A Tale of Two Movements Part I
March 23, 2007
This beginning of this week marked the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The end of this week marked the 3,233rd death of an American soldier and the deaths of at least 59,408 Iraqis. In San Francisco, the anti-war movement marked the occasion in much the same manner it did the invasion—a series of non-violent civil disobediences (“die-ins”) that shut down key intersections of the financial district.
I was one of about five dozen people who were arrested for refusing to move out of the intersection of fifth and Powell when told to do so by the police. At 850 Bryant (SF’s southern police station), protesters were placed into small corrals made out of police barricades and never even saw the inside of the station. All were promptly cited and released by officers who were by the most part, very restrained, professional, and polite.
Non-violent civil disobedience seemed to me the least we could do, at least to send a message that somebody in San Francisco wasn’t waiting for the Democrats to swing low a sweet chariot. The organizers of the event pulled off a disciplined, creative action that momentarily injected some political clarity into the evening news.
Yet I left the police station with a cloud of dissatisfaction over my bald head. I was emotionally prepared to commit a symbolic act of defiance, in hopes that the symbol could give rise to substance. It took me an entire day to fully comprehend what had bothered me so deeply.
That realization hit me on lunch hour the next day. I attended a press conference for the People’s Budget Campaign, at City Hall. The People’s Budget is an ambitious project in which dozens of community groups from all over San Francisco draft a “shadow city budget” based on human needs and unite for a budget that actually increases spending on healthcare, housing, and community safety. The groups represented here are the ones I have worked and struggled with for the past decade and a half. These are the people who fight the good right everyday because their very survival depends on it. (eg PODER, Coalition On Homelessness, SF Organizing Project, CLAER).
Suffice to say that the $410,825,804,723 spent on just the Iraq war could fund every item of the People’s Budget; in fact thousands of People’s Budgets in every city. Very clearly, the cost of US imperialism is exacted both here and abroad. Yet in a time when large populist movements must be built; the word “fractured” doesn’t even begin to describe what it going on.
More like segregated.
Yes, segregation. We have separate movements. One has to find ways just to survive, squeezing little drops of sanity from a municipal budget. The people at this rally represented the rainbow of the urban working-class. There were a quite a few allies, but it was obvious that the People’s Budget was deeply rooted in the neighborhoods. On the other side of the colorline, the classline and the generation line was the anti-war movement. If you think it is possible for one group to stop a war, or to transform a city, then I guess this is no big deal.
I bring this up not to guilt-trip or to point fingers.I would gladly be arrested again and again in the company of these brave people if it could end the war a minute earlier. However, how effective can a “movement” be with this many degrees of separation?
In the next post I’m going to explore tangible ways to bring the domestic fight against empire together with the international fight against empire. I’m interested in hearing your ideas.
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On my reading list this week:
Left Turn Magazine #24
“The War at Home” by Francis Fox Piven
“The Cost of Privilege: Taking On the System of White Supremacy and Racism” by Chip Smith
