When I was younger, I used to constantly ask my parents about their days as anti-war protestors. I wanted to know what it was like to be a college student when an unfair war was going on, when the government was making colossal mistakes that could even cost people their lives.
They used to answer my questions politely, but would say things, like “I don’t know,” “I don’t remember,” “Caroline, don’t you have something better to do?”
Finally one day, my father told me the truth. He said: “Look, Caroline, the world goes on. You can be against a war, and you can go to protests, but you still have to live your life. We did what we could, but we were just normal people.”
Now, years later, this statement would be true except nobody seems to be getting involved in the anti-war movement. I thought the world was going to stop when Congress voted to give the president power to invade Iraq. It didn’t. I thought campuses across the country would explode in riots like after the Kent State riots. They didn’t. I thought the anti-war groups would be contacting everyone, telling them to come to Marsh Plaza Friday to fight against the war. But nobody cared.
There may be an anti-war movement going on across the country and maybe even in Boston, but it hasn’t been noticeable at all. I see signs around campus saying when a protest will be held, but when I arrive at the designated location, nobody is there. Or, I read about a protest the next day in the newspaper, without ever having heard about the protest in the first place. Today, I even saw signs for two different events on the same day.
On Oct. 4, protesters lined the streets outside the Seaport Hotel in South Boston to meet with President Bush after a meeting with gubernatorial candidate Mitt Romney. About 300 people showed up for a two-hour protest, but they never saw the president. The only people to come out of the hotel that day were Romney’s campaign supporters.
Later that same evening, about 1,500 protesters marched from Atlantic Avenue to Boston, where President Bush was supposed to be until he changed his schedule. Nobody suggested moving to where the president actually was; they just marched by citizens of Boston.
I didn’t hear anything about these protests until Oct. 3, when my friend told me she was going to be demonstrating against the war tomorrow. But what she did is what is at the problem at the heart of the anti-war movement. While she went to the protest, she made sure to leave by the time she had class. Against the war or not, she couldn’t miss class. She also didn’t bother to tell her other friends or even me to come with her; she just said she was going. She didn’t really care about gathering a large crowd to the protest.
The anti-war movement now does not try to draw anyone new to their protests. They make sure the scheduled protests fit in with their schedule.
Last year, during the war in Afghanistan, I wrote an article on the anti-war movement. One of the anti-war group leaders actually said the protests have slowed because all the students had midterms and finals, and all these leaders were just too busy to organize anything else.
I wanted to hang up the phone. How much do these people care about ending the war if they can’t even miss a night of studying?
Nobody even cares about getting anyone else involved. Nobody is trying to get anyone else involved. Protesters seem to have a feeling that they’re doing their part and that’s all they need to do. Everyone seems to think their job is over once they protest, and that’s the end. I attended a Students Unite for Peace meeting, and the president had no interest in spreading word about a future protest. She kept saying she didn’t care how many people came, she still wanted to protest.
The point of protesting this war is not just to protest. The point is not to be a martyr for a cause. The point is putting a stop to the war. This war needs to be stopped, and this country can work together to stop this war. But holding a few protests each week, where a few people show up to each one, is not effective at all. No message is reaching anybody by having a large numbers of protests.
Anti-war groups need to begin things like teach-ins and phone chains. If everybody who is participating in a protest called 10 people and got just one of them to call another 10, they could reach so many more people. If they begin holding teach-ins to tell the average person about the war, they will be educating so many others.
Not in Our Name, a New York-based anti-war group, told The Washington Post it has received 25,000 hits on its website and 1,000 emails per day about the war. They organized about 40 separate protests on Oct. 6, The Washington Post reported.
Oct. 6 was supposed to be a day marked by protests. I actually heard about a protest in New York, and I also heard there were going to organized trips to New York for this trip. But that’s all I heard. I never heard of any specific trips, of who was organizing the protest and how many people were involved.
The Boston Globe reported around 15,000 people showed up for the protest in New York. The Globe also reported about 2,000 here in Boston and another 3,000 in L.A. That is pretty impressive.
If the anti-war movement keeps trying to expand, they can build up on these numbers and stop the war. This is the time when we can stop the war. This is the time for people to begin working against the war.
I haven’t been active in protesting against the war because the superficiality of the protests bothers me. I want to be involved, but I have yet to be convinced that anyone cares about ending the war, not their own agenda. The anti-war movement needs to get their act together.
When they start working toward getting more people involved and organizing the protests better, more normal people will be doing what they can to stop the war.