VIETNAM REDUX
On Saturday, March 18, on the corner of 16th and Broadway in Sacramento at 4pm there was a third Saturday Protest of the war on Iraq, to coincide with the third anniversary of the illegal invasion. Once again, my family was there… this time there were about seven of us. Although the television news said that there were only 100 protesters there, in actual fact at 4:30PM there were 300 people there.
Around noontime I started making a sign…. My sister was going to collect me at quarter to 4 so I had to be quick about it. I took an old Ginsu knife and cut apart a computer box, leaving all the spare flaps. I took it outside and used some antique white latex, rolling it on and leaving it in the sun. Went inside and made a sign: VIETNAM REDUX, with a small box that said TROOPS OUT NOW. I made this sign because the Air War on Iraq that has been escalating over the last 5 months has been under-reported. I made this sign because if the American people knew, they would remember we were here before in 1972… and they would make a move to stop the expansion of this illegal war.
See:
CENSORED NEWS BREAKS THROUGH – AIR WAR ON IRAQ
I made it the with Microsoft Word, in the landscape setting (to print horizontal), then when printing I hit the poster button, to tile the pages at a 16 to one ratio. I printed and did paste up with a glue stick, and trimmed the top and bottom. This took no more than 10 minutes. The sign was ready to tape to the board before the paint was dried… I reinforced the painted board with a wooden 1x1x1 inch dowel and kept the whole thing solid with three yellow bungee cords. I taped the paper sign to the board with packing tape, and it was ready to go.
The sign fit neatly standing on end in the car, and was really easy to carry. I had angled two side flaps so that it was weighted and would stand on it’s own so I wouldn’t have to stand there holding it all day. As it was, I found a green newspaper stand that it could lean on in front of a bank. I leaned the sign there and went back a block to see if it had good visiblility.
I stopped in front of a HUGE sign that said NO WAR. This sign was about 5 by 20 feet, and standing behind it was a couple in their sixties. “I’m just checking out to see if my sign looks all right.” “I don’t know if most people will understand what `redux’ means,” said the man. “Well,” I said, “you do, and your wife does and I do, so that’s good enough for me.”
By the time I got back to the green newsstand, there was a Veteran standing there in Army fatigues, leaning on a cane. And there he stood, friends, for the next 3 hours. He never moved. He never took a break, even declining my offer of a cup of coffee. He is with the Sacramento Veterans for a war memorial. I walked right up to him and shook his hand and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you.” But what I was was knocked out… taken aback by the rightness of the thing.
Mitch (not his name) is a Vietnam vet; he saw the sign, and went right over to it, knowing full well what the sign meant, and what an impact there was in his standing behind it. My job was done, so I hauled off about 6 feet behind him. Later we talked about troop levels, the air war, and the lack of real support… armor….. and so it goes.
WHAT’S A COUPLE OF ZEROS?
The demonstration in Sacramento was 300, not 100 as reported.
The demonstration in San Francisco was 10,000 not 1,000 as reported.
The demonstration in London was 45,000 not the 14,000 as reported.
The demonstration in Dublin was 1,300 not the 800 as reported.
And, contrary to a lot of leaflets printed in advance of the demonstrations here and around the country, the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war since March 2003 is 128,000 to 150,000, not the 28,000 as reported.
See:
Why is the Left Understating the Carnage?
Counting the Dead in Iraq
by Todd Chretien
March 14, 2006
MINIMIZING BODY COUNT IN IRAQ
I’m not in the mood right now to discuss numbers. I’m not in the mood right now to discuss the media coverage of this war and the anti-war movement. And I’m definitely not in the mood to talk about how numbers have been manipulated in the attempt to manipulate the public. The thing about the true report is that you have to search for it… if it’s not there, you have to write it yourself, and make sure that it gets sent out to where it might do some good.
I know how to count people. I know how to accurately estimate crowds. I know how to get accurate numbers based on crowd density, and how make estimates of crowds if they are stationary or if they’re on the march. I know how to do this, and I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years. The Associated Press does not know how to do this.
Attending these events, one sometimes gets an overwhelming feeling for history and memory. Standing there with my arm around my sister she and I had a moment where we remembered together that we have been marching together for forty years. We saw two lovely old ladies, one in a wheelchair, and another in a pink sweatshirt and a pink cowboy hat… She was in her seventies anyways… and then some.
“Are you Code Pink?” I asked. “No,” she said, “I’m just me.” “Well you look lovely, that color suits you.” “These are just my protesting clothes,” she said. I looked at my sister and she was looking at me thinking the same thing.
We have been fighting for this cause for 40 years, as our mother had before us. One day, another thirty years from now, we will find ourselves here again… and it’s likely that I’ll look over at my elderly sister and she’ll be wearing a pink cowboy hat… and it’s likely she’ll be looking back at me and I’ll be using a cane.
The cause is never won, and, like Mitch, one cannot take a break…. There is no resting on laurels, for as soon as you get rid of one bunch of scoundrels there will be a worse bunch behind them to fall into rank. The struggle for justice, for a decent wage, for peace, for civil rights will go on as long as we live.