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I'm so pleased with Portland!
Jan. 19th, 2003 02:29 pmNo, we didn't participate in the protest yesterday. I won't even say we were there in spirit, because even though I was thinking about it all day, and I was checking the online headlines to see the coverage, I didn't go. And I didn't go for two of the worst reasons: fear and laziness.
Several Portland protests in the past few years have turned violent, and I didn't feel like taking the risk of being involved in a fistfight with a cop, or ending up on the business end of a can of tear gas.
Now that I've confessed that in writing, I'm pretty ashamed of it. The risk to me at a protest against the war is so much less than the risk to all of us if this war takes place. It's a far far lesser risk, undertaken with much much greater choice, than the children of Baghdad have faced every day since January 1991, when our government began bombing their city to get at one guy. One guy we didn't get. One guy our government has been trying to get ever since. In twelve years, our government hasn't touched Saddam Hussein. But our government, and the United Nations, have been responsible for the lives of hundreds or possibly many thousands of Iraqui civilians, including children, lost due to sanctions imposed on that country. The fact that I am aware of these things makes me responsible, too. Responsible to at least show up and register my disapproval.
We show up in different ways. At least 20,000 people showed up Saturday to march in the streets of Portland and speak out against war with Iraq. It took each of them a certain amount of bravery to do so. Six hundred people showed up in downtown Indianapolis that same day, and I'm betting it took most of them even more bravery, because in that part of the country such dissent is like whistling into a hurricane.
Today, just writing this and posting it here where maybe 5 or 10 people will see it is all the bravery I can muster up. But tomorrow, who knows, maybe I'll find more bravery yet.
Several Portland protests in the past few years have turned violent, and I didn't feel like taking the risk of being involved in a fistfight with a cop, or ending up on the business end of a can of tear gas.
Now that I've confessed that in writing, I'm pretty ashamed of it. The risk to me at a protest against the war is so much less than the risk to all of us if this war takes place. It's a far far lesser risk, undertaken with much much greater choice, than the children of Baghdad have faced every day since January 1991, when our government began bombing their city to get at one guy. One guy we didn't get. One guy our government has been trying to get ever since. In twelve years, our government hasn't touched Saddam Hussein. But our government, and the United Nations, have been responsible for the lives of hundreds or possibly many thousands of Iraqui civilians, including children, lost due to sanctions imposed on that country. The fact that I am aware of these things makes me responsible, too. Responsible to at least show up and register my disapproval.
We show up in different ways. At least 20,000 people showed up Saturday to march in the streets of Portland and speak out against war with Iraq. It took each of them a certain amount of bravery to do so. Six hundred people showed up in downtown Indianapolis that same day, and I'm betting it took most of them even more bravery, because in that part of the country such dissent is like whistling into a hurricane.
Today, just writing this and posting it here where maybe 5 or 10 people will see it is all the bravery I can muster up. But tomorrow, who knows, maybe I'll find more bravery yet.
