The Great Hollywood Peace Parade
Antiwar Angelenos mark the fifth year of war by throwing a party
By Ron Garmon
Poets and Paperback Writers
Antiwar movements being much too important to leave to the politicos, I spoke to a wide assortment of committed Angelenos and found, as usual, the writers among the most militant voices. Lewis MacAdams is poet, activist, historian of Beat, and noted defender of the L.A. River. His “To the 43rd President of the United States” is a hard jewel of invective destined for anthologies, concluding with the lines: We must search our souls/To understand how/We could have/Lived all these years/And done all this work/And still allowed this to happen. “I wrote it just before the invasion, and read it a few times,” MacAdams remembered. “People were extremely enthusiastic. I read it at the Museum of Natural History, and a couple dressed very ostentatiously walked out and that was about it.”
“I think the airplanes have to land in their bases and the troop ships dock and the soldiers, sailors and contract killers have got to get on them and leave,” he drawled, “We in America are going to be suffering, whether it’s this month or the month after next. But it seems very likely there’s gonna be a civil war in Iraq after we leave and it’ll be part of America’s sordid karma. We’ll get ours.”
Lest anyone complain the literary tend to cluster at one end of the national political dial, I called my old friend – and sometimes writing partner – Brad Linaweaver. A science-fiction writer and Nebula award finalist best known for spinning bizarre alternate histories, Linaweaver is also a conservative-libertarian pundit Ronald Reagan was given to quoting on matters of doctrinal orthodoxy. Recent political writings and support for Ron Paul win him no friends in rightist circles these days.
“The Republican Party should not pretend to spread democracy to the benighted regions of the world,” said Brad, who was in rare form, bellowing down the phone line. “That is not in the Republican party’s job description. He’s in the wrong comic book. Bill Buckley thought his Iraq policy “un-conservative,” a fact noted by Fox News in his obituary, which I thought unusually fair and balanced of them.
“The left is completely failing to fight the war machine,” the novelist continued. “They won in ’06 and have failed ever since. They don’t understand even now how the corporate power-elite runs both parties. George W. Bush is such a happy man these days. Why? He’s done his job, serving his masters well, giving us a foothold in Iraq forever. We will never leave. McCain is being unduly optimistic when he said we’d be there a hundred years. We’ll be in Iraq as long as the American Empire exists. Bush went there for one reason – to stay there.” Echoing Jodie Evans, my old friend and antagonist charged the administration with the fantasist’s worst sin – lack of imagination. “They’d rather kill people than develop alternative energy,” he snorted.
‘Kush, Not Bush!’
Well, the idea that the fix is irretrievably in makes some cynical and gives others a reason to get up in the morning. If no one but the fractious, faction-ridden SoCal left had shown up for the ANSWER-LA rally in Hollywood last Saturday, the event would’ve been considerably less raucous than it was. Instead, the party had already started in the Red Line train when I got on at Pershing Square. Normal Saturday mid-morning service was glutted with knots of excited, jabbering young people. Most were dressed in ironical variations on military uniforms, stylishly-frayed tunics, and other fucked-up mufti. Some were carrying homemade signs, one reading “Drop Acid, Not Bombs.”
Topside at Hollywood & Vine, the famous intersection was already piled with noisy revelry well in advance of the noon start time. Rows of prop coffins lay neatly, flag-draped to represent the returning dead kept carefully from view by the Bush administration. Clowns jostled with masked anarchists, costume performers and Fire Department officers ostentatiously photographing protesters. The venerable chant One-two-three-four/We don’t want your racist war! welled from the crowd, a sentiment grown fusty from decades of racist wars eventually replaced by performances by the likes of Mojo and the Vibration Army. The marchers were overwhelmingly young, with most of the Movement graybeards sprinkled among them looking as if they’d burst from unaccustomed joy.
All was love and camaraderie, even for the media, even from the LAPD. Soon, the procession lurched forward and I entered the police cordon, walking backwards ahead of the mob and scribbling notes. The festive spirit even infected the counter-protesters; a half-dozen males in late middle-age, all with Christian slogans emblazoned on tees stretched tight over starchy bellies. “Hey!” one yelled at me through a bullhorn, “Don’t you write for the Communist World News?” I smiled and waved. It was just like old times. Another crooned, “This is treason! You are the new Al Qaeda!” Again, fierce hip-hop clattered out of the PA, drowning them out. News cameras honed in on a grizzled dingbat with a homemade John McCain sign, his jaws working rapidly as chanting and whoops smothered most sound. Indeed, ANSWER’s usual portmanteau of assorted left-wing causes was swept away as well. The kids didn’t seem animated by dialectical materialism, livestock rights, or the unhappy fate of Leonard Peltier. This was clearly not business-as-usual.
Cops cleared a path and the march swung left down Schrader. By this time, many of the sidewalk gawkers had begun to join the parade, stepping out into a self-staged, self-conscious show, a delightful suspension of the rules. There was much amplified jeering as the party bore left on Sunset and the CNN building rose into view, its iconic logo long a symbol of corporate propaganda to antiwar leftists and libertarians. Angry fists went up at this citadel of The Man and hundreds of bawled “Fuck CNN!” Office staff gathered at the windows, dim shadows peering down at a vast Technicolor ruckus their organization looked to be studiously ignoring. I gave a friendly wave, wishing they could be there. Signs reading “Whores, Not War!” “Kush, Not Bush!” and the plaintive “James Buchanan, Come Home! All is Forgiven” flapped in the sudden high winds alongside placarded pleas for Obama, Ron Paul and others, the plausible alongside the ludicrous.
The day belonged to the participants, since most of the promised star-power didn’t materialize. Organizers read a doleful list of no-shows from the speaker’s stand on Cahuenga. Marty Sheen, Jackson Browne, Ed Asner, and others all defaulted, and the redoubtable Gore Vidal was addressing the ANSWER rally in San Diego. Mike Farrell’s brief, tearful address that impressed many who weren’t born until after the actor’s run as B.J. Hunnicutt on M*A*S*H half a lifetime ago. Ron Kovic, the iconic Vietnam veteran now marking his 40th anniversary in a wheelchair, commanded attention for a few buoyant words – “I promise you,” he cried, “our time is coming! We will fill this street with people!” Eventually, the speakers shut down, and some guy with a megaphone started rapping for Obama. The LAPD, out in overly numerate force, were content to hang back and let this street carnival order itself, pausing to puzzle over performance artist Jade Thacker urging passers by to cut off pieces of the U.S. flag she wore as a dress. A performance troupe called Corpus Delecti performed a zombie butoh dance, writhing on the asphalt like undead worms. Bystanders drifted away slowly, but the atmosphere lingered on and I saw kids whooping and lugging signs later that night as far away as downtown.
Channel 7 estimated the turnout at 1,500 participants, police put it at 2,000, and ANSWER-LA claimed 10,000. The latter figure was exaggerated, but closer to the truth as the unexpectedly large number of first-timers plainly startled and elated organizers. Despite histrionic warnings from counter-protesters, I saw no violence and police reported no arrests.
Published: 03/19/2008
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