First of all, thank you for your service. Thank you for having the moral courage to stand up and represent to the world that not every American prefers to be represented by a warlord posse.
In the current climate, opposition to crimes against humanity is no small act of Resistance, and in the current meterological climate, it is unlikely that your sacrifice will receive the attention it deserves.
Next, I would like to ask a favor.
There are many people, all over the world, who for one reason or another, cannot march with you. They are old, they are infirm, they are far away, they have children or elders or both to care for. They are poor, some homeless, some held in “shelters,” some, like Leonard Peltier, are imprisoned.
Whether or not you are on CNN, you will be in all those hearts, and the favor I ask is that each one of you who will march, take someone with you, to march for one of the millions who cannot. Call, email, cajole, wheedle, threaten, feel free to use underhanded tactics like guilt and emotional blackmail, but get that person to go with you, to march by your side, to take the place of Leonard, of Miss Rosa Parks, of the old lady in New Orleans wrapped in the flag.
In January, on the occasion of the coronation of the current figurehead, I was privileged to eavesdrop as a middle aged lady recounted another cold day in another January, another crusade of aggression, another coronation of another war criminal.
In a modest Alexandria home, a motherly Episcopal rector’s wife stirred pots of soup. “We’re used to marchers,” she said, smiling as her two dozen or so houseguests, none of whom she had ever met before, stumbled and milled about, groggy and sore from unaccustomed floorsleeping, lined up for the bathroom, made their way into the kitchen, then out the door, and on to Washington.
There were no free speech zones, no checkpoints, the mall itself was the free speech zone. The crowd grew, it swelled, it spilled into the streets, it swarmed over the monuments, it sang, it chanted, it shouted. The crowd waved signs, unfurled banners. The helicopters overhead gave up trying to estimate it.
Black and white, and every shade in between, young and old, rich and poor, the crowd grew larger, louder. The coronation ceased to be the story. This crowd was the story. Stop the war!
Some came with memories of other marches, another march in this same place, a decade before. Some bore the scars of Bull Connor’s dogs, memories of hoses, or jails, of a bridge in Selma, Miami, the siege of Chicago, Philadelphia, Mississippi, four little girls in Alabama, Kent State.
Some came with their children, that they might have this memory, somehow sensing that, in the words of Mick Jagger, this could be the last time.
Some lent strong shoulders to aging elders with older memories, and the unshakable conviction that “never again” meant never again to anybody, even a little bit, even if there was money to be made.
Somewhere in the crowd, a murmur, VVAW is coming. And in the distance, they came slowly into view. On and on they came, until as far as the eye could see, a sea of people, marching into another sea, filling the horizon, some limping, some in wheelchairs, on crutches. Some hobbled on artificial limbs, some hopped without them, a few lay on gurneys, wheeled by their companions, on and on they came, the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War.
They kept on coming, by whatever locomotive powers the war had left them with, they joined the chanting, Stop the War!
The crowd without organizers, cell phones or central command, parted to let them pass. Cecil B. could not have done it better.
And still they kept coming, as far as the eye could see.
And the crowd, clergy, atheists, hippies, Black Panthers, stern young SDS fellows in proto-muscle shirts, socialists, communists and all, kept on parting like a human red sea, and lifting wind-chapped hands, fingers aching from the cold, they saluted.
Full disclosure: part of this taken from old blogrant, but apt to the occasion.
