MiKE: bombing for peace is like raping for love

We attended the anti-war (open air) rally and the march today. The march culminated in an indoor rally in a church, but we did not want to attend it, and left to go take a romp through High Park before the snow melted instead. I suppose there are obvious comparisons between Chee Soon Juan and co.'s 6 + approx 2 dozen demonstrators and the over one thousand people here in Toronto, and many more in cities all over Canada. For one, they were held at the same day - Mar 15, but then it all diverges - here, the protest is about war, there, rising costs. Here, police were present to help ensure the safety of protesters, there, the police were present to arrest the 'ringleaders'. Well, to be sure, I was not in singapore, and did not bother to read the articles beyond the headline and google news summary that 6 people were arrested (what's new about that?). So, I suppose, I shall limit my comments about that incident.

The outdoor rally at Queen's Park, where the Parliament house is, was scheduled to take place at about 1pm. As usual, our procrastinating tactics got the better of us, and we only managed to get there 15 minutes late. Still, it was good enough. Even though the temperatures were a cool 3-5C, the sun was blazing bright against a perfectly blue cloudless sky, and we soon felt as if our necks and faces were going to get sunburnt if we stayed out any longer than necessary. The sound system, or rather, the lack of it, at Queen's Park, meant that it was hard to hear what the speakers had to say. We were offered picket signs, but we did not take one up, because we felt that it would be a problem with disposal of the sticks after the protest was done, and also, at least speaking for myself, I felt like a spectator here, and not really a protester, even though my feelings were in unity with them. I have more to say about this, but first, the picture stream?

The protest march was centred on the condemnation of the federal government's decision to extend the mission in Afghanistan till 2011, without dialogue, consultation or discussion, in public or in parliament. There has been recent strong anti-war sentiments, and it seems that, like in many places in the world, goodwill generated in support of an offensive mission in Afghanistan post-911 was squandered away in the hubris associated with the specious case made for the invasion ('liberation', 'surgical strike', choose your euphemism) of Iraq; and along with it, a gradual awakening to the possibility that, after all that saber rattling, the case for Afghanistan could be similarly hollow. Canada has a force of about 2500 troops in Kandahar, and there is public demand for the role of these troops to shift from the NATO (read, US led) 'anti-terrorist' action to a nation building, peacekeeping capacity, as you can see the placards:





One of the messages that was being chanted by the crowds was "War is not the answer! Housing not bombs!", just in case some of the placard needed explanation...

As I mentioned, perfect blue skies. Ok, there were a few clouds, but they did not do much to obscure the blazing sun:


Then, at about 1:30, after some speeches, the march started. The route took us north along Avenue Road, making a left turn at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), and continuing west on Bloor Street till the church where they held the indoor rally. As you can see from some of the placards, the message was not just "Troops out of Afghanistan", it also included demands to end the siege of Gaza, messages of conspiracy: "911 was an inside job", appeals to not start aggression in Iran, and of course, an end to the Iraq mission.



The sign on the right was interesting. I managed to get a close up of it a bit later:
Perhaps the placard was not terribly effective due to its smallish fonts, but for those who could read it, it was certainly powerful; very often, people forget that the entire venture was an illegal one, and unfortunately, just like how it can be hard to stand up to the schoolyard bully, the rest of the world seems to be powerless to stop this.

At one point, the march went past McDonald's on Bloor street, the one just opposite the ROM. I suppose the siting strategy for McDonald's cannot be faulted - place one as close as you can to tourist landmarks, so as to increase the chances of it being photographed, and also so that it can serve hungry tourists who know the standard taste of McDonald's everywhere in the world. To me, what was interesting was the juxtaposition of the stereotype corporate symbol and the messages of anti-war. Like I said, I'll elaborate on this below.

Also, we passed by a condominium project; see the badges of conspicuous consumption:

And an interesting placard:



I like this picture:


The march went past OISE, and someone decided to place a placard next to the sign:

And in what tread a very fine line to animal abuse (animals protesting political positions?), we saw this dog, which was, as you can see, in the midst of... expressing itself. It was powerful - we were about 2-3 metres away, and could sense it almost immediately.

At one point, the march went past the Miles Nadal Jewish Community centre, the glass and aluminium building you see in the background below; given that there were pro-Palestine sentiments within the crowd, from what seemed like Palestinian immigrants, I wondered about the off-chance of violence. I mean, the crowd was very peaceful; not angry at all, no clash with police or public bystanders; I did not even notice pro-war protesters, which could spark conflicts. Generally, what we saw were drivers who, stuck in traffic, were actually happy to honk their horns and flash V signs, in support of the cause.

And finally, the placard that gave this post its title:

Ok, some thoughts:

The first thing that came to my mind was the effectiveness of such protests. I read today news reports quoting the organizers claiming that the Vietnam war was stopped by protests such as these. Still, I wonder; especially in neo-con dominated US, how powerful protests can be, since the public is usually up against very powerful media machines which help to define the norms and terms of discussion: note how, post 911, any discussion whatsoever that was not 'pro-America', any discussion that tried to wake the country up from the collective amnesia and remind the people of the historicity of the conflict were automatically labelled 'unpatriotic' and dismissed wholesale.

I realised that far too often, the vast majority of people are not comfortable with tenuousness, tentative judgment, position shift in the light of new evidence; in short, most people want black and white, and, dare I say it, simple minded, childish certainty (as an aside, this also explains many (not all) people's attraction to simple, B&W moral rules established by religions, rather than general moral principles which need thought in their application with in different contexts). As it is then, many people would find the balanced liberal progressive position uncomfortable, and instead find comfort in the hardline, binary right and wrong, 'clear cut' distinctions.

I also felt that perhaps the complexity of the issues were not acknowledged; for one, I wonder if the demonstrators realised that their very way of life could be dependent on what they are demonstrating against. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but think about it - Is it not strange, the very fact that they (we?) are able here to hold a demonstration with cheap ("free") professionally printed placards stapled on fresh (not reused) wooden stakes, in a city with a police force to maintain law and order? Where do these resources come from? Someone paid for them. Yes. Where did this money come from? It came from the accumulated wealth of a group of people. Why should it be that this group can accumulate this wealth, when there are fellow human beings suffering, in their (our?) own communities, let alone internationally? Especially in the US, where much of the way of life is maintained by externalising the costs of products to communities outside of the borders (e.g. underpaying the Latin American farmers, the Chinese sweatshop workers, and Indian call centre operators), the situation is rather perverse, as some of the objections to such arrangements are smoothed away with armed force, obscured from the public view or blatantly spun into the more palatable narratives of 'feeding the poor', 'quelling a peasant uprising', 'regime change', 'spreading democracy' [1] or 'fighting terrorism'. For the man-in-the-street, it is hard not to become self-centred, fat and ugly.

Ultimately, I feel that the demonstration was useful, if only because I have insufficient imagination to consider an alternative. I think, even in this part of the world, there is still a lot of way to go to achieve participatory democracy rather than the representative democracy that is extant now. The problem of war, especially unjust wars like Iraq especially, and Afghanistan, require that we who have a conscience stand up and speak out against leaders who are ostensibly our representatives. If the institutions of power remain unconverted, at the very least an attempt was made, and one at least gets to say that such actions are not made 'in my name'.

[1] 'spreading democracy' always reminds me of a quip I once read some time back but whose detail I forget; it involves spreading religion, with a knife, as if it were peanut butter or something.