OCR Text |
Show THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT COMES to GRAND JCT. ...some thoughts on joining up By Danny Rosen A group of old men, dressed in white, fumbled down the street. Their eyes covered with dark glasses to show their blindness, they tapped the ground ahead with canes. Big black UN signs were taped on their backs. Following them was a Hummer carrying many excited and hale young men in uniform brandishing rifles yelling at the white clad group ahead, "Get out of our way!" Welcome to the Grand Junction Lions Day Parade. For some reason I thought of hallucinogenics; could they help me deal with this shit? I listened for Al Michaels and John Madden to start the play by play. I looked for an invigorating military flycver. A marching band started playing down the road. With the Super Bowl over it must be up to the Lions Club to keép Football Nation revved up on its way to war. Who knows what else I could have seen at the parade, but it-was time to go. I headed one block north to the Federal Building at 4th and Rood to join one of the largest antiwar protests ever to take place in Western Colorado. Sometime before the new year, anger at the actions of my government reached the point where I felt the need to do something. I heard about a small group of people who had begun meeting Fridays at noon at the Federal Building in downtown Grand Junction to protest the race to war in Iraq. I started joining them. It felt good to publicly display my disagreement with US pou It was s illuminating to see the response from my fellow citizens.. There were many friendly waves and smiles from passersby but it was shocking to be on the receiving of so many violently tossed epithets, "Fuck you,” or "Nuke ‘em, Kill ‘em, Kill all Iraqis!" or "You people are so damned stupid, go back to Iran," or "Yeah War! Yeah War! Yeah War!" 2 Remember Jack Nicholson in Easy. Rider, "...all these people talk about is freedom, but when they see somebody being free, it sure pisses ‘em off." It has been uplifting to get more involved in the process of being a citizen in a democracy. ve never been a flag flyer, but I. felt: more patriotic than ever, and started carrying a flag on.oceasion at the protests.. ‘The pro war group should not be able to iy sole claim as the only true citizens of our country. Out of the early milieu the small group of protesters started organizing and chose the name, A Voice Of Reason (AVOR). With the help of some newspaper articles and a billboard message (SAY NO TO WAR) by Confusion Corner (Grand & 1st & 6 & 50) AVOR started getting some publicity. More people started showing up at the weekly protests. Things were getting done, people were taking action. In mid January, when a few hundred thousand people marched against the war in Washington DC, about 150 people did the same in Grand Junction. About three hundred people came to a teach-in at Mesa State College in early February where four professors spoke on the politics, geography, history, and cultural realities of Iraq and the Persian Gulf. This past February 15, when millions around the world protested the impending war in Iraq, the number of marchers in Grand J swelled to 350. It was quite a scene as the group stretched down five blocks along North Avenue amidst the ever spirited response from passersby---about evenly split between thumbs up and finger up.. It was a great success but it might have been even more powerful if we could have joined up with the Lions Parade. George W. Bush’s response to the massive protests went along the lines of, “certain people think Saddam Hussein is not a threat to world peace, I respectfully disagree." Boy, did that piss me off. It is wrong to equate opposing the war with thinking the protesters sympathize with Saddam Hussein. I had to join the antiwar movement, but it has not been easy. I feel empowered to. be taking action, but I have been troubled by the blatant and what I consider unwarranted paranoia that some zealots bring to the antiwar movement. Early in January we had a discussion about a video on the 9/11 attacks that purported to show that the US government conspired to carry out the attack or at least knew about it and did nothing to stop it. Karen and | left after half an hour. Who needs that crap? I read an article in The Nation that tore apart the conspiracy theorist who had produced the video. The Nation, to say the very least, is not a Bush lover. I think most of George W. Bush’s policies are short-sighted, backward, and harmful, but I do not think he made 9/11 happen. The things | remember Jack Nicholson from "Easy Rider," ",...all these people talk about is freedom, but when they see somebody being free, it sure pisses.'em. off," that he and his administration do up front, out in the open are horrifying enough. The actions of my government splashed on the front pages every day scare the hell out of me and make me want to do anything I can to change its direction. Paranoid diatribes against the government marginalize the antiwar movement and undercut its potential impact. The group International ANSWER has been one of the prime organizers of some of the major national antiwar protests. When I attend a protest in Grand Junction I can be associated with an ANSWER sponsored protest even if that is not the case. ANSWER has an agenda that I’m not entirely in agreement with. Now here | am marching in Grand Junction, along with hundreds of thousands of others marching in DC and SF and elsewhere. Whether or not we are aware of it, by proxy, we are supporting certain unstated goals of ANSWER. Unsettling... I like to be aware of these things. CON CANYON Obert ‘Help us Restore a Masterpiece. - GLEN CANYON Our rugs get bigger in the Spring. the way it was... it could be agai “PAGE 22 era BLUFF, UTAH 435.672.2208 : a |