Reading MaryScott O'Conner's diary this morning (
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/19/2287/35284) about the 9/24 demonstration, I was struck by the utter pointlessness of what is planned. A
happy hour? A self-congratulatory
breakfast? WTF? This is
WAR, people! You don't win wars, or stop them, by liveblogging over drinks.
To all those well-intentioned Kossacks who would come to DC to fight the good fight, I'm here to tell you--as planned, this demonstration is a complete waste of time. Below the fold I explain why, and make a few suggestions for making the 9/24 demonstration worthwhile.
I live here in DC and I often participate in demonstrations. I have been to at least half a dozen in the last 5 years, and have come to understand how the modern "demonstration" in Washington has been carefully sidelined by federal and local authorities so that it is irrelevant.
Here's how demonstrations in DC work: everyone gathers on the Washington Monument grounds or on the Ellipse. The Ellipse is adjacent to the White House, but far enough away so that the White House can comfortably ignore anything going on there. Everyone then marches up 15th Street, takes a right on Pennsylvania Avenue and marches--toward the Capitol, through the utterly deserted weekend streets of downtown DC--to 4th Street. There, everyone turns back onto the Mall and sits and listens to speeches and music, and then goes home.
No one in DC sees the marches because they happen downtown, and the locals clear out because local media tells us for a week in advance to do so. The Washington Metro Police make sure that marchers do no stray from the approved route. MSM makes a token appearance, but usually little or nothing actually makes their broadcasts or newspapers.
The problem is that the DC demonstration has become pro-forma, routine, humdrum, boring, and definitely not newsworthy. There are no policy makers to see or hear them, and there is nothing about them to cause the MSM to sit up and take notice. They are really nothing more than a walking party for like-minded people. A lot of effort is expended in vain.
The following are some suggestions for how this (or any other) DC demonstration could actually get attention from the MSM and the policy makers:
(1) Bring a million people to DC. The average demonstration is 100,000-200,000 people. Numbers in that range are not newsworthy. Get a million people, or better yet, two million and now you've got a story to tell. That many people would completely overwhelm the DC infrastructure and paralyze the city. It would definitely get the MSM talking.
(2) Engage in massive acts of civil disobediance. If 50,000 people or more refused to go home at the end of the day and insisted on staying on the Mall indefinitely, Washington would sit up and take notice. Sure, they might make thousands of arrests, they might even come in with dogs and water cannons. But it would be a huge PR victory to see the government having to resort to such tactics against ordinary citizens. It would be no good if only a few hundred people did it, but if tens of thousands did it it would have a huge impact.
(3) Refuse to stick to the established route. I was part of a spontaneous demonstration of maybe 700 people that broke out in the first days of the Iraq war. We marched from DuPont Circle to H Street near the White House. There was no permit, and we were walking down Connecticut Avenue (a major road) at rush hour. The police descended immediately, at first threatening to arrest everyone. I wasn't even planning to participate, I was actually just walking by and heard this, so I immediately joined in. When the MPD saw people leaving the sidewalk to join in, the dropped their threats and simply closed one side of CT Ave. to let us march. A lot of people saw that one because it wasn't on a Saturday when everyone had been warned in advance to stay away.
(4) Refuse to go home. If 100,000 people came to DC and demonstrated every day, all over the city, for a month, it would be major news. DC is an uber-liberal city and there would be plenty of locals who would be willing to house demonstrators (I can house 4 inside and another 3-4 tents in the back yard), especially if the demonstrations were calculated not to mess up the routines of ordinary Washingtonians.
(5) Have the demonstration somewhere other than DC. 100,000 people marching in DC is not news. 100,000 people marching in Kansas City or Dallas or Des Moines, however, is a different matter. FOr one thing, it brings the anti-war message to the doorstep of red America. They infect our school boards, our local media, and our county governments--why should we not take our fight directly to their home turf. The sheer provocativeness of such a demonstration would be news in itself. Far more newsworthy than another boring DC march, and more fair to our West Coast friends as well.
But the status quo? Not so much. Expect to be unnoticed while you're in DC, and forgotten as soon as you leave. Until the anti-war movement gets a spine and actually puts itself in the breach, it will get no traction with either the Democratic leadership or the public in general. Until the left takes its fight to red America, in numbers, it has no hope of a political recovery. Americans respect and sympathize with scrappy underdogs. The left has done a great job of becoming an underdog, now it has to get scrappy.