As some of you know, I lost my NR status a few days ago because I uprated a call for a change of tactics to include violence in the OWS protests. I want to make it very clear that this uprating was an honest mistake. I did NOT intend to Rec such a comment. I intended to HR it, and Geekesque's response, which was meant to be facetious, because I didn't want it used by Fox News as proof that OWS supporters think that the Occupiers should include violence in their tactics. I ws rushing, and I screwed up. For that I apologize.
I attended college from 1967-71, and my college was located in Washington D.C. I didn't do a lot of anti-war protests, except on campus, where it was low-key. On the occasions when I went downtown, I encountered a few anti-war protests. The marchers were always calm and controlled and volunteer marshals from anti-war groups helped keep order. I never had a problem with them. I never saw any violent responses, just occasional passive resistance.
But there was one time I was truly afraid. Back in the day, when I was 20 and looked 16, I went to a Brentano's bookstore near the White House. I went to buy some sf books and to have lunch at a restaurant where the food was cheap but good. Since I didn't watch local news much, I was unaware that the VFW and other groups were marching to support the war. WHen I came out of the bookstore, I ran into the marchers.
There I stood: 5'3", in acotton skirt and a lacy top, weighing 120 pounds soaking wet. My hair at the time was growing out of a short cut, but it was neat and well-styled. I didn't look like anybody's idea of a hippy, just a young woman running errands on A Saturday afternoon.
And a few of the marchers started yelling insults at me. One broke ranks to come over and spit on me and tell me I should be ashamed of myself for hating vets and soldiers. I admit to being scared. The police presence was nil ( Nixon was in the White House, and they didn't arrest pro-war people, just anti-war types or so it seemed on the news). I turned away and walked very quickly to a bus stop. I was very much afraid someone would hit me. These were angry people and to them I represented my generation.
I suppose I could have gotten into a screaming match. Part of me wanted to. One of my friends from John Hopkins had been a marshal at a recent protest march, and had gotten a couple of stitches from a cop who liked swinging his baton too much. But I didn't want to escalate the situation, and I wanted to get away in one piece without needing stitches.
I have always believed non-violence is the right way, the only way. I am old enough to remember school integration and troops having to be sent in to protect African American children children from the malice of white adults. I remember the integration of Ole Miss, and I remember Lester Maddox and George Wallace. I remember their nasty, hate-filled Good Ol' Boy faces, a stark contrast with the dignity of Rosa Parks and the participants in the bus boycott, the marchers in Selma and Birmingham who did not answer violence with violence. I remember the Berrigan Brothers who poured blood on draft records but never used violence as a method of protest and several Catholic nuns I knew who marched with MLK. I believe they won in the end, after many arrests and suffering a good deal at the hands of angry cops because they held the moral high ground. It wasn't just their cause that was right. It was their methods.
I've lived in NYC and participated in marches and protests. Generally, if you had a long-term permit and picketed a specific place (as we did during the Hunger Strikes in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland--not to support the IRA but to protest the British laws allowing people to be held in jail indefinitely without every being charged--an attitude now embodied int he Patriot Act and Gitmo), there were a handful of officers who showed up every day. They knew us. They respected our non-violence. When Maggie Thatcher called President Ronnie and asked him to pressure Ed Koch to shut us down, Koch refused--because the police told him we were cooperative and peaceful, day in and day out. The only day I ever saw things get dicey was the day Joe McDonald died. We had a much larger crowd that day, drawn from all of NYC and New Jersey and Long Island. It was very hot. And there were a lot of new officers who didn't know us and some were itching for a fight. I turned my first (deceased) husband and said, "We need to leave or I'm gonna end up having a run-in with the Sly Stallone clone over there."
I support OWS 110%. I support non-violent activities. I support non-violent civil disobedience. I do not condone violence toward the police or bystanders, nor do I condone vandalism--even when the place vandalized belongs to Bank of America. We are in the right here. We have the moral high ground. With every protestor who is beaten, every journalist who is not allowed to cover the story, we'll look better. And in the end we'll win, just as the anti-war people won in in my college days, just as MLK won.
Today is my 62nd birthday. When I blow out the candles on the pecan cake (with chocolate butter cream icing) in a little while, my wish will be that the rest of this country--including those Republicans who still actually believe that raising taxes on the 1% is a mortal sin--wake the fuck up and start caring about the other 99%.