This is the second of my wife Ramona's essays recalling our participation in the burst of anti-war rallies and events just prior to the outbreak of the Iraq War. Given the large nationwide rallies today (January 27th, 2006) I think its useful to look back, before looking ahead. Remember that Ramona was a US Navy Officer for over 10 years as you read this.  When Ramona and I were on active duty we, like all US military personel, swore an oath to "...preserve, protect, and defend the CONSTITUTION of the United States against ALL enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC..." We took that oath seriously & still do.

Watching today's Washington D.C. rallly on C-Span this morning, I was particularly struck by the comments of a young African American man near the end who said something like: "I don't mean any disrespect to any of the previous speakers here today [He was reffering to members of the US Congress who had spoken] but, people, your government was overthrown years ago...That man in the White House was never elected--remember that!"

I'm posting a photo from the Washington demonstration sent by fellow members of Veterans for Peace, taken today (January, 27th, 2006) on the National Mall near the Capitol.

 Photo credit...Doug Mills / The New York Times

SAN FRANCISO ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION, February 16, 2003

                                                                            by Ramona Byron

Mike and I arrived in San Francisco a day early and took in the Legion of Honor Museum of Art, followed by a dinner of some of the best paella I’ve ever had.  Then we met our friend from Riverside, Alan, and attended the Chinese New Year Parade.  It was exciting to hear the parade approaching from around the block, with its noisy firecrackers, drums, and cymbals.  It sounded really ominous, like war drums and gunshot, but when it came around the corner, it was an innocuous demonstration of people just having fun.  We are now entering the Year of the Ram in the calendar of this very ancient culture, who has seen almost everything come and go in its time. 

 

About 9:30 on Sunday, we met Alan for breakfast.  We walked about a block down the street to the tiny restaurant, appropriately for the times named the “Moulin Rouge,” considering the debt of gratitude that we owe to the French for their stern resistance to America’s rush to war right now for very indeterminate ends. 

 

As we were seated, two nearby patrons noticed our signs, “Veterans for Peace.”  They didn’t say anything directly to us initially.  Instead, they discussed among themselves that they thought that the upcoming anti-war demonstration was actually one of an anti-Israel slant. Finally, they asked us in rather challenging tones, what we thought might be the alternative to a war with Iraq. 

 

I let Mike answer that one, since he has the Ph.D. in Political Science.  Mike discussed that containment had worked with the Soviet Union and China, and that it certainly would work with Iraq, which had far fewer weapons and not much of a long-range delivery system for those weapons.  I added that there is no connection between Al Qeda and Iraq, and that our government is just lying to us in saying that.  Mike and I both pointed out that North Korea has much more dangerous weapons, but no oil; and that there seems to be more than a circumstantial connection, as to the focus of an unprecedented unprovoked attack by the US also being against the one country who is sitting on largest stockpiles of oil in the entire world. 

 

When the subject of Israel came up, Mike mentioned that he had lived in Israel for 11 months.  The other patrons began to talk with him excitedly about that.  They all exchanged some sort of pleasantries in Hebrew.  Mike will have to tell you about that himself, since I don’t know what they were saying. [We just exchanged pleasantries—Mike] The conversation ended on a very pleasant note.  Mike, Alan, and I left the restaurant, to the approving nods of the other patrons in the restaurant as they read our “Veterans for Peace” signs. 

 

We went up the street and caught a city bus to go to the demonstration rally point.  After a block or two, a young African-American man boarded who appeared to be headed off to a day of work, carrying a bag lunch and a bottle of water.  He passed by us and saw our “Veterans for Peace” signs, and he immediately began singing as he walked toward an available seat and sat down, beating a rhythm with his hand against his thigh.

 

Gonna lay down my heavy load
Down by the river side,
Down by the river side, down by the river side.
I'm gonna lay down my heavy load
Down by the river side;
I ain't gonna study war no more.

And I ain't gonna study war no more;
Ain't gonna study war no more;
I ain't gonna study war no more.
And I ain't gonna study war no more;
Ain't gonna study war no more;
I ain't gonna study war no more.

Well, I'm gonna put on my long white robe
Down by the river side,
Down by the river side, down by the river side.
I'm gonna put on my long white robe
Down by the river side;
I ain't gonna study war no more.

Well, well, well, I'm gonna study war no more;
No, no, no, no, study war no more;
I ain't gonna study war no more, no more.
No, study war no more;
Ain't gonna study war no more;
I ain't gonna study war no more.

This is only an approximation because his improvisations on the theme were so much better that I cannot possibly do it justice.  The other riders on the bus, all of extremely varied ethnicity, were clapping their hands in rhythm, and some of them even joined in the singing.  

 

I was excited!  I wanted to learn that song!  So I led Mike and Alan toward the rear of the bus, and we sat down near the young man and followed his lead as he continued to improvise his song.  When he finally stopped, we demanded an encore, and got one!  We sang all the way to Market Street!  We debarked the bus in an euphorious mood.

 

Due to the expected large size of the anti-war demonstration, the bus routes and other traffic were all stopping far short of our destination of Justin Herman Plazala.  As we walked toward the rally point, we encountered a very old soldier, who had noticed the signs that we were carrying of “Veterans for Peace.”  He pointed to a button on his lapel, which said “Veterans for Peace,” and then he added, “But I was on the other side.”  We looked at him, not understanding.  He explained, “I was a German soldier in World War II, who spent three years on the Russian front, and then later I was taken as a prisoner of war of the French army.”  We were astonished!  We never expected to meet any of the relatively few survivors of the German army’s soldiers from the Russian front!  Good grief – can you even imagine more suffering than what that guy had gone through?  We couldn’t even think of anything to say in response to **that**. 

 

Finally, Mike asked the German army veteran if he saw any similarity now between the Bush administration, and what happened to Germany during the rise to power of the Nazis.  The German army veteran said, “They’re fascists.”  Mike followed this with another question, “So what’s happening here is like what happened in Germany?”  And the old soldier simply answered, “Yes.”

 

We passed by a person who was holding a French national flag.  I yelled “Vive la France!” and began humming “La Marseillaise.” 

 

Whether we like to admit it or not, America, has always relied upon France to back us up in our fights for our highest principals.  It’s indicative that our much-beloved and highly-symbolic Statue of Liberty was a gift of France.  And our own democracy, dependent as it was upon French assistance in the beginning, could also be said to have been a gift of France.  We needed France in the birth of our first Revolution, and it looks like we’re going to need her in our next one. Remember **that** the next time you’re being dissed by a French waiter.  We owe them for what they’ve done for us, when we really had to have that help.  And we **need** them to diss us now, as they try to pull us back to the higher principals upon which our nation was founded.

 

So, we finally reached Justin Herman Plaza at about 11:10, accompanied by hundreds of people who were walking in the same direction.  The area was so crowded that we had to work our way with some difficulty through several blocks back just to get to the Plaza.  When we finally got to within hearing distance of the stage, I have to tell you, what we heard was rather disappointing.  Instead of hearing anti-war messages, they were doing speeches about something about some resisters against the Castro regime in Cuba, gay rights, pro-Palestinian messages, women’s rights, etc.

 

OK, so I’m sympathetic to all of issues; however, I still think that we need to **stay on message** here, since this demonstration had been called for a very specific message about an unprovoked war against Iraq.  Let those other issues rely upon their various supporters to attend separate demonstrations for those other worthy purposes.  It’s both unfair and disingenuous to abuse a captive audience and use that bully pulpit to promote a lot of other issues that simply are not germane to the purpose that the anti-war demonstration itself was called for, and that hundreds of thousands of people had come to support.  It cannot be determined that any of the demonstrators that day would have voluntarily supported any these other issues, had they been given the choice; therefore, this is an intellectual dishonesty being perpetrated upon those hundreds of thousands of anti-war demonstrators.  The organizers of these events seriously need to take this into consideration, if they want to continue to attract such huge crowds.  Otherwise, folks are going to rightfully think again whether they so ardently desire to expend their money and time again to travel over very long distances just to be so egregiously abused in such a manner.

 

As if to make that very point, at about 11:30, the crowd turned away from the speakers’ podium while a speech-maker was advocating the release of the “Cuban Five,” and began a spontaneous march up Market Street, about 90 minutes earlier than when the march was supposed to start!  We looked at them, and we looked back at those irrelevant speakers, and then we voted with our feet!  We went marching with the crowd! 

 

Mike’s sign on one side said “Republic, not Empire.”  My sign said on one side “Bug-Out (AWOL 2 yrs) Bush, Chickenhawk (“Other Priorities”) Cheney – Asses of Evil.”  On the other sides, both of our signs said “San Diego Veterans for Peace – Chapter 91.”

 

Due to the size of the crowd, we never spotted our fellow veterans.  However, we did march along for awhile with two very fit-looking veterans of WW-II, one in a green Army uniform and the other in Navy blues.  Many of the people in the crowd cheered us, thanked us for being there as veterans, and for having served our country.  It was very clear that this crowd was **not** anti-military.  They, like us, are against a completely unjustified war, which purports to prevent a war (only Bushits could come up with that kind of illogic).

 

Along the march, we saw signs saying “Somewhere in Texas, a village has lost its Idiot,”  “Prevent Truth Decay,” “Stop Mad Cowboy Disease,” “No Iraqnophobia,” “Bush-Cheney are Empty Warheads.” One sign said, “If God Wanted War, It’d Be Raining Now,” making reference to the inclement weather that had been predicted for that day.  There were many more clever slogans than I can possibly remember.

 

In the midst of the crowd, a small group was moving with their Chinese New Year’s props, of golden-headed lions and crashing cymbals.  A group of American Indians were drumming and dancing.  We saw people making that entire trek on **stilts**. 

 

Due to the huge congestion of the crowd on Market Street, it took us over 2 and ½ hours to walk the 1.5 miles from the Justin Herman Plaza to the Civic Center.  Starting at about 11:30, we finally arrived at the Civic Center at about 2:00.  When we got there, we called our friend, Anita, in Riverside, who put us on the speaker phone so that her “Un-President’s Day” party guests could hear our reports and the noise of the crowd around us.

 

Now, think about this:  The last time there was a big anti-war demonstration rally in San Francisco (January 18, 2003), we had an estimated 200,000.  That time, it took us about 90 minutes to make the 1.5 mile march from Justin Herman Plaza to the Civic Center.  It was crowded then, for sure. 

 

But this time, it was ***a lot*** more crowded.  This time, it took us 3 and ½ hours to cover the very same distance, and that was with our starting 90 minutes earlier than when the actual march was supposed to begin.  This time, we were not separated by about 3’ fore and aft from other people -- instead, the marchers were shoulder-to-shoulder spreading completely across the street, with about 12” fore and aft between. 

 

We calculate that a stationary picture of a crowd of 1.5 miles, 70 abreast, at about two feet apart fore-and-aft would come to about 277,000.  However, as noted above, this crowd was **not** stationary.  As we went past every subway stop, more crowds were coming up the stairs to join the march, and more people were streaming in from every side street to join us.

 

Now, people, do the math.  We have 1.5 miles, with at least twice the density as on January 18^th, with a single stationary calculation for our February 15^th crowd giving an estimate of above at 277,000, and more people joining by the minute.  This is just the people on Market Street alone, and doesn’t even count the people who were already at the Civic Center Plaza when we started, since the crowd was so huge that it had stretched completely down Market Street to the Civic Center Plaza before the march had even begun.  

 

Doesn’t this imply that there were about 2-3 times as many folks in this march as there were on January 18, 2003??  How else to account for the extreme crowding we were experiencing, that began **before** the formal march was scheduled to start, and continued throughout that march?

 

Never mind that the San Francisco Police Department calculated that there were about 125,000 in the plaza itself at the end of the march on February 16, 2003—That number is **not** indicative of the total number attending the demonstration on that day.  I know because I, upon arriving at the plaza -- and it appeared that many more besides myself -- left the massive, crushing crowd for some rest and recuperation, and returned a couple of hours later.  It just wasn’t a comfortable place to be.  I saw plenty of other folks leaving the crowd, too, and I saw many returning later. 

 

So, if there were at least 200,000 there on January 18, 2003, and it felt like 2-3 times more crowded and it took over twice as long to make the trek, where do the march’s organizers get off telling us that there were only 300,000 there on February 16, 2003???  If we add our 277,000 on Market Street to the 125,000 that filled the Plaza, you get an estimate of about 400,000.  That is our figure for actual attendance at this event.  We note that during the rally the march’s organizers stated that “The people’s counters are reporting a tentative figure of nearly 300,000 marchers on Market Street.” This occurred while the march was still going on.  We firmly believe that the size of this event is somewhat underreported.  Partial confirmation of our count comes from this account:

“Bill Hackwell security organizer for ANSWER, one of the three main sponsoring organization stated that the front of the March did not enter the Civic Center until after 3:00 PM fully 2 hours after the beginning of the program and the time scheduled for their arrival. The cause was simple. Market Street and the Civic Center were already so full of anti-war demonstrators that the march could simply not get through the demonstrators.

Mr. Hackwell stated that “each of the three Peace rallies had doubled in size. Each had posed new problems.” How to get the march through the demonstrators supporting the march had been the biggest problem this time. He estimated that the total crowd numbered approximately 300,000.”

Here are two photos which may give you some sense of the size of the march!

 

http://2005.piou.org/photos/f16antiwar/Pages/236.html

 

      

 

http://2005.piou.org/photos/f16antiwar/Pages/31.html

Note: The two large crowd pictures above are copyright Edward Piou, http://www.piou.org/

When I returned to the crowd after my brief respite, someone was handing out a flyer titled “Total Resistance.”  I’m attaching the text here, as I think that it is very important to all of us.  Please read it carefully. 

 

Back at our hotel, we watched the TV propaganda machine hard at work trying to spin the demonstrations into a pro-Hussein, anti-American movement.  The news first showed the winter weather, then a demonstration in Iraq in which the people were understandably cheering the anti-war demonstrators from around the world who are trying to prevent the annihilation of the Iraqi people. The news then warned of another terrorist attack being imminent, showing a shadowy figure in black with a “?” over it.  Only THEN did the news cut to a five-second piece about demonstration in San Francisco, describing it ambiguously as a “throng” instead of “hundreds of thousands.”  They also diluted the SF report by combining it with a 10-second report on the demonstration in Sydney, Australia.

 

The following day, Rumsfeld dismissed the world-wide protests as “irrelevant.” 

 

“Irrelevant”?  How about an unelected, fascist, war-mongering, power-grabbing regime, for irrelevancy to what America stands for? 

 

Folks, don’t believe these damn propagandists.  Believe your own eyes and your own heroic heart.  Don’t allow these liars to discourage you.  Remember that it was the “irrelevant” colonists who usurped the British empire.  It was “irrelevant” civil disobedience that freed India.  It was similar civil disobedience that brought our country out of its feudalistic “Jim Crow” racism.  Our People Power movement is going to crush the Bushits’ flimsy house of cards, and then we will discover who exactly it is that is “irrelevant.”

 

Like the Chinese New Year paraders, we anti-war protesters are many and noisy and we are approaching ever closer to the seats of power.  But unlike the Chinese New Year paraders, our world-wide anti-war marches are truly threatening to the Bushit regime and his few (and rapidly becoming fewer) supporters.

 

Bushits, understand this!  That steady drumbeat in the distance that grows steadily closer and louder, is the sound of your hell-bent future.  We will rip from you that noble flag in which you have cynically wrapped yourselves, in your vain attempt to cover the obscene nakedness of your vile criminality.  We will not be silenced.  We will not be mollified.  We will not stop until your power is broken and you are consigned to the annals of history as the racist, fascist, lying, thieving criminals, scumbags and worthless scoundrels that you are.

 

Well, that’s the end of my report of the February 16, 2003 demonstration in San Francisco.  Please read on, for the complete text of the flyer, “Total Resistance.”  If you decide to buy the book by that same name, it would be prudent to pay cash for it so that you do not create a paper trail.

 

 

 

TOTAL RESISTANCE

 

The government “of the people, by the people, for the people” has now declared war ON the people. While the media futilely attempts to distract the attention of the people, our criminal government uses their propaganda as a cover while they strip us of the constitutional rights that many of us, and our relatives and friends, have fought for and/or died to win and to keep. Therefore, resistance to the current, unelected and criminal regime is the patriotic duty of every citizen. At any moment, the government is going to declare a state of martial law, and will become a dictatorship. Be prepared for when that occurs.

 

Here are some suggestions on how to act if a dictatorship is imposed. First and easiest is to stop buying anything that is unnecessary. Your money is fueling the criminal government. Pull your money out of the economy and invest it in ways that the criminal government cannot access (i.e., foreign accounts).

 

Infiltrate the Neighborhood Watch; if resistance members are strongly represented in that organization, it will be much more difficult for them to operate in secrecy and to spy upon us and our neighbors. Do not attempt to organize in large, well-defined units that can be infiltrated by the government. Form small cells composed only of people that you know and trust. Know who has access to medicines; know who has places where one can send a member of the resistance who is being pursued by the government; know who has access to any resource that is useful in the resistance. Stockpile nonperishable food, warm clothing, and camping gear.

 

Use your employment creatively to assist the resistance. Sales and delivery persons, etc., become couriers, reducing the need to communicate in ways that can be monitored. Prison system workers, assist the escape of political prisoners. Construction crews, build means of escape into internment camps. Rescue and/or fire fighters, use your vehicles to transport resistance members, and assist if they are injured so that they do not have to go to hospitals. Postal Service or police department workers, become couriers and make your extra uniforms available for resisters to wear as disguises in order to move about freely. Artists, create false identification documents for resisters.

 

Computer hackers, enter governmental computers and destroy or alter records; if you are skilled in creation of computer viruses, use them not to damage private persons’ computers, but to access their address books in order to propagate global messages of resistance.

 

If you have access to transmitters, be prepared to use them to broadcast resistance messages.

 

Obtain a copy of the book, Total Resistance, by Major H. von Dach. The above are a few strategies from that book, and a few additional strategies not contained in it. Scan the text of Total Resistance and place it on the Internet for the downloading and use of resistance members, and/or e-mail it to those you trust.

 

You get the idea — Be prepared.

 

Copy this, separate the pages,

and leave them anywhere that you go.