February 15th, 2003: NYC Peace Rally
The day begins with a rousting. Four dozen poets, two wide banners, one lieutenant from the NYPD, Anne Waldman hurling verse into the frozen wind. But. "You can't have those banners here, this is a public sidewalk." The poets-polite-respond, explain. We're just here to express our feelings about war. "We've set aside an area over there where you can express yourself. Behind those barriers. Over here, this is a public sidewalk and what you can do here is walk." First Avenue and 59th Street, underbelly of the Queensboro Bridge. Guernica reproduced in black and white to walk with us, a poem in paint, eloquent and horrific. What we can do is walk.
First is completely cross-sectioned, twin metal barriers intersect it at every corner lest our protest assume the dimensions of the fiercely prohibited march.
11:30 we head south, walking-don't call it marching, don't set a single peace-loving foot off the curb, oh no, don't break this solid, inexplicable law. Banners rolled tightly against their harmless, permissible cardboard tubes, no contraband wooden sticks over here, poets obey the rules, good citizens, don't you know? We even get invited to the White House from time to time.
We're stopped at 57th Street, not permitted to walk any further, bodies building up behind the silver barricade like water behind a misplaced dam. Never seen city cops quite so committed to order. They've got an emergency lane set up, clear and sacred as the central aisle at St. Pat's, almost as large as the designed area for expressing ourselves. One poet subgroup breaks out, hurries north to try and edge southward, closer to the hopefully throbbing heart of the rally just about to start.
Here comes a four-foot high Frankenstein green effigy of Bush in papier maché, wearing a Texaco Oil button. The unelected war marionette.
AXIS OF UNILATERALISM
Twenty degrees out here? Maybe. Suddenly the barriers are opened. Everyone pours south. One, two, three entire blocks. Crowd thick now, barriers resealed. I arrive at 54th and First to find that SEIU union workers in their purple hats have ignited a cornerside frenzy. Bush has got to go! (say what?) Bush has got to go! (tell me again) Bush has got to go! Dancing and megaphones, whistles, leaps. The massive stage, just three blocks downtown, easy to see from here, though you can't make out the bodies moving on it. Poets dot the crowd, Edwin Torres, Hettie Jones, Danny Shot. Listeners & scribblers. I am still among Poets for Peace, though we seem to have relinquished our loose grouphood. Just as well, I've got work to do, words to write.
MANIFEST DESTINY MY ASS
At noon on the dot the speakers boom out, and the one on 54th works perfectly. Richie Havens tunes up, does an extended sound check, sings Freedom.
I see a man on the corner, running a solo reverse protest: "Freedom Is Worth Fighting For" on a great big orange sign. He stands by himself. Two young girls stop, say something, he gets angry, shakes his sign, his arms. They walk away. Now he's surrounded by questioners, shouting. Onstage, the Islamic call to prayer is chanted and translated, the same translation I remember from my years on 14th Street with the Sufis… "I bear witness…I bear witness…" Bearing witness to the possibility of peace with all rather than peace with some selected few, I walk toward the man with the warsign. Is there anything at all we can agree on? Would I stand publicly in favor of war at a peace rally? His courage is large, and I tell him so. He shakes my hand. His name is Shane.
Hebrew prayer over the loudspeaker, a thick honey female voice. I hear Shalom for the first time today. No one has mentioned Viet Nam, not yet.
BUCK FUSH!
It's colder today than last month in DC. My feet can't feel the ground. Fingers stumbling over these pages. A fierce Latino prayer to Jesus rivers from the speaker. I want to follow it like a charmed snake.
I climb over a barrier, cross the street to get to (gasp!) Starbucks. At the corner, a chubby cop—looking too young for his uniform—slides a steel barrier across the slim opening in front of the shopping plaza steps, says sarge was "going crazy" and doesn't want anybody else getting into that store. I want to talk to this sarge. Boycop says he's not here. I say, this is illegal, get the sergeant. Boycop says he doesn't have a radio. There are a dozen cops on this corner. Not one radio? Pretty inefficient. I ask what country we're in, where it's against the rules to peacefully enter an open business in the middle of the day. Maybe this is what it's like in Iraq?
Clearly, the NYPD has gotten strict instructions: throw whatever petty cogs you can find into the well-greased wheels of the peace machine, this is the republic of NYC and we don't brook no protest BS here. Sad contrast to the serious but gentle DC cops, there to instruct and guide, not obstruct and prevent. Wonder if anyone down at One Police Plaza has referred to us as goddam hippies yet.
WHAT IF YOUR CHILD WAS COLLATERAL DAMAGE?
While my confrontation with boycop gets louder, joined by the swelling crowd of wanna-coffees at the corner, a tiny-bodied woman squeezes between the barriers and simply, sweetly whispers to the cop, "excuse me, I'm just going to that store right there." She goes. Another. Another. Me. All of us. No one is arrested for the crime of entering this Manhattan equivalent of a strip mall.
There's R&B blasting in the coffee shop and I've arrived on another planet, the land of commerce where peace does not (need not) apply. Takes almost 20 minutes to get a big cup of coffee and a cookie dotted with exotic nuts.
Back outside, I have no trouble getting off the shopping plaza, but am not permitted back inside the area set aside for us to express ourselves. NYPD is behaving very badly. Come out, yes; go in no, and none of the cops know why. None of them are interested in the question. Each sentry sends you to the opposite quadrant for access, but when you get there—walking whole avenues out of your way as instructed—it's the same damn story and you're sent straight back to square one. Patience pays off, though, as the rules seem to change minute by minute. Pretty nimble for a police force without any radios. I catch a corner in the middle of a quick cop strategy shift and manage to slide between the barriers, back into our official protest ghetto.
DOWN WITH BUSH, CHENEY, AND ALL THE TERRORISTS.
A massive tarpaulin rolls over our heads, passed hand to hand, flapping and blocking out the sky with the huge orange heart hand-painted on it. It's got about the same square footage as a roomy two-bedroom in the boroughs. A rippling cloth wave, canvas body of a crafted heart wafting northward above us like a great, volitional beast.
"Mr. Bush we came in the cold to heat up the world…" Al Sharpton. Amazing new world, where I can suddenly listen to Rev Al speak without wanting to rip his face off. Maybe the idea of peace has affected me more than I realize.
EMPTY WARHEAD FOUND IN WHITE HOUSE
Here's a sign telling all cell phone users to call the New York Times right now. It's got the phone number, all the IVR codes, tell them how many of us are here and demand page one coverage. I call. The operator on the international desk says that the European rallies will be on page one. Not NYC. At least it's something—they can't back completely out of this one.
Here comes one of my coworkers with a video camera. "You wouldn't believe how many people are stuck over on Second and Third Avenues and can't get here—even more there than on First, the cops won't let them through."
See NYPD. Say servants of the people. See Bloomberg. Say servant of the republican party. See the politicization of the country's largest police force. Say conflict of interest. Watch them in cahoots on an assignment to thwart this peace effort to whatever extent they can. See Bloomberg make his baby kowtow to Bush, the big kahuna who just might throw a few more bucks toward NYC, slow its inexorable slide into insolvency. This is how it's done in the boardrooms. Kiss that executive ring, even when you've got to hold your nose, remember every moment that it's all about the quid pro quo.
Pete Seeger says we're the greatest rainbow gathering New York has ever seen.
DUCT & COVER
Jump up and down, try to get my feet back. It's 1:30. Two and a half hours of—what?—eighteen degrees? Feels like less. Feels like none. There are nowhere near enough degrees out here but nobody's leaving. I hate being cold more than almost anything, but not more than I hate the murder that is war.
Yet. I don't want to hate anything. This is about the excision of hatred. The cancellation of hatred. Excision of war as a goal of love.
More than half of all Iraqis are under 15 years of age. A nation of children.
GO SOLAR, NOT BALLISTIC
There are twice as many people on the avenue now as there were even half an hour ago. Shoulder to shoulder, from barricade to shining barricade, as far up and down as can be seen, and the last speaker said that there are just as many of us along Second and Third, the entire upper east side is shut down. Archbishop Desmond Tutu takes the microphone. "God is proud of you. God is smiling as he looks down on First, Second and Third Avenue, saying, aren't they neat!" He says demonstrations like this brought the end of apartheid.
WHO REALLY HAS THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION?
"Never retreat to the convenience of being overwhelmed," says Ruth Messinger, after reminding us that 30,000 children die of starvation on this planet every day.
30k kids/day. 1 million kids/month (give or take a few tens of thousands). Holocaust of hunger. Burger King dumpsters abrim with scraps. Ongoing, unsung, practically unnoticeable from the high leather seats of our assembly-line SUVs. But no assemblyline peoplefeeder.
The cold is nearly intolerable. (almost doesn't count)
Lone URL on cardboard: www.votetoimpeach.org
Sarah Jones speaks in three voices, a homeless woman, an elderly Jewess (with a grandson named Funkmaster Sharofsky) and a Latina. I hear drums coming toward us, a rhythm moving east on 54th Street. The canvas heart returns, southbound now, flutters over our heads like a great, flexed muscle of mutual peace.
PREEMPTIVE IMPEACHMENT
One full minute of group chanting. "The world says no to war." The drums are louder. Closer? A planet-wide rally, millions marching in Europe.
A moment of silence, but nobody told the drummers. In the startling quiet, I hear them chanting along with the beats. Our blocked-out compatriots, speaking to us in the old way. Seattle had smoke signals, NYC has talking drums.
LISTEN TO YOUR ALLIES, YOU DUMBASS
A squadron of angry-looking mounted police high-step their horses into the sliver of crosswalk remaining, inspire a spontaneous leaping chant: OUR Streets, OUR Streets… The horses are jittery, shying; a danger in this packed crowd. Why come now? The she-cop's horse almost rears, the vanguard at our barricade grid hisses and boos. Three mounties canter (flee?) down the so-called emergency lane to a chorus of reprovement. This war is the emergency, my friends. How about you clear a lane for that?
DROP BUSH, NOT BOMBS
Crowd estimates are coming in, numbered in hundreds of thousands. Maybe half a million. I've lived here all my life. I believe these numbers completely: we have peopled the wide avenue from wall to wall for as far and farther than any eye can see.
"George W. Bush is a killer clown," says Tony Kushner. He's followed by … Angela Davis? Rainbow gathering indeed. She calls us a demonstration of collective courage.
Half a dozen people in a circle have turned the coldfoot leap into a little dance, complete with rattles and a flailing of dreads. The one child just tall enough to see at the summit of her jumps. White label on a suede jacket: Mourn War
WAKE UP. SPEAK UP. WAR IS SUICIDE.
Danny Glover, harsh-voiced and unscripted, launches into a flat-out rant and takes us all with him. The crowd begins to thin. It's almost three o'clock. There's a minimarch starting up westbound on 54th, swept in the beat of that tireless, still invisible drumming.
The rally stretched north as far as 80th Street, they said. How can we not march out of here? There's not enough room on the sidewalks. Can they arrest us all?
In front of 350 West 54th I find the drummers, dancers, and a community affairs cop who actually says excuse me, all spilling over the steps of an expensive building. Suddenly it becomes a march, but it's going back into the rally, not away. Five-gallon joint-compound drums. Girl with stick and cowbell. A massive rolling percussion machine:
JAMMING FOR JUSTICE: THE RHYTHM WORKERS UNION
I end my day of rally with them, in twenty minutes of spaced out staccato bliss. Dancing in the streets. Hint of weed on the cold wind. Girl with an orange peace sign painted on her left cheek whacking a pair of bongos, blond boy in shirtsleeves handing out homemade instruments. I get a taped-shut plastic bottle filled with pebbles and I'm right on the beat, warmed by my own motion, quickstepping feet coming back to life, our music muffling the stagewords. Here is the enactment of peace among strangers, not the exhortation toward it. The thing itself. No rules, no suggestions, no structure. A harmony of unmet, single-purposed bodies, separately together in the drumbeat dance.
SPREAD DEMOCRACY TO THE US
When I'm ready to go, I hand the homemade rattle to a handclapping guy and head back to 54th Street. Peace sign discarded on a windshield. Another one slid over the antenna of a locked and empty police van, neat as the sheathing of a knife.
Lexington Avenue is a parking lot, stalled drivers losing their minds, leaning on horns. It's the first east-side avenue open to traffic, but they might as well not have bothered. Blue wooden barricades block and re-route walkers at every corner, for reasons only God and the NYPD brass can fathom. Park Avenue is barrier-free, but the drivers here aren't having too much of a better time.
I keep going, further west, looking for a clear path to home. My city has been paralyzed for peace. May these immobilizations continue.