By patriotism, I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world, but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand,, is inseparable from the desire for power." --George Orwell (1945)

Our Web Log for the Weekend:

_______________( dan ) Jan 31, 2002 10:33:36_______________ Out in a tame portion of Brooklyn late this AM I saw him on the subway plaform. Gym class grey sweatshirt and sweatpants. The latter tucked into shiny new GI-issue black boots. A black vest of the sort that photographers or adventurers or people on the Discovery Channel wear. It was brimming with pockets and sat loosely over his ample torso. Black wrap-around shades that cost more than my entire outfit. A black baseball cap. He was doodling on a palm pilot. Also in attendance were 3 hip young guys fresh from MTV. A light-skinned brother, a mousey white guy and an edgy asian. They were obviously from out of town, but effected a cool attitude. Their clothes were earth-toned, but not terribly so. They were confident and relaxed, the brother engaging the local Turrets senior briefly. They sat in different rows on the subway, once it finally came. All this could be normal. I"ve certainly seen worse. And better. But this weekend is special and I think it has begun. _______________( dan ) Jan 31, 2002 11:00:14_______________ Manhattan is once again locked down. The police presence is intended to be reassuring, but this time is different. We"re not being protected from zealots and their explosive Nikes. The plutocrats are in town and they need protecting. Quite right. Protection from me? I"m a capitalist. I believe in economics. I have a sociology degree, and in addition to reading Marx, I found his Achilles heel. He didn"t understand technology. And yet I am the enemy. I believe the bottom quarter doesn"t deserve its lot in life. The upper quarter has lots to spare. We don"t have to eat them; we could simply gorge on their fat. The current administration has the exact opposite view. Instead of increasing the inheritance tax to 100%, they propose eliminating it. Our civil liberties, hard-won over decades of battle, are being eroded in the misguided notion that safer is better. Wrong! Freedom is better. The not-so-funny irony is that we are comfortable with trading freedom for security. And so deserve neither. I will be exercising all my First Amendment rights this weekend. I will resist the treasonous capitulation to our country"s enemies. I will celebrate what makes us great: our liberty. ________________( dan ) Feb 1, 2002 21:50:12________________ The kickoff gathering Friday night is a vigil organized by the Pagan Cluster. Washington Square Park is ringed with cops. The acronyms on their jackets are a real alphabet soup: TARU, DCPI, BCCA, etc. Al and Patrick and I get there about an hour into the group hug/humming session. On the way in we must walk a 10-12 deep contingent of police down a narrow corridor. Al reminds me not to jay-walk. This will be hard for me, as that"s my favorite urban sport. The crowd is mellow and friendly. We circulate to get a sense of what"s happening. People are passing out flyers and leaflets (is there a difference?) and generally schmoozing. One guy is talking up a revolutionary bookstore and we engage him. After a couple dozen questions he can"t answer, he turns and leaves. We hardly notice as we are still debating the answers we never got. The crowd was small, barely an eighth of the park. Albert notes that the Anarchists would have shown up in number, but were having organizational problems. He shows no hint of sarcasm. "You know that I"m going to quote you ..." He erupts in laughter. I notice one fellow who is the spitting image of Bill Gaines standing amidst many cops, wearing a FDNY cap, smiling broadly and carrying a hand-lettered sign reading "Revolution". Al has his picture taken behind a phalanx of police from the TARU clan (Terrorist Attack Response Unit). Patrick, Al and I are discussing how the crowd is dispersing. Albert leans into our trio and announces "Cover me while I put out this cigarette." Patrick responds conspiratorially to me, "Let"s start a fight as a diversion." We are hungry and have too little stimulation. ________________( dan ) Feb 2, 2002 18:29:18________________ The promise: 500+ couples Tangoing down Broadway from Columbus Circle, ensnarling traffic for miles. The reality was just a bait-and-switch. No dancing, but lots of fun with the counter-cultural elements that make these events interesting. The umbrella rubric of "anti-globalization" tells us little about any particular group. And the sheer number of groups defies any commonality. You have (in no particular order): anti-capitalists, socialists, anti-Enron, pro-Argentina, pro-Cuba, anti-energy-companies, abortion rights, anti-death penalty, free Mumia, anti-sweatshops, pro-environment, anti-Gap/Banana Republic/Starbucks/etc, AIDS activists, pro-First Amendment, cancel the debt, free Burma, anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian, anti-Cointreau (yes, the liquor), anti-WTO/IMF/WEF/G8, and for good measure, one guy who advocated boycotting all corporations. You can"t be too careful. Al and I got there right at 11:30 and did our circulate thing. As last night, I was wearing my large fleece Rasta hat. It was much more lively today (read: edgy). Folks were out to make points, peacefully, and didn"t mind a little attention from NY"s finest. After one guy climbed a statue and taped signs into it"s hands, the cops moved in and disbanded the crowd that had assembled on the statue complex. One sign read "Eat Bush," the other was the Texaco logo with two black eye slits drawn on the uppermost white triangle. There was a long line of impassive police preventing people from wandering into the traffic circle. Folks weren"t paying much attention to them, with one exception. A well-dressed fellow was yelling his head off, walking up and down, giving them what for. We really couldn"t follow what, precisely, he was saying, except that the word "treason" kept coming up. We never did learn if he was pro- or anti-globalization. There were organized medical and legal corps. The medics all wore crosses made of red duct-tape. The legal eagles wore ties under their jackets. It was quite cold (read: normal for winter, historically speaking, cold for the recent past, doh!) Some of the legal corps were handing out small wooden pencils (like those used to score miniature golf). They were emblazoned with the free support number and designed to be kept when incarcerated (even though they had a point). More leafleteers were in evidence. One passed Al a flyer that had a huge image of "I <bomb w/lit fuse> NY". Albert did what we saw everyone do when they saw what they"d accepted. He folded it up immediately and tried to stick it in a pocket. In Al"s case, he tried to put it in my pocket. The actual march started after rumors of a tripod had been disabused. A tripod, btw, is a protest tactic that has people climb up wooden poles 20+ feet high and positioned like a tripod. The cops usually don"t want to disturb the structure for fear of the people falling and getting hurt. I saw one once in my neighborhood several years ago when there was an organized effort and resistance to, dismantling the community gardens in the East Village. We marched, several thousand strong thru Central Park and out into midtown from the SE corner (5th Ave). We found the anarchist cheerleaders quickly. Al was at least as interested in them as getting into trouble. Maybe that"s redundant? We ducked out to get some grub at a deli and at Al"s suggestion, I bought a bunch of Gatorade for them. We emerged from the deli to find the march had come to us. We rejoined it and started looking for the telltale pom-poms. Once we had found them, their reaction was warm. "Riiighhhtt On!" They all gave Al an appreciative hug and peck on the cheek. He was glowing. We finally settled in for most of the march just in front of one of the percussion sections. The rhythm was infectious and made for a happy pace. Just ahead of us was the synchronized cyclist brigade, walking their bikes in wheelies to the beat. They made a point to try to recruit all the cyclist cops along the route. "Come join us. You"re one of us, not them..." Various "normal" folks had to cross our paths. One ancient woman with a recently electrified hair-helmet looked as if she were wading in among sleeping piranha. She tip-toed rapidly with an alarmed expression. One cop in the endless sequence lining our route told me "nice hat!" He was grinning and I thanked him. A fat guy waddled down the street in the opposite direction, picking people out from our crowd and yelling at them "You shoulda been in the towers, asshole!" One jogging woman, when offered a flyer, wore a disgusted look that said "as if!" And so, with periodic calls to "hug a tree" (there are only a few trees on the route) and lots of chanting "Whose streets? Our streets!" (my favorite variation on this was: Whose world? Wayne"s world!), we made our way back to Park Ave and headed North to the site of the main protest. The permit was supposedly good until 9pm. I should note that there were two main groups marching. One (going first, as far as I could tell), was a narrowly anti-war group. The one Al and I came for was organized by Another World is Possible. This was moot as police cut the march in two, blocking most, if not all, of the AWIP folks from getting anywhere near the main site. No reason was given to us. About 4:20, we left, but even that took 30 minutes to effect. As we left, a guy walked down to the mass of waiting marchers (still hopeful of getting through) and used his megaphone: "When megaphones are outlawed, only outlaws will have megaphones." True. ________________( dan ) Feb 2, 2002 20:05:34________________ I met my friend Miles at the Indy Media center. I had some photos, newly digitized for whomever wanted them. I had to join to get in, but that seems right. It's past time we all were witnesses to and for our country. There was a huge hotjobs.com poster (circa 2000) of the twin towers with the phrase "Playground of the Brave" emblazoned. Indeed.

Check out the album of our day.

"Crazy madness is all I see out my window,
it doesn't matter who's the president, yo."
--Guru

"What is wrong with America?" Scott asks.

He will hold me to a high standard. That's good, but I'm not ready to commit to an answer.

There are times (more recently) when I sincerely question whether I belong here. Trouble is, everywhere else is worse. What I long to be free of (political selfishness) is epidemic in humans. Besides, this is my home. It's my mess. And it is a mess.

There are many things and reasons to protest. The one assessment of ourselves we all agree on 100% is that things aren't perfect. So, what of the various causes that braved a cold February Saturday in the concrete canyons of Manhattan?

Scott continues: "Our religion has led us astray. I mean capitalism, of course."

Anti-capitalist? As I walked the paved-over land that was bought for $24 (transparent markets are better for the little guy, eh?), I was struck by the overwhelming hypocrisy of the anti-capitalist movement. It's not just that radical socialists and communists are too idealistic. It's that they fail to learn the lessons of history. Competition plays a central role in our psyche. It's symptomatic of the way we ill-tolerate complexity in social thinking to say that competition excludes cooperation. The truth of their interdependence is manifest all around us.

Competition is fundamental in nature. So is cooperation. Why revile one and praise the other? The parameters of capitalism are as open to our interpretation as the Constitution. This power we shrink from. Exhalting community over profits throws the baby out with the bath water, while the reverse is contrary to our best interests.

But it's most important to abandon the simplistic all-or-nothing approach to seeming contradictions. Life is infinitely richer than that.

We have a failure of process. We are terrible at it. See what our religions have taught us? Faith in Authority: denigration of critical thinking skills. Among the myths is "original intent". We are obviously unable to decide for ourselves. Try this: see the founding fathers as they really were: godless revolutionaries (no wonder we feared communism so much: the American Revolution was the only successful revolution in history). Their wisdom should be our guide, not our master. It's the idea of America that is important.

That said, even the marchers were awash in corporate logos.

All societies alienate some of their members. They either organize or die slow deaths. If organized, they will succeed to some degree. At worst it will merely salve the open wound of their suffering. Principled dissent and patriotic resistance are indispensible for a nation's (and our own) health.

"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent... The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

--Louis Brandeis

Anti-war? Only the most idealistic person could believe war is merely a dysfunction. It's our third most potent drive, and not always a bad thing. There are people of ill will out there. Sometimes it does come down to us or them. A philosophy that violence is always wrong fails. Much is made of the Great Soul's success in India, but he did not act in a vacuum. There was much threat from parallel factions. And the numbers weren't promising for the colonials.

Anti-Israel? Please. Peace has always been solely in the hands of her neighbors. Some have wanted it, others perhaps never will. I don't wish any ill on the Palestinian people, and I think their grief is genuine. But .. I don't see a solution that satisfies their requirements and Israel's security. In that conflict, I take Israel's side. I believe they want peace. No one has yet called their bluff, if that's what it is.

In the largest sense, if we take the view that it's all about money, then it's easily resolved. Once we finally undo the last 3 centuries of lower class rape and redistribute a bunch of the ill-gotten wealth, we can finally get down to warring over the really important things that naturally divide us: religion and sports.

"So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs. "

--Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Free Burma? Of course. Governments not chosen by their people are abominations.

And we must aspire to the same standards here at home. GWB may be my president, but he wasn't duly elected. The harm caused there will take a generation to heal. That's not to mention the wholesale reversal of environmental regulation designed to merely stave off our demise by a few score years. We will all pay, regardless of who voted for whom.

I'm always in the middle. In Law School, I was a charter member of our chapter of Amnesty International. At one meeting they held a long discussion (in my presence) about whether I could be a member without publicly declaring myself anti-death-penalty. I will always be in the middle, even if the center doesn't hold.

Pro-environment? Nature is not a loving mother. It couldn't care less about us. It has thrown up whole worlds that have been gone longer than we've been crawling around up here. It won't miss us when we're gone. We are our only hope for survival. And that's the worst news of all.

"Life is a long lesson in humility."

-- J. M. Barrie

As Kent Brockman (an unlikely symbol of enduring belief) put it, "Once again, I've been had." I'm disappointed not only in my fellow citizens, but myself for believing in "better" as a possible destination.

The Buddha teaches many wonderful things, but the truth most important to me is that life is suffering, but we should participate in it joyfully.

Next weekend I'm snowboarding.

"The more we live by our intellect,
the less we understand the meaning of life."

-- Leo Tolstoi

Tom Paine

Another World is Possible

Protest.NET