Yesterday, in San Francisco, I found an anti-war protest marching down 2nd Street between Market and Mission. There was a lot of chanting, plenty of handmade signs, and a person or two with kerchiefs over their faces. All in all, the slice of protest that I saw was peaceful. Not so the reactions I witnessed to it. The first hint of discord was a twenty-something woman in a business suit standing alongside her taxi, half-in, half-out, in the open door, screaming incoherently in the direction of the march at the intersection of Mission and 2nd. "Get the fuck out of my way," was the jist of her freedom of speech. Overhead, police and news helicopters flew.
Later, at GGU, where I teach on Thursday nights, on the plaza level, getting a coffee, I noticed through a window, a large screen TV in the student lounge: on it, surreally, was a shot from a news helicopter shooting down on the march. I couldn't hear what the voice over was saying, but it was strange that folks would watch an event happening about half a block from where they were on TV rather than walk over and watch it for real, without apropos soundbites.
As I sat sipping my coffee and eating a cookie, one of my students, an American citizen, sat down, said hello, and then asked nobody in particular, why none of these rioters demonstrated after 9/11. I answered innocently if there were in fact no demonstrations after 9/11. He looked at me shocked, as though I'd spit on him. He thought it was worse than a shame that these rioters were getting all this attention. I asked him if he had a problem with the US constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, suggesting he move elesewhere if he was upset. This time he looked at me as though I'd landed from Mars and had just vomited on the flag.
Before class started, another one of my students wondered out loud in class about the violence of the rioters. I asked her if our anti-war demonstrations were more violent than political demonstrations in her home country of Peru (where I happen to have relatives). She started talking about how at home, the Shining Path (sendero luminoso) people don't demonstrate: they just blow things up. Things and people.
When I got home later that night, the news was all agog with ex-miltary consultants (who it seemed had all served in Gulf War I) explaining how Tomahawk cruise missles had improved in a dozen years of R&D. Shots of police facing off with angry, violent demonstrators in San Francisco looked more real than any of the folks I saw marching along, upsetting business women returning to their hotels in the early evening.
My rhetorical question: "Should people have demonstrated after 9/11, because their government was somehow involved in the acts of terror, as it is now involved in a war which they think is morally and politically wrong?"