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Wanted: More and Better Protesters
by Eileen Jones
Wednesday, Mar. 02, 2011 at 3:59 PM
You know things are dire when I go to a protest rally. It’s one of the signs of the apocalypse, the one right before the seas turn to blood. I hate rallies. You stand out there feeling like a complete ass, while people around you chant “Hey-hey, ho-ho, corporate welfare has got to go.”
aboutamericandream.jpg, image/jpeg, 315x402
Whatever the thing is that’s being protested, see, you say it’s Got to Go.
This event was the insipidly-named “Rally to Save the American Dream” that went on yesterday in various cities across the USA. The intention was to give the thumbs-up to the Wisconsin protesters, encourage them to keep up the battle for collective bargaining rights. Also, presumably, to dig the trenches for the last-ditch fight to save the American working class, in spite of tea-party defectors who have already put out the sign saying “Welcome Corporate Overlords!”
But there’s got to be a better way than this. At the San Francisco rally, there was a cheap microphone that didn’t work, people yelling “we can’t hear you” at the back, old lefty warhorses trotted out to say the same things they’ve been saying for forty years in the same reedy tones, and mildly diverting signs done with marker on poster-board:
“Scott Walker is a Koch-Whore”
“Think Outside the Fox”
“Hitler Banned Unions”
“We Are All Cheeseheads Now”
“Gov. Walker Isn’t a Badger, He’s a Weasel”
“Tax the Rich (They’ll Be Okay)”
The worst of rallies is, nobody knows what to do once they show up. So they fall back on the toothlessly traditional. For example, the call-and-response routine that was old when Pete Seeger was young:
“What do we want?”
“Justice!”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
Seriously, that was one of the things chanted yesterday. Also wanted: jobs, fair taxes, and, if I remember right, collective bargaining rights, which played hell with the chant rhythm. Nobody had rhythm at the San Francisco rally.
* Read the article at
http://exiledonline.com/wanted-more-and-better-protesters/
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