 October 2004
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Sara Burke, Managing Editor Sam Diener, Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
A View from the Streets in New York Rachael Kamel, who works in the Community Relations Unit of the American Friends Service Committee, sent out this report a few days after the August 29, 2004 march in New York City, sponsored by the United for Peace and Justice coalition (www.unitedforpeace.org). The march in New York City on Sunday, August 29, 2004 was a very powerful experience, for me as for countless others: the half-million or so who were there, and the millions more who have been following the story from around the world. The march began by going uptown (north) along Seventh Avenue. The street was lined with barricades, mostly chained together, making it very cumbersome to move back and forth between the street and the sidewalk. Seeking refuge from the heat and the crush of people, we walked east along 22nd St. and then resumed our trek uptown on Sixth Avenue. When we were still well below Madison Square Garden (which is located on 34th St.), the east-west streets began to be blocked off with even more barricades, so that they were completely impassable. Protesters may have won the court-ordered freedom to march, but apparently we had no freedom to leave the march route and walk across town, or to leave the march and return to it later. Does this count as freedom of assembly? At Sunday's massive & completely legal march, the police were subdued -- but they were also everywhere in vast numbers. My partner, Sue, commented that their nightsticks were longer than she had ever seen. The closer we got to Madison Square Garden, the larger the police presence News reports since then show clearly that the police were holding back on Sunday largely as a tactic, not out of respect for our freedom to protest. Beginning on Friday, smaller demonstrations and civil disobedience actions have been suppressed with savagery.
As we joined the march and headed back downtown, we saw many displays of support for the march from onlookers and local businesses -- and only a small handful of counter-protesters, mostly carrying signs from "protestwarrior.com," a group devoted to ridiculing progressive actions. When we got to Union Square, we were met by march organizers asking us to disperse and directing us to the nearest subway stations. It was there that I began to understand the extent of the muting of our voices and the suppression of our rights. There would be no final rally: no opportunity to see the historic numbers who had come together to take a stand against war, occupation, and militarism. No opportunity to see who had turned out or hear their message. If you weren't carrying a radio (we weren't), there was no way to know if the march was large or small, no way to feel the spirit that had been created, no way to grasp what was happening. What a profound twist for freedom of speech: we had the right to go home and turn on the television to find out what we had all said. From our spot near the front of the march, it seemed disappointingly small to us, and the day seemed strangely incomplete and unsatisfying. (We didn't hear the opening press conference and the comments of the celebrities leading the march until we saw it later that night on TV.) Then, as a sort of impromptu rally substitute, we began to walk backwards along the march route, up Broadway and Fifth Avenue, then west on 34th St. Retracing the march is what allowed us to feel the spirit of the day, the energy of the gathering. When we finally reached the end of the march on Seventh Avenue, just below Madison Square Garden - nearly six hours after we had watched the march set off from the same spot - we realized that we had indeed been part of a massive, historic gathering (without having to wait until we were able to read about it on the Net!). United for Peace and Justice did a brilliant job of organizing a march that was safe, peaceful, funny, angry, unifying, and impassioned, and allowed half a million people, in all our diversity, to raise a voice against "war, greed, hate, & lies."
I've always believed, but never more deeply, the basic principle
that freedom of speech, and every type of freedom, is defended
best by exercising it. New York was alive this week with that
kind of freedom. 
Previous Article Next Article
|
|
|