[Cdhrsupport] DRANT #221: LIVE FROM THE PENTAGON: DC Report #2
SF-8 case
cdhrsupport at freedomarchives.org
Sun Mar 18 01:04:22 EST 2007
DRANT DAILY
Number 221
March 17, 2006
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Today's DRANT
---Ill-tempered, Iconoclastic, Impatient and Ideologically-
unpredictable views, comments, and sources about the World, how we
humans are messing it up, and how we can all DO SOMETHING about it.
For the complete, entire Megillah, please access the NEW DRANT
WEBSITE (under construction at : http://drant.blog.com)
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"Your silence will not protect you..."
Audre Lorde
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Live from Washington DC and The MARCH TO THE PENTAGON:

An anti-protest protestor-- 3-17-07
Photo by DR
"If people don't wanna see a movie, ya can't keep 'em away."
Samuel Goldwyn
We joined tens of thousands of people of every kind from all over in
Washington's freezing wind today to March on The Pentagon, after a
week of multiple actions and protests, including The Encampment at
the Capitol, arrests inside the Rayburn building where none of We The
People were allowed into Our House to witness the Co-Conspirators'
cha cha cha, and an action by 3,000 Christian Anti War Activists with
multiple arrests in the sleet and snow Friday night.
Brave and hearty souls, all of 'em. But.
If we want the war to stop, if we want seriously to cause change,
we're going to have to dump these worn out old models, and the
obsolete 1967 style Protest March. What worked in 1967 works no more.
We took one last ride in the old sedan this afternoon, and -- as well
as the old boy has served us over the years, as comfy as it is to
ride in, as much as it revives warm memories of granpa and granma and
how we did so much Good when we were kids- it's time to stuff it and
hang it on the wall.
In truth, these "demonstrations" and "marches" do more to harm our
cause than to serve it.
The marches are full of bonhomie, solidarity, and spirit, but
essentially are easily ignored marches to nowhere. The
demonstrations or rallies are boring, endlessly verbose and
hopelessly diffused affairs, run apparently more to satisfy the egos
of their promoters than to provide lightning rods or impetus for change.
The major pimp media and the enforcers of the status quo use the
meager attendance at these events to prove their case: that those
against the war are a marginal few, and a motley disjointed few at that.
It was not the bad weather, or the logistical difficulties, or the
lack of media exposure that kept tens of millions away from this and
many other demonstrations this weekend, most notably in DC. It was
that the event itself, like so many before --- was going to be one
more unfocused and unproductive snore.
What exactly was the POINT ?
The organizers accepted the restrictions laid out by the cops,
started on the outskirts of town, and then left town completely.
We needed to be in the middle of town, in the middle of the week, and
on the doorsteps of those funding, running and supporting this war,
not on a weekend in a dingy inconspicuous parking lot well out of the
earshot and view of anyone even slightly involved with the war. We
did not need speeches, we needed to stop the machine. Stop business
as usual.
What is it that compels people to repeat acts that do not work ?
What is it that causes pretty smart folks to rely on and invest
expectations in others, like those in Congress, to end this war for
us, when we all know that they have done and will do nothing of the
kind ?
Of course, we show up and feel better because we see people who share
our views, and can vent some feelings about the way things are being
done-- in a supportive environment of like minded souls.
But damned few of us are showing up, and when we do, nothing really
happens, and absolutely nothing changes.
So, if we want to make ourselves feel better, we can keep marching
and chanting and carrying smart signs and we can continue to write or
email or fax or call our Congresspeople.
If we want to change anything, we'd better do something new, and be
quick about it..
Pro war protestors
3-17-07 Photo by DR
Along the march route, we encountered a good sized group of Pro War
demonstrators, many of them Vietnam Vets.
These are people who cannot accept that what they and many of their
buddies and families sacrificed for was meaningless, who are stuck --
in that period of their lives when they could feel strong, powerful,
potent; with life and death in their hands, and shared purpose in
their daily lives.
Who have never again felt as good as when they could strap on the
M-16, and kick some slope ass.
There was more real dialogue about the War in the confrontations
between these vets and the protestors, than we have heard or seen in
Congress or the major media in six years, including the last three
months under Pelosi's Poseurs.
Is there more self-delusion possible than the sign "Safe since 9-11" ?
Or another that read "There or HERE" ?
Well, just about as much as the self-serving illusion that another XX
thousand people marching with signs and hearing harangues and going
home will do one single thing to change the course of this war or
alter our precipitate descent into fascism and planetary destruction.
Here is what I think needs to be done:
We need to take care of this ourselves.
No Congress, no newspaper, no court, no silver tongued candidate, no
messiah. No logos, no "organizations."
We need to mobilize, we the people of the country, one body and one
conscience and one will at a time.
And we need to walk -- starting from wherever we are-- to Washington DC.
And walk into Washington DC, and to the White House, and Congress,
and the Pentagon and all along K street-
and fill the streets with our bodies, and lie down and not allow
another minute of this bloody business as usual.
We need to take Gandhi's march to the sea as our model.
Every day, we walk, and we gather others, and day after day we gather
more and more- and the media cannot ignore us, and people along the
way will take us in, and feed us and join us.
I nominate and have tried to ask Cindy Sheehan to lead the walk, she
would be ideal, but we don't need her.
We need you and me, and our kids and friends.
And we need to start now.
The weather is getting warm. If we leave California in April, we can
get to DC in 3 months or so, maybe even by July 4.
What do you say ?
After the marches and protests of this weekend are over, how about we
all take a walk ?
I'll tell ya what. If you will join me, I will stop everything I am
doing - every thing -- and do only this.
Will you ?
"We're here in the shadow of the war machine,"
said anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in
Iraq.
(Watch Sheehan march with a throng of protesters Video)
We need to shut it down. We need to stop paying our taxes to fund
this war."
At the rally Pentagon Parking Lot 3-17-07
Photo by DR State
Highway Patrol Riot Squad Troops block entrance to Pentagon
3-17-07 Photo by DR
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.......
__,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,___
DAVID RUBINSON
ON THE ROAD in DC
Quote of the day:
"...The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like
him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they
were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the
viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of
judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the
atrocities put together..."
Hannah Arendt
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