosely controlled chaos. So disorganized it was, that I was at times tempted to rise and leave, not wanting to be disheartened in my belief that regular people can change things.
But, I stayed. And I think I’ll go back. I am, however, left with an abiding sense that this entire movement in America – my own wishful desire for a return of an active, progressive, populist movement – is going to be led by people in the blogosphere. This is the brain trust. The troops on the front lines lack your command of the facts on the ground, and your tactical awareness. Of this I am sure.
And it all leaves me with just two sentences, that as I form them in my mind, give me at once a sense of great hope, but also great trepidation:
This is our world. Change is going to have to live and die with us.
