March 21, 2003

• I went to the response protest yesterday. It was a pretty incredible turnout for cold rainy weather on a week night – at least 5x larger than anything I’ve ever seen during the week. I heard somewhere over 5200 ppl showed up.
  
  Incidently, I heard that Blair called Bush yesterday and “expressed his strong disappointment with the fact that the British military and political leadership was informed about the planned start of the combat operations just 20 minutes before the first air strike. Blair called this decision by Bush ‘unfriendly’ and characterized the US actions as a breach of trust between the two allies.”
  
  Great.
  
  One of the toughest things about protests is that there are people there who I completely disagree with. At an anti war protest, you’ll get people who are disgruntled Democrats who are anti-bush (never mind that Clinton was bombing Iraq 3x/week in the late 90s), you’ll get the hard core “purist” anarchists who are against any form of hierarchy or state, you’ll get socialist anarchists who are against any coercive state actions, you’ll get people who just like making noise, you’ll get people who are pissed off at the government for whatever reason, you’ll get people who are looking to mix it up with the cops, you’ll get patriot libertarians, you’ll get isolationists, you’ll get all kinds of people.
  
  Some of these people I disagree heavily with, some I agree with. Some people carry signs that really tick me off and some chants I definitely disagree with.
  
  Its hard to deal with, and its where progressives and radicals always get into trouble – if their allies are not “ideologically pure”, they can’t be allies. For example, I think animals should be treated well, but PETA really wouldn’t want me around ’cause I wear leather boots, a leather jacket, and eat meat.
  
  *heh* reminds me of a joke!
  
  

  Why do animal rights activists focus more on fur than leather?
  
  Because it is safer to throw paint on old ladies in fur jackets than on biker gangs!

  
  Well, I can either wait for the other three people in the world who think exactly like me or I can stand up when I feel it is right and explain the difference between my point of view and other protesters points of view when people challenge me on it.
  
  I was glad to see that a large number of the demonstrators yesterday had some sort of “Support our troops” theme going. The one that really got me was a group of people who had “Bring XXX Home” where I assume that XXX was a brother or loved one currently in the Gulf.
  
  As I think about the friends and friends of friends over there right now, I just hope they all come home safe. And soon.
  
  …
  
  So, anyway, the rest of the evening was really nice.
  
  Joy came over and hung out. We were thinking of going somewhere to meet a couple more people and hang out, but for various reasons that didn’t work out. One of these days, hopefully!
  
  Instead, we cooked dinner and we watched a “Young Ones” tape that a coworker lent me. Now I’ve watched some brit comedy before, but this was really … um… something. Joy assures me that to properly appreciate it I would have needed to be drunk. I tend to concurr.
  
  All in all, it was nice mellow evening in. Conversation and all that. It was good.
  
  Namaste

  • 10:09 am
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