Impressions of the March to Open the US Social Forum 2007

by Sam Diener, Co-Editor of Peacework Magazine

I just ducked into a café. The march is fairly large, larger than I expected. I' d give a quick impressionistic estimate of between 5000-1000 people, and is quite wonderfully racially diverse, with a large contingent of indigenous people up front, many large multi-racial and African-American contingents, lots of anglos (but not the overwhelming majority that we find in most putatively multi-racial demos) and large Latino contingents. There are certainly quite a few Asian-American activists, but I didn' t see any Asian-American contingents per se.

The chanting bilingually (It seems that bilingual English-Spanish activists have concluded, to all evidence quite rightly, that anglo activists can only learn one Spanish chant, so there are endless repetitions of, 'El Pueblo, Unido, el mas sera vencido. (The People, United, Will Never be Defeated.) I think it' s probably long past time for those of us who are Anglo activists to learn some additional Spanish chants.

Activists are highligihting a range of issues, as is expected from the USSF crowd, with ending the war the most predominant, but large groups focusing on health care (especially as we passed the perpetually threatened Grady Hospital, the one public hospital remaining in the Atlanta metro-region.), immigration justice, and housing as a human right.

I understand the organizers (many kudos to them) worked hard to get the permit for this action. My one concern about the route is that there were very few people out on the streets to see us. We did pass one construction site where the predominanty latino workers cheered us enthusiastically as we passed.

On the personal level, I was pleased to see War Resisters League activist Jim Haber theree. I was very glad to run into ex-AFSC CT staffperson Kasha Ho, who is now working at a 6-month campaign position at the Rainforest Action Network on an effort to counter depredations by agribusiness industries (such as the Palm Oil debacle in Indonesia).

I also enjoyed meeting a local Atlanta activist who works in a bakery and has been practicing war tax resistance without much contact with the war tax resistance community. He was glad to know there is such a thing as War Resisters League' s A Guide to War Tax Resistance and the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund.