Sean Redmond

"This is what we call a rapid response action," explains MoveOn.org volunteer Sylvia Wilkerson as a handful of middle- to older-aged women mill about the tiny memorial situated at the intersection of Belmont, Ashland and Lincoln. The protest is about to start, and the group expects a good fifty to sixty participants to show up for the "counter-filibuster," organized in response to a filibuster Republican senators held to prevent a vote on the Levin-Reed amendment. The amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill, if passed, would call for most U.S. troops to return from Iraq by April 2008. MoveOn protests were organized Friday once word of the planned filibuster spread, and occurred simultaneously in major cities across the U.S, at the offices of Republican senators and across the street from the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

The crowd soon grows to about thirty people, many of them sporting signs around their necks with slogans like "Keep ‘em safe, bring ‘em home" and "Iraq War: Wrong Way." The protesters line up along the street and emphatically shake their placards at the passing drivers, many of whom honk wildly in support. Things like "Fuck Bush, woooo!" and "End the war!" can be heard emanating from the occasional car window, but not everyone appreciates the protesters’ efforts. Just as the demonstration is getting off the ground, a haggard old man getting off a bus notices what’s going on and begins angrily shouting "End the war my ass!" before launching into some sort of personal anecdote that nobody can understand.

Participation barely tops forty at its peak, but with only a weekend’s notice, the organizers are pretty content. The movement even gains some extra punch from a woman named Sharon Saxelby, who isn’t involved much with the MoveOn organization but shows up to tell about her son, a U.S. armyman situated in Baghdad. While other protesters read the stories of strangers downloaded and distributed from the MoveOn Web site, Saxelby reads her son’s emails, explaining how he goes off on missions for ten days at a time without contact, operating in the 120-degree heat on only five hours of sleep a night doing things he was never trained to do. "The army now owns your child," she laments, "and they know that."

And as for the filibuster? After an all-night session, the Republicans successfully prevented the Senate from voting on the amendment. Nevertheless, the pressure is on. "This is a last desperate gasp [for the Republicans]," protest organizer Richard Stowell shouts to the growing crowd of people. "The majority of the people and the majority of the Congress want this war to end."

(2007-07-24)

Also by Sean Redmond

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In 1965, off in that exotic tropical realm of South America that is Brazil, the brothers Arnaldo Baptista and Sergio Dias joined with Rita Lee to create what would become the legendary psychedelic group Os Mutantes
(2007-07-02)

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