[Reader-list] in the name of the people

[Avishek Ganguly]

Saturday morning on the streets of New York was
magical...for a moment you would have thought you
matter, people still matter, and who knows they might
actually make a difference!
...if only we, ALL OF US, would be prepared to come
down on the streets again...and again..

...after all wasn't that how it used to be?

Avishek

 --- zehra rizvi <fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com> wrote:

---------------------------------

sarai didnt post my response to rehans piece...i used
a bad word.  so sorry.  

wanted to know about protests all over...heard about
stuff all over the world, wondering if others from the
reader list were part of it and wanted to get
responses...anything in south asia?  i heard about
somethign in srinagar...

some fisk to warm our hearts....the protest was
great...i did hear some people living in bubbles
saying they didnt know *anyone* who was pro war...

wake up people.

 

i love where fisk takes this.

zehra
>Published on Sunday, February 16, 2003 by the
lndependent/UK >The US: A Nation Divided, With No
Bridges Left to Build >In Austin, Texas, Robert Fisk
sees at first hand the vast gulf between the pro- and
anti-war movements in the United States > >by Robert
Fisk > >The show was over, recorded for one of those
nice liberal local American TV cable channels this
time in Texas where everyone agrees that war is wrong,
that George Bush is in the hands of right-wing
Christian fundamentalists and pro-Israeli neo-
conservatives. > >Don Darling, the TV host, had just
turned to thank me for my long and flu-laden
contribution. Then it happened. Cameraman number two
came striding towards us through the studio lights. "I
want to thank you, sir, for reminding us that the
British had a lot to do with the chaos in the Middle
East, " he said. "But I have something else to say." >
>His voice rose 10 decibels, his bare arms bouncing up
and down at his sides, his shaven head struck forward
pugnaciously. "Yeah, I wanna tell you that the cause
of this problem is the fucking medieval Arabs and
their wish to enslave us all and I tell you that it is
because we want to save the Jews from the fucking
savage Arabs who want to throw them into the sea that
we are about to fuck Saddam." There was a pause as Don
Darling looked at the man, aghast. "And that,"
cameraman number two concluded, "is the fucking
truth." > >Darling called to the studio manager.
"Where does this man come from?" he demanded to know.
The lady from the University of Texas organizer of
this gentle little pow-wow advanced on to the studio
floor in horror: "Who is this person?" I didn't know
whether to laugh or cry. All of a sudden, our nice
anti-war chat had been brought to a halt by a spot of
redneck reality. There really were right-wingers out
there in the darkness who really did want George Bush
to zap the Arabs. I asked the guy his name: "Gregg
Aykins," he said. "And the FBI can do nothing to me if
you give them my name." > >It was a telling moment, a
symbol of the vast gulf of reason between the pro- and
anti-war movement in America. They don't talk to each
other. And if they do, neither comprehends the other.
Like the endless chat programs on Pacifica Radio and
all the smaller liberal talk shows from Boston to LA
that serve up inedible dollops of anti-Bush,
anti-Republican rant, there is simply no contact
between the intellectual "elite" of the left and the
less privileged Americans who work with their hands
and join the military to gain a free education and end
up fighting America's foreign wars. > >At a seminar at
the University of North Carolina, I listened to a
group of professors and senior lecturers and
"activists" debating how to influence the "path to
war". "What we've got to do is to reach out to
mainstream press and bridge-build to other activists,"
a lady with long gray hair announced, reading a list
of proposals all couched in the language of academic
discourse that ensures her message is incomprehensible
outside academia which she wished to discuss. > >Quite
apart from the irredeemable nature of the "mainstream"
press The New York Times, The Washington Post and the
rest are far too busy carrying more Iraqi horror
stories from "intelligence sources" than reporting the
American anti-war movement the lady's desire to
"bridge-build" with fellow "activists" was all too
familiar a theme. > >The people with whom these
liberal academics should be building bridges are the
truck-drivers and bell-hops and Amtrak crews, the poor
blacks and the cops whose families provide the cannon
fodder for America's overseas military adventures. But
that, of course, would force intellectuals to emerge
from the sheltered, tenured world of seminars and
sit-ins and deal directly with those whose opinions
they wish to change. > >When I made this very point at
Harvard and several other universities, I was told,
rather patronizingly, that these people the phrase was
almost identical had "so little information" or are
"not very informed". This is, in fact, untrue. I have
heard as much sense about the Middle East from a train
crew en route from Washington to Georgia and from a
waiter in a St Louis diner as I have from the good
folks of North Carolina. > >Black Americans, for
example, are uninhibited in their sympathy for
Palestinians under occupation. But when I told a
lecturer in Austin that I had asked hotel staff and
air crews to turn up to my lectures on the Middle East
and America and that all had come I was treated with a
kind of weird amazement, puzzlement that I should
bother to ask such unpromising material to think about
the Arab-Israel conflict mixed with faint pity that I
should ever expect them to understand. > >Sometimes I
rather suspect that the anti-war left in America likes
being in a permanent minority. I mean no disrespect to
the Noam Chomskys and Daniel Ellsbergs and Dennis
Bernsteins; they fight, amid abuse and threats, to
make their voices heard. Yet I have an uneasy feeling
that many on the intellectual left are fearful that
America will lose its next war amid massive casualties
but are even more fearful that America may win with
minimal casualties. > >Perhaps this is unfair. But as
long as America's anti-war movement talks to itself
rather than to others, it is going to go on being
surprised when the Gregg Aykinses emerge from the
darkness with their hatred and venom intact to support
George Bush's forthcoming war in Iraq. > > > 2003
Independent Digital (UK) Ltd > > 

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