I moved to New York City about 10 days ago, right in time for the anti-war demonstration on saturday. In the days leading to the event, I was amazed at the amount of building that had went into it: posters, stickers, and flyers were everywhere I turned, and I was never at loss to find an actvist handing out flyers for the rally at the entrance/exit of subway stations. There was a buzz about it that pervaded the whole city - I overheard conversations about it in subways, elevators, cornerstores. Louis' earlier post concerning anti-war sentiment at Colombia attests to all this.

Standing in line at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art the friday before the rally, I overheard two high school girls in front of me discussing whether they were going to go, and towards the end of the line I saw a couple with buttons on promoting it. The next morning, a few hours before the demonstration, I went out to buy bagels, whereupon I overheard two middle-aged women gossiping about it, one saying how she was going to get there, the other skeptical about attending because of the fear that her ten year old daughter might get stampeded on (I tried to convince her that this was highly unlikely).

My thoughts on the actual event have already been articulated by everyone else on this list. It was truly inspiring, primarily because of it's mainstream flavor, which was far stronger than in any other political event I've ever attended, combined with it's sheer size (literally taking over the east side of Manhattan).

In the few days since it ended, it's impact is still felt strongly. As I walk down the street, I see someone wearing an anti-war button on every other block (usually they see mine, and then we exchange smiles - a silent, mutual affirmation on the busy streets of New York). Protest signs are pegged into the snow, some still there. I've lived in big cities the last 10 years of my life, and I've never seen a progressive cause stretch this far out into the public. Normal people are wearing they're anti-war buttons with pride, and they are literally everywhere. Anti-war political expression has attained a cultural presence in normal, everyday life.

(I just read that a famous British designer had his runway models wear clothing that said "No War, Blair Out". This illustrates my point, albeit the obvious downside that a section of the fashion industry is trying to coopt anti-war sentiment).

This emerging anti-war culture has become larger and more visible since Saturday, from my personal observations. I think this is because all the demonstrations this weekend provide a concrete foundation or reference point for people to take off from. Further, the media attention and the international character of the protests give them a new legitimacy; people truly feel like they are part of something concrete, worldwide, and representative of the majority. This is all fueled by the experience of actually going through the protest, and all the emotions and empowerment that conjures up. This is a movement with momentum, and people know and FEEL it.

The movement has truly made it into the mainstream, and is even being taken seriously by the mainstream press. For instance, yesterday in the NY Times, there was a front page news analysis entitled "A New Power in the Streets" (I think someone posted this). It states that "world public opinion", currently being manifested in the anti-war movement, could be the counter-superpower to the US. It acknowledges the mainstream character of the protests (as the Times also did the day before), and even states that for the protesters, fighting against the war doesn't mean sympathy for Saddam Hussein. (This acknowledgement is important, since it's the strawman that the war-hawks always pull out. Bush stated this morning that his disagreements with the protesters lie in that we don't see Saddam as a threat to the world. When a reporter pointed out to Bush spokesperson Ari Fleischer that this is misrepresenting the majority of the protesters views, Fliescher, after evading the question, replied that he didn't think it was misrepresenting anything, from his information. I guess the Bush people don't read the most important bourgeois paper in the US).

But, it's been only three days since the protest here, and perhaps I'm being overly optomistic about the scope of an emerging anti-war culture. Time will tell I guess. But it seems to me that if this is the case, it is just the tip of the iceburg. If it keeps gaining momentum, causing peoples' questioning of their rulers to go deeper and deeper, it will draw out other forms of injustices plaguing working people today into the mainstream. If so, perhaps we are entering a new period where real change is possible, and where radical ideas actually represent a significant, concrete section of society. It seems so to me, when you take into account all the other global factors that attest to capitalism's dysfunctionality, and the growing resistance to it on many fronts.

Antiwar poll from the underground...

I went to the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art again today intending to hang out, read, and check out some of the exhibits. Standing in line to check my bag, it was deja vu: just like last week, I spotted a young woman wearing an antiwar sticker in back of me, and the middle age guy in front of me on his cell phone, upon seeing my button, turned and told me how much he liked the Feb 15th demonstration, and how absurd the war drive is.

This just keeps happening to me. So, I decided to ditch my casual plan and have a little fun. I wanted to ask fifty random, diverse people in the museum a simple yes/no question: do you support the decision to attack Iraq without UN support? If they answered "no", I would ask them if they'd support it upon UN approval.

I did my best to insure diversity in terms of age, race, and gender with the people I polled. I also tried to ask seemingly working class people (such as security guards) what they thought. I didn't approach people who looked overtly hippie or artsy looking, because these type tend to be antiwar. I was more interested in finding out what ordinary folks thought, so I looked for people who you'd just as well see walking down the streets of Harlem, the Lower East side, or suburban America.

All together I approached 50 people. Here's how I break them up, using my best judgment:

AGE: Young: 23, Middle aged: 20, Old: 7
RACE: White: 18, Black: 9, Latino: 13, Asian: 10
GENDER: Male: 23, Female: 27

[Asian includes both east and south asian (India, Pakistan, etc)]

Here's the results. After, I'll leave a few observations that go beyond the numbers.

Pro-war w/o UN: 5
Anti-war w/o UN: 45 (90%!!!)

Pro-war w/ UN: 11
Anti-war even w/ UN: 34 (so 68% are against war no matter what!!!)

AGE:

Young people: all 23 young people I asked were against the war w/o the UN. 17 of them were still against it even with the UN.

Middle aged: 15 were against the war w/o the UN, 5 for war w/o the UN. Of the former 15, 13 were still against the war even with the UN.

Old folks: All 7 I asked were against the war w/o the UN. 4 were still antiwar even with the UN

RACE:

Whites: 16 out of 18 whites were against the war w/o the UN. 13 were still against it with the UN.

Blacks: All 9 blacks I asked were against the war w/o the UN; 7 were still against it with UN approval.

Latinos: 11 out of 13 were against the war w/o the UN. 8 were still against it even with the UN.

Asians: 9 out of 10 were against the war without the UN. 6 out of this 9 were still against it with the UN.

GENDER:

Male: 20 out of 23 guys were against war w/o the UN. 15 out of this 20 were against it even with the UN.

Female: 25 out of 27 were against it w/o the UN. 19 out of this 25 were against it even with the UN.

So there you go - the results are pretty reassuring. But the numbers don't tell enough.

First of all, most of the people who supported the war only with the UN told me they did so very uneasily and with hesitation and reservations. They'd only support it if there was proof of WMD's, and the vote was near unanimous throughout the UN. The whole time, there was only 4 people who quickly and unambiguously supported the the war. Two of them were white parents with their kids; one was a south Asian guy who seemed like he was a business student. The other was a male latino security guard who just give me a knee-jerk reaction inflated with machismo: "You gotta watch your back. No one's gonna do it for ya".

I asked one hip looking black teenager what he thought, and received a straight and strong "no" to both questions. I told him that almost everyone agreed with him, and that only a few disagreed. His reply: "Were they (the pro-war people) white?".

I spotted two older women sitting down on a bench. I think they did some sort of janitorial work at the Museum. One was latina (probably Dominican or Puerto Rican) and the other Jamaican. At first, they were both a little hesitant, but after a second they spilled their guts about what they thought. They both agreed that it was just a war between two men (one suggested Bush and Saddam just duke it out themselves). They talked on and on about how this war won't help ordinary people out at all.

It was the case with a lot of people that once I asked them the question, they'd begin by thinking out loud and end up by passionately saying what was on their mind concerning war, their leaders, their lives. People have a craving to give their opinion on the things that affect their lives-- all you need to do is scratch them a bit. And everyone that talked to me displayed an intelligence that pierced right through a lot of the Bush war rhetoric and, moreover, came straight out of a sense, conscious or not, of their class interest.

There were a couple people who referred to Vietnam. They said that this seemed like a repeat, that we're going into Iraq for ulterior motives, and it could be a total disaster.

I walked up to one latino guy who looked like a thug. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt and had huge, widely tattooed, muscular arms, and several gold chains wrapped around all his limbs. He was with his two kids and wife. After thinking about it for a second, he told me it was a complicated thing, but that we should not start a war with or without the UN. He said that it's just the people up top who are doing this, and that we shouldn't do this even with what happened with 9/11. His wife was more surely and forthrightly anti-war.

Lastly, there was one old black woman, a security guard, who I asked. Her first instinct was to support the war. Her reason was that 9/11 was such a tragic event. Ordinary people who had nothing to do with politics were killed, and we can't let "them" attack us again (she was obviously just assuming that Iraq was in on 9/11). The cool thing was that she starting off very quiet and unsure of herself. When I started walking away, she stopped me. She started getting more energetic and articulate and thinking it through out loud. Soon, she resolved that there was no easy answer.

I finally walked away from this woman. When I went past her again later, she stopped me and restarted the conversation. I told her what I thought in a few sentences, explaining to her why I didn't think Iraq was a threat, and why the administration really wanted to attack. She seemed to agree. As I walked away for the last time, she told me that it was terrible that our young boys and girls were going over to Iraq to die. "So young... so young", she said with a sad, regretful face. (I marked her down as a anti-war w/o UN, but pro-war w/ UN. After our conversation she may have changed her mind about war even with the UN - I wasn't sure, but it seemed so).

I'm probably forgetting some stuff. There's more generalizations to take from all this. But the most inspiring thing, besides the intuitive antiwar instinct and distrust of the government that most people have, was seeing ordinary people speak their minds about things they're normally not encouraged to. It was like watching a a flower bloom. Many people walked away continuing the debate amongst themselves.

Change is so, so possible.

– Derek Seidman

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