In 2003, 10 million people around the world were involved in a coordinated global protest against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Some called the global anti-war movement the 'second superpower,' their implied hope being that a force capable of constraining the U.S. was at last spreading its wings. I remember, in the days immediately before the war seeing posters confidently proclaiming "WE WILL STOP THIS WAR." I envied their hope.
I've always been a bit sceptical about rallies, despite being no stranger to them.
While at university I point-blank refused to take part in
Take Back The Night marches because I felt that they did nothing to make the night safer the other 364 days of the year. They made people feel good, but didn't actually change anything. The way to take back the night, I thought, was to insist on my freedom of movement. The way to take back the night
was to walk alone beneath the moon on darkened city streets, to refuse to believe the myth that women are more at risk of rape from strangers than from those known to them.
It's the feel-good factor that I distrust about rallies. The 'look-at-us, we're so virtuous' factor. The fear that a rally, whether held on the mall or in front of a federal building doesn't change anything. It doesn't prevent business as usual. Worse, it can become legitimised acceptable dissent, of a kind analogous to that so ineffectually and copiously doled out by Colin Powell during his undistinguished career.
But at the same time, I've been at rallies where the speakers made me so proud of them. Where I felt that truth did get spoken to power. Where people got a rare chance to stand up and say what they wanted (and why is that chance rare in a society that calls itself a democracy?). Where for a brief moment carnival and conscience were united in riotous joyous chaos.
Here's what I think right now. No amount of rallies are going to get the U.S. out of Iraq. They do not disrupt 'business as usual.' But that doesn't mean they're useless. They're a great way for people to get involved in the anti-war movement, to educate and energise themselves, to meet like-minded people, to know they are not alone.
But if you want to end war, you've gotta sing loud.
Rallies are one useful tool in the tool-kit. But they're just one tool. Others are needed too -- non-violent tools (because there's no point in becoming that which we despise) that disrupt business as usual, that cannot be dismissed as acceptable dissent.
So, how have other movements around the world thrown a spanner in the spokes? How can the war in Iraq be made more expensive domestically? How can the anti-war movement cost warmongers cold hard cash (since we know that's all they care about)?
And what do you think about anti-war rallies?