Another day in the last superpower

It is not easy for a shy person to walk down the street with a sign on her back; it is just as hard for the same middle-aged American woman who remembers the Vietnam war to carry an American flag. And I certainly did not want people to think I supported this new war.

The night before my third peace march, I stopped at the local arts and crafts mega store to buy American flags. I bought three flags, plastic and stapled to sticks, one for me and one for each of my friends.

Next day, I parked and put on my pink jacket, as in Code Pink, the colour for peace these days. On the back of my jacket I had pinned a sign, ‘Another patriot for peace.’ Patriotism is a hard concept to embody as I have never found it trustworthy. Patriotism: my country is the best in the world. Patriotism: my country before all others. Patriotism: my country right or wrong. Patriotism: love it or leave it. Patriotism: agree or be punished. But I put that sign on the back of my jacket, stepped out of the car and carried the flags to meet my friends.

I had bought the flags because of the candlelight peace vigil I’d been in the previous week. A man had carried a large American flag as we had walked with our candles down Grand Avenue in my hometown, St. Paul, Minnesota. “I’m not going to let the other side co-opt the flag,” he had told me. And I agreed with him. We’d been through this crap during the Vietnam war.

And now this Bush guy. His assertion that if you’re not for the war, you’re not patriotic. Well, okay, if patriotism is for war, I’m not patriotic. I’m for the world, for human beings, for human rights, for tolerance, for free speech. Remember the Constitution, Mr. President? But this Bush guy was drunk a lot in college, we’ve heard. Not that that’s a good excuse. A lot of us were drunk in college. But we recovered and grew up.

And now we need to make America stand for peace. So for the first time in my life, I bought an American flag and labeled myself a patriot. Another patriot for peace. Which these days is not the same as being an American patriot. But I’m trying to change this.

Down on Summit Avenue, a beautiful vision sweeps into view

When I met Alex and Grace, Grace refused her flag. “I’m from Canada,” she said. “What does that have to do with it?” I asked. But she had jumped back out of my reach. “Is she really from Canada?” I asked Alex who has known Grace longer than I.
“No. That’s just what she says these days.” So Alex took Grace’s flag and another and fastened them to the sign she was carrying, ‘No more lies’ on one side and ‘Not in my Name’ on the other.
“How do you like my sign?” I asked, turning.
“A patriot? What do you mean?” demanded Grace. She is pushing 60 and wears her gray hair in a long ponytail. She has been around long enough to learn that patriotism is used to intimidate people to join unsound causes.
“You know, peace is patriotic,” I answered.
“It is?”
“Yes, we have to make that point. Hey, there’s a toddler for peace!” A man pushing a stroller with a small child walked past us. Across the awning of the stroller was a sign with the declaration. Next to them ambled a dog wearing a ‘Dogs for peace’ sign.
“I wanted to make an ‘Old lady for peace’ sign,” said Grace, “but I didn’t have time.”
“There’ll be more marches,” I said grimly. “This administration has an ambitious agenda.”

By then, we were at Macalester College campus. The crowd was huge and of all ages. There were bald heads wearing Norwegian wool sweaters standing next to green hair with exposed pierced navels. Next to me stood a young mother leading a four-year-old boy and pushing a stroller with an infant. Her complexion was as clear and pink and pure as her children’s, her eyes as blue and transparent as the sky above. “I’ve never been on a peace march before,” she told me. “I want my kids to get the start I didn’t have.”

There were speeches; we couldn’t hear well where we stood but that was okay, the visuals were good. My neighbours at home had their lawn signs out in front of their houses: ‘Liberate Iraq, support our troops’ and I was glad to see the logical progression of that thought, ‘Support our troops, bring them home.’ Then a voice from the podium, one Grace recognised. “We’ve got to hear this guy, he’s good,” and we followed her closer to the podium. “It’s Keith Ellison. He’s a legislator from the north side, he’s my homeboy,” she said grinning. Keith Ellison lambasted the administration saying the ‘W’ in George W. Bush stood for Wrong which received a resounding cheer.

Then a restless milling about, a gentle surge and we heard we were moving out to Grand Avenue for the march. We went a short block and turned onto Snelling Avenue. We were in a sea of people and had no idea of the size of the crowd until we turned from Snelling onto Summit Avenue. A man was standing on a bus bench there, a counter in his hand. “You’re three thousand here,” he shouted. “Three thousand of us!” shouted people in the crowd, “And lots more coming!” Summit Avenue is a grand avenue lined with old fashioned street lights and mature trees in front of grand old houses housing mature wealth. I had expected the people here to support the war, but instead, I saw signs saying ‘Pray for Peace’ and ‘Say no to War with Iraq.’

A chant had started behind us but we had trouble making out the words. It was something like ‘No war with Iraq’ but it soon died out. Then a call and response began. ‘What do we want?’ ‘Peace!’ ‘When do we want it?’ ‘Now!’
“I like rhymes better,” said Grace. “Rhymes are catchy.”
“Yes, rhyming is best for chants,” said Alex, cheerfully. “Say, there’s a chap I know!” and she darted over to the side of a man carrying a sign saying, ‘I don’t care what Americans think of me, they didn’t vote for me.’ I shuddered. How divided America has become. Within itself and from the world. I have worked with divisive people, experienced how they come into a harmonious workforce and fracture it. I saw another sign, ‘Before hated by few, Now hated by many, Thanks Bush’.
There were signs in French and to my right twenty feet ahead, ‘Regime change starts at home, Welcome French troops.’

Alex was back at my side. “What have you been up to this week?”
“I’m refinancing my house. Economy so bad at least taking advantage of low interest rates.”
“Well, they’re going up now.”
“Yup. Stocks, too. Wall Street’s optimistic now there’s a war on.”
“You get a good rate?”
“I guess. But real estate is so high. And I still got a 30 year mortgage. I’m 52 years old and I’ve got huge mortgage payments to make every month until I’m 82. It scares me. But there’s no way out.”
Alex pointed to another sign, ‘Bankrupt at home, despised abroad’.
“And there’s another good one,” I said. ‘War is expensive, peace is priceless.’

Sign on the street says: ‘you don’t own me’

The streets crossing Summit Avenue were blocked for our march and two police stood at each intersection. They watched passively, showing no emotion. And I had an epiphany – talk to the police! Shake hands, maybe, thank them for doing their job, for making this march possible, spread peace. At the next crossing, the police did not look one bit friendly. I felt suddenly shy. Over the next block, I resolved not to let shyness hold me back from peacemaking. Next crossing, a police officer was standing next to his parked car. I waved my flag at him. He stared. Maybe he didn’t see me. I waved the flag again, this time smiling broadly. He didn’t move, but his eyes were on me. I had connected and I could see his aura. It was very black indeed. I decided to give up on peacemaking with the police. It was enough that I was on this march.

I was startled by sudden laughter from Alex and Grace. In front of one of the grand old houses stood a young woman holding a sign that said, ‘The only Bush I trust is my own.’ “You get into plenty of trouble with that one,” I admonished Alex.
“Only a bit now and then,” she replied. Then I tripped.
“Say I’ve got to knot my shoelaces. I’ll catch up to you,” and I made my way to the sidelines and knelt down and retied my laces. When I got up, a man with one eye was walking past me carrying a sign that said, ‘An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind’.

It was easy to spot Alex’s two flags ahead and I hustled past ‘Drunken frat boy drives country into ditch’ and ‘3000 bombs in 24 hours is not liberation’ to join her.
“Good shoes,” she observed, “but you have to knot them. I told my children I had to wear shoes that are good to run in today.”
“What did they say?”
“The usual. They looked at me. But there you are, they’re teenagers, aren’t they? I told them it’s not just the walking but the possibility of the crowd getting out of control or the police getting out of control. In London you have to worry about the horses as well.” Alex is a veteran protester, having started out as a teen in London during the Vietnam war.
“I thought your children might be with you today.”
“They didn’t seem interested, but they watched me very closely I noticed. I told them, ‘You can’t wear Birkenstocks on a march.’ Just to let them know.”
“With your long history on the Left, I worry your kids are going to end up on the religious right.”
“That’s why I didn’t press them to come along. They can rebel against something else.”

Chanting had started again; this time it rhymed, ‘Hell no, we won’t go, we won’t fight for Texaco.’ Good meaning with rhythm. Just our thing. Alex and Grace and I joined in. Which gave me time to think about the signs I’d seen.
“So what about this history he has of drunkenness. And I’ve heard of cocaine use, too. They persecuted Clinton for trying marijuana.”
“He’s been forgiven by Jesus, hasn’t he?”
“Oh yeah. Jesus lives in his heart.”

I’d been in China during Bush’s campaign when he’d said that. China, where people are gaining more rights and freedom. Now I was at home in America where we are losing rights and freedom. Up ahead I saw a sign that asked, ‘Who would Jesus bomb?’ I’d gone to Christian Sunday school as a child. I’d hated it, but as my parents had predicted, it was helpful. There, I had learned right from wrong and George W. was very Wrong. The chant had changed to, ‘This is what democracy looks like, Bush is what hypocrisy looks like.’ I joined in fervently. Neither shyness nor patriotism would silence me.