What Does It All Mean? |
I thought it was a really good experience for my first protest march. It was peaceful and orderly and I had no problems at all. You might think that a huge protest march would have both positive and negative aspects, but for me, this march had no negatives at all.
On the positive side, it was so satisfying to see so many people vocally and publicly announcing their dislike (and even hatred) for Bush and his terrible policies. Although a protest march like this in New York City is like preaching to the choir, hopefully the media will pick up on it so the rest of the world can see that it's not all smooth sailing for Bush and the Republicans, despite the smoothly packaged message from the convention. There are a lot of people, including good people and ordinary people, who are seriously disaffected by the ruinous Bush administration policies.
It was also fun to hang out with true-blue New Yorkers, who are so very willing to let it all hang out and be 100% "out there". Even though I was very mild-mannered (as usual), there were lots of radical and outrageous people who enjoyed flaunting their radicalness and outrageousness very publicly. The spectrum of people and ideas in New York City is so vast, with all types of people and all types of ideas, it is like a world in itself. By comparison, Baltimore is a feeble little outpost of industrial squalor. We can hardly get up a bunch of "ordinary" protesters, never mind the outrageous "out there" protesters who make New York City famous/notorious. So it was very interesting and enjoyable to see how a protest march should really happen, by observing the true masters of protest marches, liberal New Yorkers.
And to see it all happen, in such massive numbers but without ANY visible problems (despite a huge police presence) is such a great thing—peaceable assembly and democracy in action, at its finest. Way to go, New York! Of course, I read online that the rest of the convention might not be so peaceable. Some people were intimating that it could be as violent and disruptive as the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, which was a brutal enterprise.
We shall see—I think the Republican Party lackeys and shills who will inhabit Madison Square Garden during the convention really do deserve to be symbolically, emotionally, and politically "roughed-up" (though not physically) just so it sinks into their self-righteous skulls that they don't have all the answers. In fact in some areas, they don't have any answers. So Bush, read our lips: you screwed up, big time, and YOU'RE FIRED!
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