"End the Occupation of Iraq and Manhattan"

Reflecting on the August 29, 2004 March in New York City

The march through mid Manhattan on Sunday, August 29, 2004 (see also here) was a welcome surprise. Over 500,000 people came to express their dissatisfaction with the Bush administration and the continuing occupation of Iraq. People came from around the country. One person I met going to the march said he was from Crawford, Texas. He was for peace. He had no one to vote for in the upcoming election as neither Kerry nor Bush were for peace. So he came to New York City with his sign to be part of this march.

The march gave people a chance to make signs, signs that expressed their views. Among the signs were many against the continuing occupation of Iraq by the US, signs against the US attacking North Korea or other countries, signs supporting the Palestinian people in their fight against the occupation of their lands, signs mocking Bush and his cabinet, and showing them with long noses, symbolic of the lies they have been telling the American people and the world. Also there were many signs about 9-11, indicting Bush for not acting on information that could have stopped the attack on the WTC, and signs criticizing the Republican Party for coming to NYC with their Convention to take political advantage of the 9-11 tragedy.1.

The march took place on a hot Sunday summer morning and afternoon. Many of those participating arrived by 10:00 am to line up for the march. The march was still going at 4:30 pm when we left. People traveled from California, Texas, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to name a few of the states represented. There were also Canadians participating. One Canadian said that this was the largest march she had ever taken part in. Signs like "Brits for Peace" indicated that there were those from other countries as well.

While there were a few groups focused on getting Bush out of the White House, and some holding banners or signs for Kerry and Edwards, this was a minority sentiment among the marchers. Instead the fact that there is no anti war candidate or platform offered by the Democratic Party, leaves a significant strata of the American public without any way to have a government that represents their views.

One reporter asked a marcher from New Jersey how he felt about the media. The person said he hoped the media would change and reflect more of the actual views of the people as were being expressed at the march. Others were more vocal in their dissatisfaction with the US media. When marchers passed a Fox news truck, they shouted "Fox News Sucks" 2.

In the weeks leading up to the march, there had been debates on progressive media like "Democracy Now" about whether it would hurt the fight against Bush to protest, or whether this would play into the hands of the Republican Party. The American writer Norman Mailer was featured saying that Americans shouldn't protest, unless the protest was very big. The Canadian journalist Naomi Klein challenged views like this and said that it was all the more important to protest since both the Democrats and the Republicans are promising to continue the occupation of Iraq.

What the protest march showed, however, is that there is a strong sentiment in the US, that is not limited to New York, which opposes the war and the torture and the other war crimes of the Bush administration, and which doesn't want another presidential candidate who promises to take over these crimes. There is an independent movement of people in the US who are not being represented by either of the political parties. This demonstrates the failure of the political system in the US as a democracy.

The lack of an independent online press like Telepolis in Germany or Ohmynews in Korea, is a serious dilemma faced by this movement. While there are new media efforts developing like Indymedia and local newspapers like the Brooklyn Rail in NY, or Democracy Now/WBAI on cable tv, radio, and the Internet, none of these are broad enough to reach out to and encourage the broad ranging expression of views and discussion that is needed to challenge the domination of the US press by the conservative media.

In the 1960s the young Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) saw the need for a more participatory theory and practice as a way to encourage the development of a creative movement for social change in the US. SDS recognized that people in the US had given up trying to affect their political institutions because these institutions were so unresponsive to the people they were supposed to represent. SDS believed the way to change the situation was not to complain that people were apathetic, but to challenge the continuation of institutions that denied people a way to have an impact. A movement to develop new institutions that welcomed citizen participation was the goal set 3. This helped to develop a movement that included millions of Americans and eventually, with support from people around the world, helped the Vietnamese to end the Vietnam war.

The lessons from the 1960s are that it takes a broad ranging democratic movement, a movement of people around the world, to challenge the power and actions of the US corporations and the US government. The march on Sunday, August 29, 2004 is a flicker of light to guide one through the dark tunnel that has engulfed the world since the Bush regime took the 9-11 2001 tragedy as their pretext to wage war against innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, and against the civil liberties of the people in the US. This has set a precedent followed to a greater or lessor degree by other governments around the world. The Republican Party planned its convention in NYC to continue this abuse of the tragedy of 9-11. But more than 1/2 million people came to march on August 29 to let them know that their plan would not go unchallenged. Reflecting the sentiment of many who marched on August 29, one sign read: "End the occupation of Iraq and Manhattan."

See also our Blog covering the National Convention of the Republican Party Wenn der Arnie mit der Laura