The Anti-War Movement is starting to Move Again

My partner and I were going to a social function last Saturday, leaving our sodden and flooded farm for a few hours and driving through the gloom of a raging downpour.  On the corner outside our little town was the sign guy.  This gentleman appears at odd intervals with a huge sign constructed of two by fours and signboard.  The sign asks why the wars haven’t stopped.

The sign guy was standing there, holding up his sign from time to time, absolutely drenched.  I said as we turned past, “Next time we see him we’ve got to stop.”

“Why?”

“So, I can find out when he’s going to be out next and go stand with him.”

“Oh, good idea!”  I waved and gave a thumbs up as we passed the sign guy, and my partner honked the car horn in approval.

More people than the sign guy remember that we are still involved in two very expensive, very costly, very murderous wars.  All of us here know it, and people across the country and the ‘net are starting to wake up again.  Obama isn’t going to change a thing, he’s not really anti-war, and it’s time to start protesting… again.

There’s going to be an anti-war protest on Dec 16th in Lafayette park in front of the White House at 10 am.  There will be military veterans and leaders of the peace movement giving speeches.  I doubt the protest’ll be very big, and I don’t think it’ll get any media attention, but it’ll have happened, and, as Chris Hedges says in his Op-Ed on Truth-out this week, ‘No Act of Rebellion is Wasted‘:.

Hedges’ first paragraph got me choked up, I have to admit.  He says,

I stood with hundreds of thousands of rebellious Czechoslovakians in 1989 on a cold winter night in Prague’s Wenceslas Square as the singer Marta Kubišová approached the balcony of the Melantrich building. Kubišová had been banished from the airwaves in 1968 after the Soviet invasion for her anthem of defiance, “Prayer for Marta.” Her entire catalog, including more than 200 singles, had been confiscated and destroyed by the state. She had disappeared from public view. Her voice that night suddenly flooded the square. Pressing around me were throngs of students, most of whom had not been born when she vanished. They began to sing the words of the anthem. There were tears running down their faces. It was then that I understood the power of rebellion.

He goes on to talk about the professors of languages who rebelled in 68 and who were sent to Bohemia to work on the road crews laying tar and grading road beds.

And as they worked they dedicated each day to one of the languages in which they all were fluent – Latin, Greek, Italian, French, Spanish or German. They argued and fought over their interpretations of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Proust and Cervantes. They remained intellectually and morally alive.

For a history, language and archaeology geek like me, these words are above inspiring.  But go read the rest of the article, and get ready to protest even in the smallest of ways.  Because that is what has to happen.

For more information on the December 16th protest, see the website www.stopthesewars.org.  I will try to find something local going on that day or at least send a few dollars their way.  Maybe the sign guy will be out and I can join him.