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Los Angeles, 9 November, 2004 -- MIM handed out about 100 copies of MIM Notes to a rush hour demonstration to protest the renewed Amerikan attack on Fallujah. The ANSWER Coalition, which called the demo at the Westwood Federal Building, claimed a crowd of a few hundred took part.
For the most part, the LA organizers did a better job of keeping the focus on Iraq than did the organizers of the San Francisco demonstration on the same night (see accompanying article). The better signs were homemade--calling for an end to the "illegal occupation" and for support for the "brave fighters" in Iraq.
MIM is all in favor of reminding the Amerikan people of the lesson the Iraqis are giving the u.$. military every day: technology alone will never subdue the will of a people to fight off an occupier. Amerika has many times the population of Iraq, and so can choose to keep throwing soldiers at the problem, but the Iraqis and Arab allies will exact their price for the suffering the united $tates inflicts.
The Westwood demonstration had its share of chauvinism too. One official ANSWER sign we saw called for equal rights for the lesbian/gay/bi/trans people, but discrimination is really not an issue to put up alongside the rights of Iraqi people to survival. And the activist leading chants took a lengthy detour into parasitism when he started calling for money for jobs, healthcare, and unions of all things, instead of for war. The bit about the unions made us laugh the hardest--as if now funding labor bureaucrats, who are paid out of the superprofits Amerika sucks out of the Third World, is supposed to be this great argument against imperialist expansionism!
After MIM left, two armored vehicles--apparently Marine APCs--showed up on Wilshire Blvd. in front of the demonstration. We don't know why they were there, or if their presence had anything to do with the demonstration, but one activist reported that a few of the soldiers gave the demonstrators a thumbs up and seemed friendly, then they drove off.
It's no secret that the military ranks are disproportionately filled with oppressed nationality youth, because the oppressed nationalities are a disproportionate share of youth. MIM also notes that the u.$. troops are becoming discouraged at the combination of their own lengthening tours and the seeming inevitability of a draft, the fact that the Amerikan government and military leaders obviously either didn't know what to expect in Iraq or lied about it, and most importantly the fierce resistance of the Iraqi people. We do not target our recruiting efforts at the military, but we welcome any disaffected military members to get in touch and use our press as a platform for voicing your new-found anti-imperialist views.
Sources: www.boingboing.net; www.la.indymedia.org.