War Protests: Why No Coverage?
Coordinated antiwar protests in at least 11 American cities this weekend raised anew an interesting question about the nature of news coverage: Are the media ignoring rallies against the Iraq war because of their low turnout or is the turnout dampened by the lack of news coverage?
I find it unsettling that I even have to consider the question.
That most Americans oppose the war in Iraq is well established. The latest CBS News poll, in mid-October, found 26 percent of those polled approved of the way the president is handling the war and 67 percent disapproved. It found that 45 percent said they’d only be willing to keep large numbers of US troops in Iraq “for less than a year.” And an ABC News-Washington Post poll in late September found that 55 percent felt Democrats in Congress had not gone far enough in opposing the war.
Granted, neither poll asked specifically about what this weekend’s marchers wanted: An end to congressional funding for the war. Still, poll after poll has found substantial discontent with a war that ranks as the preeminent issue in the presidential campaign.
Given that context, it seems remarkable to me that in some of the 11 cities in which protests were held - Boston and New York, for example - major news outlets treated this “National Day of Action” as though it did not exist. As far as I can tell, neither The New York Times nor The Boston Globe had so much as a news brief about the march in the days leading up to it. The day after, The Times, at least in its national edition, totally ignored the thousands who marched in New York and the tens of thousands who marched nationwide. The Globe relegated the news of 10,000 spirited citizens (including me) marching through Boston’s rain-dampened streets to a short piece deep inside its metro section. A single sentence noted the event’s national context.
As a former newspaper editor, I was most taken aback by the silence beforehand. Surely any march of widespread interest warrants a brief news item to let people know that the event is taking place and that they can participate. It’s called “advancing the news,” and it has a time-honored place in American newsrooms.
With prescient irony, Frank Rich wrote in his Oct. 14 Times column, “We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq…. But we must also examine our own responsibility.” And, he goes on to suggest, we must examine our own silence.
So why would Mr. Rich’s news colleagues deprive people of information needed to take exactly that responsibility?
I’m not suggesting here that the Times or any news organization should be in collusion with a movement - pro-war or antiwar, pro-choice or pro-life, pro-government or pro-privatization.
I am suggesting that news organizations cover the news - that they inform the public about any widespread effort to give voice to those who share a widely held view about any major national issue.
If it had been a pro-war group that had organized a series of support marches this weekend, I’d have felt the same way. Like the National Day of Action, their efforts would have been news - news of how people can participate in a democracy overrun with campaign platitudes and big-plate fundraisers, news that keeps democracy vibrant, news that keeps it healthy.
Joseph Pulitzer, the editor and publisher for whom the highest honor in journalism is named, understood this well. In May 1904, he wrote: “Our Republic and its press rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press … can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery…. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.”
It’s time for the current generation of journalists - at times seemingly obsessed with Martha Stewart, O.J. Simpson, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and the like - to use that power more vigilantly, and more firmly, with the public interest in mind.
Jerry Lanson is a professor of journalism at Emerson College in Boston.
Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor
Hahaha. How can one think the oligarchy will give us democracy?
Burn your newspaper . . . down.
Bush won.
It is time to change the focus of public protests and to target the seats of power, Wall Street and the major media outlets. It would be more difficult for the media to ignor thousands of protesters camped on their door steps.
There is one significant bright side. If there was no such thing as citizen journalism, independent media, forums like this, blogs, etc. we’d truly be in grim times.
But since we’re able to increasingly make our own news, the MSM is increasingly rendering itself disconnected and irrelevant. Tune them out, and encourage others to do so.
Let me see. This antiwar demonstration took place on a Saturday in October when three-quarters of the American sheeple are either watching college football on television or in person at the stadium. Makes it awfully convenient for the consolidated, downsized Mainstream Media to ignore with looks for all the world like any other Saturday gathering of do-gooders, walking for some charity or other. Say, breast cancer or ALS. I agree with samh41. Protest on the doorsteps of the media outlets…on a work day.
We are marching to the wrong places. We should march on the corporate headquarters of all of the major news media. This could include strike lines such that media employees themselves would have to decide whether or not to cross.
That most Americans oppose the war in Iraq is well established.
I humbly suggest that this is misleading, an untruth. I read this untruth everywhere, but I do not see a majority (or anything greater than minuscule) of Americans doing anything about it.
I suggest that the poll questions, and responses are (deliberately?) misleading. What I think is happening is that a majority of Americans are tired of being exposed to constant news about the war that is taking place far-removed from our shores, in a foreign land that many cannot locate on a map, against people we do not understand. I believe that most Americans are overwhelmed by life, and hearing about the war and its implications is a major irritant. Hence they register their opposition to the war in such polls.
How else can we explain such poor turnouts at demonstrations?
Certainly we should be worried that they can string along the Dumb Class, but there’s a limit even to foolishness. Let the people’s media outlets rise. Focus our efforts into the indymedias, etc. and let the MSM become a more desolate wasteland than it already is. There’s a reason that the old network news programs have declined over the years: people moving to cable, the internet, indy news, etc.
Let dying dogs die.
Protest the MSM or not — but get thee a digital camera, take to the pen or blog, and become a citizen journalist. There’s a new brand of journalism rising and becoming more relevant, and people will begin to tune in. This is far more likely a scenario than camping out at the doorstep of the MSM and begging them to quit their half century of propaganda and starting being nice guys for a change. Let’s quit the co-dependent/dysfunctional relationship with them.
I have always believed that the news “market” only plays a partial role in what is published. Clearly we have reached a point where the owners of the national media are out of step with the public and don’t care that they are. They want to promote views that are sympathetic to the government and to the conservative ideals of the paper owners. That was probably always true. But in the past there were more papers some of them were liberal.
What do you think? Does this explain it? Or is it an evil conspiracy of the new world order?
WTF: “how else can we explain low turnout at demonstrations?” Did you read the article?? They aren’t covered, not even announced; increasingly futile. For the record, I live in a military town, and just yesterday expressed an antiwar sentiment to a military wife whose views I didn not yet know. It is **safe** to do that. Even safe from awkwardness. The people who support the war are the ones who are defensive (she did not, rather agreeing with the context of my comment that dysfunction in troops and their families reflected the unbearable length of the war). People don’t express their opposition more because they have given up. With good reason.
longingforsanity and WTF,
You are both wrong. The bottom line is that it is our responsibility to get the word out about our own rallies and to do our own organizing. We are the only ones we can hold responsible for finding the language and message that will get through to the public and making sure that it gets there on time. If you wait for the corporate media to help you and/or to deliver our message in precisely the way we want it to come across, we will all be dead before that happens.
The plain and simple bottom line fact is that our rallies are not big enough yet. I live in the Washington area and people expect huge crowds — well over 100,000 and ideally over 200,000 before they really take you seriously. We are nowhere near that; nowhere near the Moratium Day demonstrations during the Vietnam era, nowhere near the various anti-nuke demos of the late 70’s/early 80’s (there was more than one and they had huge crowds, especially in NYC), nowhere near the Million Man March, the Promise Keepers Rally, last year’s Immigrants Rights rally, the huge Women’s Rights Rally a few years ago to defend Roe v. Wade; or any of the other big rallies that became landmark occasions. We haven’t had a Seattle 1999 or an IMF/World Bank in Washington April 2000; we have not had our moment and if we do not do a better job of organizing, the movement isn’t going to happen.
We have become divided between ANSWER and UFPJ. We are always too sectarian; too easily divided by narrow points of ideology — particulars which the average American doesn’t five two fucks about, nor should they; too divided by race — yes, let’s tell the truth here: the white activists still can’t get enough people of color out to the rallies. Still too little cooperation and a persistent lack of trust.
We either resolve our differences, get better organized, get our own point across our own way [and learn how to use the mainstream media for our own purposes, do it ourselves if we can’t] or the movement goes nowhere.
Not one of the so-called News shows can be counted on to provide
what’s going on, least of all the truth! Every day I search and search and search tv to find intelligent personages discussing the ‘current’ up-to-the-hour situation, but find nothing. On C-Span, for example, are invariably right wing orgs chipping away at our beloved democracy, with nary a care for human beings or life itself . . . except, perhaps, the gated 400.
I love AIR AMERICA on the net, but can’t listen long because of the dreadful modern music in place of commercials. DEMOCRACY NOW is ‘day old news’ . . . when it should be (at least once-a-day) in the evening and live.
There was a time when we could count on Keith Olberman; but I’ll wager somebody has got to him . . . I haven’t been privy to a hard-hitting, honest and direct editorial in weeks. All I seem
to hear is watered-down Olberman, along with the daily emphasis of what the current scanty-panty of showbiz is up to. CHARLIE ROSE is a legend in his own mind and not all that smart . . . The PBS News Hour has been sour for years and years . . . so right wing my tv quakes . . . BBC America is obviously
geared to reflect the cautions of the far right . . . those destroying America and leading citizens to the slaughter.
All I can to do, and have done, is tell the news nets how I feel and that I simply won’t buy the products promoted (and I tell the advertisers as well).
The point is we American citizens are being denied access to a bonafide News Service uncorrputed by dictators and their worshipers. We citizens own the airwaves!
We can also caution our Cable and Satellite Dish service that they either provide
a news service that rallies to preserve our democracy or we’ll simply stop paying for the service.
They MSM won’t cover demonstrations because they were major advertisers for the invasion & occupation, and because, duh, they’re owned by companies that produce the war toys.
The objectivity of newspapers & broadcasters has been one of the sheet anchors of capitalist myth.
WTF also misses a point.
Whether true or not - a poll annonced yesterday 52% of persons polled favor bombing Iran.
The government of fear lives on and people are afraid - both of ‘others’ — and their own government and the consequences of any indication of dissatisfaction with the current dictatorship.
Seig Heil!
1)democracy doesn’t work when most of the citizenry are underpaid and uninformed, and mostly directly unaffected; 2)peaceful protests by nice people down weekend city streets don’t get covered - it doesn’t stir anything up.
One key to understanding the endless failures of American corporate media is the problem of interlocking directorates. The generalization of there being a “corporate good ole’boy system” is not a myth.
And if anyone is wondering why PBS has become pro-war with people like Charlie Rose putting neocons on his program after thier schemes have been completely discredited, you will find that oil corporations contribute to PBS.
” Media corporations share members of the board of directors with a variety of other large corporations, including banks, investment companies, oil companies, health care and pharmaceutical companies and technology companies. This list shows board interlocks for the following major media interests. ”
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2870
It was not a mistake that nearly every corporate media source in American failed to do even elementary investigative reporting on the WMD issue. A high school journalism student could have done a better job. And now hundreds of thousands are dead and $Trillion wasted on counterproductive warfare.
For a more complete investigation of the networks of corporate power, this site goes a bit deeper. In short, our democracy has been hijacked, and not by Muslims !
http://www.endgame.org/corpcon1.html
Corporate fascism is an accurate description of the present system running America (an affecting much of the world) complete with hideous crimes. The Iraq and Afghan war crimes are nothing more than an illegal subsidy for Big Oil and the military complex paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.
The thing I remember about the 60s that is so different now, was the take the mass media had on the marches. The reporters then were free to write about the marches and the other counter culture events in Time and Newsweek like they were hip happenings. In ways that made a high school kid like me idolize the marchers and hippies who were just a few years older and make it so I couldn’t wait to join the counter culture I had read so much about as soon as I could.
Even the police riot in the streets of Chicago at the Democratic Convention in 1968 (my first demonstration at age 17) didn’t turn me off after the appetite whetting I found in those magazines in my high school library.
I don’t know how much of it was conspiracy or just a big coincidence, but the editorial boards are making sure these days that counter culture or protesting or dissenting citizens are not portrayed in the same light as they were in the 60s. If there is any coverage at all, the last thing they do is make it seem like the best chicks and the In Crowd were at the demonstration last Saturday and if you want to have a blast, be hip, and do what is right at the same time, go to the next demonstration like the MSN did in the 60s. (I know - dated vernacular)
And there was something about a new Beatles album that was rumored that made everything exciting in a way that even the most popular hip hop artist of today can’t match.
Now we have Bill O’Reily and Fox and all the rest. . .
I always go back in my mind to my reading of “Inside the Company” by Phillip Agee when it came out in 1975 and asking myself at the time, “If they are doing all this to control the press in Uruguay and Ecuador, what must they be doing in Chicago?”
I would advise everyone to switch to DishNetwork from your current cable provider or satellite provider. They charge an extra $5 per month for the “Local Channels,” which means NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, MSNBC etc. Don’t pay the $5. You will never see that crap. It is surprising how your world view will change. Don’t miss Free Speech TV on 9415 and LinkTV on 9410.
You won’t miss the commercial stations once they’re gone. You can subscribe to your favorite sports’ packages to watch sports.
“26 percent of those polled approved of the way the president is handling the war and 67 percent disapproved”
Okay, I would be one of the 67%. I don’t understand why this war is being handled the way it is. Why aren’t our troops blowing the crap out of more stuff? What is taking so long to finish this job?
Except for a few people trying to recapture their youth most people realize that it’s about time to kick a little Islamic ass. Of course it’s about the oil. I have no illusions about that. Oil runs the worlds economy at this time. When you can replace oil with your magic MOONBAT fairy dust, then we’ll listen.
There is a great saying (don’t remember from where) that goes, ” the job of the press is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Seems as if has gotten turned around to, “comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted,”. A good example is the committee led by Conyers pertaining to the Downing Street Memos being forced to hold its hearings in some basement hideaway and then being reported in NYT below the fold on page 10. A good example of the comfortable being comforted
Protests against wars fought with volunteers (today’s Iraq and Afghanistan) do not work the same as protests against a war fought with draftees (Vietnam). Turnouts are lower, and more than half of the public would call you (and the press, too) unpatriotic for being there. The press knows this. The protest that’s needed on these wars is in the secrecy of the ballot box where national Republicans are there rightly blamed for what their party has done– and removed from office, together with their entire conservative philosophy of government.
Ohh dear Jerry Lanson,
You are just beginning to realize that you do not live in the nation,
you thought you lived in
WELCOME TO THE CLUB !
(and not only do the MSM not report, but they distort and lie as well. Its called propaganda.)
My guess is many Americans think it is hopeless and nothing can be done.
Welcome to “democracy”: American style.
Time to physically occupy news outlets. Stop the machine from operating.
“Are the media ignoring rallies against the Iraq war because of their low turnout or is the turnout dampened by the lack of news coverage?” The answer is “YES” to both questions.
This is nothing new. During the Vietnam War we were always disappointed in the lack of coverage of protest marches. The fact is the Corporate media is not going to help the people of this country learn or be informed about what is happening in this country or the world. A peaceful march is not going to be reported. If you want to be seen/heard in the MSM a protest march must turn into a riot. Violence is irresistible to the press. If you want people to hear you start a riot. The cops are always more than willing to incite the crowd. Throw some rocks and break some windows. Burn some police cars. The press will broadcast very bit of it. The other option is to stay home and shut the fuck up. A corrupt press is nothing new. We need to learn how to play it. They knew how in the 60’s. Take a lesson from the past and make some noise.
leobixby:
This reminds me off the “Protest One Person Short of Success” spoof (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39439).
Sure, we should get frustrated that the MSM is a “by the elite, for the elite” establishment, but is protest going to solve anything whatsoever? It’ll merely underscore, and highlight, a dysfunctional/co-dependent relationship. A relationship which is increasingly going the way of the dodo. They’re no longer the only game in town.
The battle won’t be run by telling the corporate press that they no longer have the freedom to propagandize. Indeed, we enter into tricky First Ammendment territory there. The answer — in the modern internal age — is to drown them out by volume of citizen reporters, accuracy, relevance, the whole shebang. The old Cold War TV networks have had dropping viewership. With lots of choices, people will eventually gravitate toward whatever speaks to them most accurately.
Imagine if 100,000 people turned out in eleven cities to protest the questionable conduct of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. Would that likely get any mainstream media coverage?
…because the revolution will not be televised!
www.raycarlson.com
longingforsanity wrote: Did you read the article?? They aren’t covered, not even announced; increasingly futile.
Warzoned wrote The plain and simple bottom line fact is that our rallies are not big enough yet.
I did read the article. The article did not state (but elsewhere reported) that the nationwide turnout was around 100,000. That is pathetic. Until at least 1 American for every Iraqi killed and injured turn out, nothing will happen and the MSM will continue to ignore this pathetic protest.
“One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda. Another is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some capacity as agents of the propaganda system–and they believe what the system expects them to believe. By and large, they’re part of the privileged elite, and share the interests
and perceptions of those in power. ” Noam Chomsky
————————–
“The Mainstream media really represent elite interests, and what the propaganda model tries to do is stipulate a set of institutional variables, reflecting this elite power, that very powerfully influence the media.” -Edward Herman
To warzoned: I went to the Sept, 2005 demo in Washington. I don’t know how many were there, but it was estimated at over 500,000, and it wasn’t covered! I know that Amtrak shut down it’s morning service to Washington, and still, the New York Times reported (in another story), that there were over 100,000 more commuters to Washington from New York that day.
Figure it out. If 100,000 more people went to Washington just from New York that day, just on public transportation (with Amtrak being shut down), then how many people were there? We came from Illinois, on a bus with 40 people, and I met people from all over the country. It wasn’t covered.
I would also suggest to everyone complaining about corporate media to check out Free Speech TV and Link on DISH network. Non-corporate media is already out there! Support it.
And, yes, my son will not go to demonstrations, and when I ask him to go, he quotes the onion article about the futility of demonstrations. I think that many of the younger generation feels this way. They may be right.
I won’t sign online petitions, because, as Tom Paine said, “Failed petitions embolden tyrants”. I know they ignore petitions and I suspect that they have learned that demos can safely be ignored. These people are shameless and have learned that we are unwilling to go beyond petitions and demos. We need to use an effective tool, like the general strike.
The US attacks Iran-we don’t go to work, at least for 2 days. I think that attention would be paid.
I am confused that some people only now, discovering that the media ignores protests - then blame it on insufficient turnout. Where have you been?
Even when we turned out nearly a million in NYC in 0F weather on Feb 15, 2003, (part of about 40 million worldwide) or at least 500,000 in Washington DC on Sept 24, 2005, we were ignored just the same. The most recent demonstration in DC on Sept 15, the few hundred counter-protestors were given more attention than the tens of thousands of protestors.
Meanwhile, every Saturday, in college towns arount the whole US, many millions stream in from hundreds of miles away for sporting events - bread and circuses, bread and circuses.
willybill you’re my hero. I hope your fine “Ballot for a People’s Referendum” takes off! It’s something concrete and effective that we can do NOW! And it beats hand wringing over our miserable state. Please get that website up soon. Sincere thanks.
Warzoned is so wrong when he says, “The plain and simple bottom line fact is that our rallies are not big enough yet. I live in the Washington area and people expect huge crowds — well over 100,000 and ideally over 200,000 before they really take you seriously. We are nowhere near that . . . .”
September 24th, 2005 saw around 300,000 people in DC and January 27th this year saw a similar number. On Saint Patty’s day, I was in DC for a “small” march to the Pentagon that had around 50,000 people. The first march I ever attended had around 10,000 people on Inauguration day in January 2005 when the city was so heavily fortified and the train system was shut down at times. This past Saturday, I was in Jonesborough, Tennessee and we had a “small” group — only around 400. The thing is, local people who were there were amazed by the “large” turnout.
This is no small movement. I am so thankful for this article by Mr. Lanson that calls the press to task for assisting the current Administration (regime) in their minimilization of the peace/anti-war movement.
I am also heartened to see more and more comments stating the obvious thing: We need to start staging our demonstrations outside major news outlets so they cannot ignore us.
Thank you again Jerry Lanson!
And here is yet another super site on the corporate media:
http://www.progressiveliving.org/mass_media_and_politics.htm
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
—The Wizard
The Wizard of Oz
“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
—A.J. Liebling
“. . . to take apart the system of illusions and deception which functions to prevent understanding of contemporary reality is not a task that requires extraordinary skill or understanding. It requires the kind of normal skepticism and willingness to apply one’s analytical skills that almost all people have and that they can exercise.”
—Noam Chomsky
The Chomsky Reader
Why protest when both parties in congress are dedicated to continuing the war?
PJD writes…”Meanwhile, every Saturday, in college towns arount the whole US, many millions stream in from hundreds of miles away for sporting events - bread and circuses, bread and circuses.”
Wouldn’t it be great Halftime Entertainment if instead of watching the local marching band do it’s antics or ms. Jackson exposing her boobalicious titty, 67% of the crowd rushed the field and declared a moratorium on the entire american status quo?!!
What is the State gonna do?…. Call in the National Guard?
“If it bleeds it leads”…
If I remember rightly even during the 60’s the demonstrations were only covered because there was always an air of uncertainty about demonstrations because of the potential violence / property damage. Demonstrations today polite as they are… just aren’t news to MSM. Break a window and that’s news. Shed some blood and that news.
Peaceful demonstrations usually result in the police rioting as they did in Los Angeles last year.
The result of the 60’s lead to the arming of police forces across the country by the federal government and the resulting SWAT teams etc. On must remember that police forces are an extension of the military and are trained to see us as the enemy.
The government encouraged coverage to show the public how dangerous the demonstrators were…but nothing made a difference…once the wave of…power to the people…got set in motion.
“there is no such thing as a bloodless revolution” and anything short of a revolution won’t make a bit of difference and it doesn’t matter which party is in power.
What we must learn from India: People Power, Land Reform and the Origins of Tree Hugging
http://www.chycho.com/?q=node/1171
“A true democracy can only be identified when the citizens of a Nation join together to affects the laws under which they are governed. India, the most populous democracy in the world, has in its brief history repeatedly shown us how the poorest of the poor can join together and become a force to be reckoned with…
In a country with a population of 1.1 billion, 25,000 people marching together have been able to force the government to promise to pass legislation to protect farmers. How is it then that tens of thousands of people marching in the United States, with a population of only 303 million, have failed to stop their government from funding a war of aggression? Which country would an outside observer recognize as a true democracy?
To help expedite our education and motivate us into action consider watching the following “inspirational half-hour documentary about environmental activism and tree-hugging featuring Sunderlal Bahuguna, Pandurang Hegde and Vandana Shiva”. It gives us hope by showing us how much power we actually have. Appiko- to embrace (29:35)”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5195824669236313304&hl=en
I think younger people (like you Mr. Bramscher?) have to realize that protests have traditionally been, and still are in other nations, a very good way of getting the politicians attention.
Nixon regualrly acknowlewged the anti-war protests in DC - with lip service and empty promisies - followed by FBI investigations of the leaders, but AT LEAST he aknowleged the grievance.
In India the Congress party leadership is already looking into the grievances of the landless poor after their protest march last week. It probably won’t lead to much effective action - but at least they acknowlege the grievance.
As far as: “With lots of choices, people will eventually gravitate toward whatever speaks to them most accurately.” well, we already have lots of choices, don’t we - hundreds of channels on direcTV or Dish Network, or Sirius Satelite Radio? I see the neoliberal, “free markets are the answer to every question” worm turning behind such a remark.
Where are the masses converging on Indymedia, CD, informationclearinghouse, Znet, etc… I challenge you to find a single aquaintance outside of the activist community if they have even heard of, say, Indymedia or other types of citizen-journalism - how many people who read this have even heard of, say, Dahr Jamal, or Brad Wills, who was murdered doing his job and ignored by the MSM.
The ‘polls’ are inaccurate. I have long since ceased to believe any of them.
This 25% for bush nonsense is getting really old. 25% is 1 out of 4. I live in a conservative town and I haven’t been able to find 1 out of 10 that think bush is doing a good job. 1 in 20 is more like it. The media won’t post that 95% of America thinks he’s doing a poor job so they play with the numbers. It’s not 25%. It hasn’t been 25% for a long time.
Another skewed poll is the Hillary Clinton poll. 80% of democrats support Hillary? That’s nonsense. It’s not anywhere near that high. Ask people and you will see.
The media is lying. The ‘polls’ are to try to trick you.
salvia,
Good points. And, as far as turnout, some people are getting it backward. poor media coverage is not due to poor turnout - poor turnout is due to poor media coverage.
Why no MSM coverage? Mr. Lanson answers his own question:
Because no protest group invited Martha Stewart, O.J. Simpson, Paris Hilton, or Britney Spears to front their march. That’s the problem with progressives - they remain either unwilling or too uppity to do what it takes to manipulate the MSM to their advantage.
The MSM cares about one thing: ratings. There are no ratings to harvest by covering boring protests that are virtually identical to all protests that have come before. In other words - boring. Same chants, same signs, same speakers. Dull, depressing, angry.
You want more MSM coverage? Give ‘em a reason and they will come. Need an example? Ten thousand people all dressed the same - that’s an unresistable visual. Reverse Protest - thousands of people all SUPPORTING the insanity, chanting for more war and more death and more illegal spying. Much more powerful than “What do we want?” “Insert Want Here!” And it’s funny. Again, the MSM will not be able to resist.
The new word of the day: Protestainment!
I don’t think we’re going to get MSM coverage, and even if we do I don’t think it will work.
I don’t disrespect the people who have participated in peace rallies. But don’t you think such demonstrations are a little bit….. old school? Been there, done that. It worked in the 1960’s, but rallies just aren’t news anymore, and they certainly are not impacting the corporations that have control of our government.
We’re going to have to do something that will grab the attention of those corporations and squeeze hard if we want to bring about any changes.
As Demerara says: “Stop buying gas from Exxon, Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron. Buy from: CITGO. Use public transport when ever possible. Walk. Bike.”
I would add to those suggestions the following:
1) Don’t buy at the big box stores like Wal Mart, etc. - buy from Mom and Pop stores. Wal Mart imports most of its merchandise from China. China has virtually no environment protections, not to mention that Chinese laborers are paid poorly. Buy American if you can.
2) Support organized labor in the US. Labor has always been the thorn in the side of US manufacturing giants.
3) Make contributions to organizations that are making a difference.
4) Find out if your church has lobbyist representation in Washington. Most mainline (Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.) churches do, and most are fighting for progressive social principles. Evangelical fundamentalist churches generally are not.
5) Email, write, or better yet CAll ON THE PHONE your Senators and Representatives and let them know you’re mad as hell. You might be suprised at the attention you will get. Don’t do this just once. Do it regularaly.
6) Don’t be afraid to voice your opinion in your neighborhood, your workplace, your church, etc. Part of the problem here is that there are more and more people fed up with our government, but they are afraid to say or do anything about it. Let them know they are not alone.
7) Get your news off of the internet, but not from the big news giants.
Why no coverage?
This is a narcissistic culture, and one thing narcissists do is silence others. Narcissists will ignore and marginalize those who do not worship them. Pretty straightforward, actually.
PJD: I’m nearly 40, not sure if that’s young or old to you. In the internet era, if politicians are genuinely interested in their electorate, a protest should be unnecessary. They need go no further than the blogosphere to check in on sentiment if they cared about it.
Nixon’s era was different in many ways — racial unrest/riots, a country split by Vietnam, the draft, Kent State shootings, etc. Nixon was probably less worried about a peaceful protest than he was about a half million people rushing the White House and physically throwing him out. Even if such a move were futile, it may have resulted in quite a bit of death that would have done neither side any good.
But lack of coverage, bottom-line, is that the MSM is fully onboard with the m.i.c./Big Energy/AIPAC coalition running the show in the mideast. We can’t really expect the MSM to do better, but we SHOULD expect our fellow citizen, increasingly, to turn them off. Or, better yet, to start writing himself.
I personally believe this to be the better route anyway. We can’t win by money, but we may win by relevance, honesty and volume. It’ll take a shift in viewing habits, and more ordinary people writing. Good news is that this is happening now, in earnest.
TheLorax October 30th, 2007 3:09 pm
I work for IPSOS, www.ipsos-na.com the Research Company that does the Political and Social Survey Research for the Associated Press…
Here’s what I wrote on another blog when someone else claimed something similar to what you’re saying.
Don’t be decieved by the media, pundits and lobbying groups reporting of surveys. THEY largely miss the point, and, for the most part, they one- aren’t in the field of social and market research, and two- they clearly report surveys with an agenda in mind, cherrypicking facts. I hate to put myself up on a pedastal, but anyone actually in the industry of social/market science, data analytics and such, these people write 40 page reports (I help write them tongue.gif) and put together 90 powerpoint slides, after weeks of digging through the data, sampling, market, demographics, clusters, and context (Pew is a great example) can give you much more accurate insight into a particular study. The media, pundits, politicians very often MISUSE the polls for their own vested agendas.
Instead of the media etc… I highly recommend going to the Survey/Market Research firms website, or where they write the official reports rather than resort to any mainstream media, political website, politicians etc. I mentioned Pew. The company I work for, IPSOS www.ipsos-na.com, our Public Affairs Division (much more than just politics) does the political Survey Research for the Associated Press… I can tell you that my colleagues and I get quite angry when our work is misinterpreted, misrepresented, cherrypicked, and manipulated by these media pundits on cnn, msnbc, fox, townhall, moveon… you name it. And we especially don’t like it because they almost never reference our reports… they just extrapolate what they want out of it. I went to a Fox News link, to what I thought would be a PDF of an entire survey and it’s report, but no, it was just a repetition of the previous article. It’s not like they, any media site, can’t reference these reports, they can…they’re widely available they just want people to see certain parts, and not to see other parts. Additionally, their misappropriations do damage to the reputation of our industry in general, another reason why we dont like how the media reports the surveys. That being said, not all Media reports are necessarily bad, or decieving (though many are).
I should have added, be especially weary and skeptical of TELEVISION and NEWSPAPERS and their misuse of the polls.
I think Frank is onto something. My hometown newspaper didn’t cover the protest with a headline and story. But they did run a photo of the “die in” in San Francisco, with a lengthy boxed caption that stated it was part of an 11-city event.
It doesn’t seem right to make entertainment out of an effort to stop a war that has taken the lives of thousands… but maybe we have to find a way.
Sarcasm & ridicule of our leaders has more influence with the apathetic majority than our outrage and indignation.
I dream of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade featuring giant gasbag caricatures of gasbags like Limbaugh, Coulter and Hannity.
I also agree with previous posts that polls are garbage. I’m even beginning to suspect that the 67% against figure was cooked up to take some steam out of the anti-war movement. With that much opposition we can all relax ’cause Congress will HAVE to act on it, right?
There may actually be that much opposition to the war, but much of America is still looking for a way out of Iraq that doesn’t involve “losing”… and they’re willing to hold out until Clinton gets elected and unveils her “secret plan”.
How do we convince them that in a war started by lies, “losing” is the only honorable thing to do?
During the Vietnam war, I asked an investigative reporter (an ex-FBI man) if there was any censorship at the paper.
He told me, “No, we are never censored. However it doesn’t take long to figure what will be printed and what will go in the circular file. There is not much point in writing for the wastebasket.”
Thomas Jefferson said, “If I had to choose between government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I’d unhesitatingly choose the latter.”
It would seem that we now have the former, as the newspapers (and the rest of the media) are no more than agencies of the Ministry of Propaganda, run for the most part by Rupert Murdoch et al,.
So sad, so bad, but I don’t see a cure in the offing.
dmia - Please don’t disparage us as “old school.” Everyone I know in the peace/anti-war movement is already doing all the things you have suggested.
I am so amazed by how little knowledge people have of what we are doing to try to stop this war. There are people attending congressional hearings every day. There are people who are occupying the offices of their senators and representatives. Most of the activists I know don’t shop at Wal-Mart or buy anything but Citgo gas. We are not “one trick ponies.” We are up against an Administration and Congress that continues to ignore and dismiss our demands no matter what we do. I don’t know the answer but I do know we have to keep fighting and hitting the streets. I like the suggestions of frank1569 that we do something different - maybe we should all turn out in our birthday suits. I have always thought that on September 24th, 2005, when we had the White House surrounded by protesters, we should have all sat down in the street - all 300,000+ of us.
Anyway, if you’re not doing anything other than complain about what others are doing, please stop and think that maybe you are part of the problem.
Thanks for listening!
It seems to me that more people don’t show up for demonstrations is because they are intimidated. They’ve seen the news, the arrests, the tasers, they know about gitmo and what happened to habeas corpus and they’re scared. They know that showing up for rallies puts them on gov’t video, no-fly lists, ‘watch lists’, black lists, and who knows how many other lists.
Most ordinary citizens, although unhappy with the way things are going, are not quite brave enough, or desperate enough to put themselves and their families and friends on the line to such a degree. I seem to remember that disagreeing with the current administration can automatically classify a person as an ‘enemy combatant’ and that anyone who even unknowingly provides a job or other support to that person automatically joins the list. It’s insidious.
More than ever, I am convinced that passive resistance, up to a general strike, is the only kind of protest left that the masses can be expected to support.
People who advocate riots are too simple for words. If not provocateurs they are fools without solutions or even ideas. Let us see them advertise for a riot and see what support they have.
The difficulty with an owned press is that it is organized and speaks to everyone. The difficulty with the net as an alternative is that the net speaks to only those who are interested in a particular website… and as they are not as yet organized…we rarely visit more than a few regularly.
This is not the sixties. We have the net (as yet) but we hardly make us of it effectively. Is there a neutral zone Peace Bulletin Board where everyone could post announcements of upcoming marches on Washington… more would come if they had more time to plan to. Perhaps small marches in large cities should become fewer but larger combined groups marches. As yet only political people visit political websites. The marches aren’t getting smaller as much as it is harder to find new people who haven’t been to one. News of upcoming marches are being announced on the net but only to the converted. That is, to only those who wanted to find out about them anyway.
I also think a single huge march is worth three smaller ones. There seem to be a lot of marches but maybe concentrating on getting everybody all together for a big one would be more effective. Conversely locally several small protests at different sites all on the same day might be more effective than ten thousand people marching down main street where only a 100,000 would get noticed. Ten separate protests of a thousand people held around a city on the same day would be noticable.
We still have the net though for how long is a question. It is a bit like the modern equivalent of the graffito scratched on roman walls during the empire. The owned press is our wall and the internet is the writing on the wall…
Speaking of the writing on the walls of ancient times…where are the damn posters pasted up everywhere by volunteers telling everyone about a demonstration and constantly reminding people that Americans don’t support the war?
Organize each other on the net and then take it to the streets by putting up some printed posters or hand out some fliers printed on your home printer. Time to stop net surfing to the converted and MAKE PEACE VISIBLE …outside progressive (if unconnected) web sites. We tell only ourselves about demonstrations…only we will admittedly…but it seems only we can hear about it too. We need to reach those who don’t visit a common dreams or other progressive site regularly. Even so they might miss the occasional reference to a coming march.
Heck… print up a dozen hand signs and tape one to a pole saying END THE WAR. Remember the iconic Peace sign? It could be seen everywhere. Posters were put up everywhere too. That stuff was the sixties. Eventually millions began to participate. Peace out of sight is also out of mind? Move Peace out of it’s isolation to the net and into everyday life too.
Put up a poster on a wall. A sixties tradition.
Riots were not what worked. Peace worked. People wanted it and worked for it. These days only some do most the work and the rest visit web sites. Back then volunteers who got tired of volunteering got someone else to replace them…lol. Want to know what the sixties looked like… you saw ‘Stop the War’ on walls everywhere in one form or another. Peace was in the air and right under your nose. Like bumper stickers at a rock concert. Peace was VISIBLE and always on everbody’s mind. Not the war but trying to stop it. Everybody could see and it was made obvious we were the majority. Posters of marches and of past marches were pasted up everywhere. The writing was literally posted on the wall.
We net surf now. So don’t just read a posted article or comments …um…copy and paste one on a real wall or pole. Leave some articles (short ones okay)somewhere. Write your own. Be creative. You’ve all got printers and some scotch tape…don’t deface but in your face nonetheless (Not the window of a store but the lightpole out front etc.) make an anti-war sign of your own and put it up somewhere or hand some fliers or copies of an article you really wished people could read. Our peace movement is constantly disappearing from view except for marches, such press as they get and here on the net.
Heck we had fun dashing about pasting up posters in the middle of the night… harmless often exciting and ever silly (hey it WAS the sixties) and we’d go see the poster the next day.
Organize the net and take it outside… peacefully. Communicate PEACE. Peace was everywhere you looked back then and not just on the net like now… the writing was on the wall.
LOL …a sixties tradition… Peace was visible to everyone.
I remember a rubber stamp saying just the word PEACE (and quite a few others which said a lot of things) … a rubber stamp and an ink pad… an individual weapon of mass information. Hmmn? Maybe one saying “Stop this War” or say one with the single word …IMPEACH…oooh I gotta get me one of those!…LOL.
mastershake - thanks for that useful insight. It is what many of us may have expected, but it was useful to hear your frustration as well.
Sorry about the tome above. >What about a stamp that said >>
IMPEACH
BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
FIRST
Leave a business card in strategic places which says
END THE WAR IN IRAQ
NO MORE BLOOD FOR OIL
If they won’t cover these protests, they might if we all decide to sit on are ass, like Ghandi did. One or two days of this would shut this government down!!!!!!!
I believe it was with Stokely Carmichael that the phrase, “burn, baby, burn” was attributed.
The riots of 1968 sure got a lot of attention — front page, and the money-shot story for all of the major networks, as-a-matter-of-fact. It was also an election year. The unrest from that summer caused a sitting president to decline to run for reelection. It was a long and hot summer, and it was, probably, the tipping-point toward the end of the Vietnam War. But, then as now, the American people couldn’t get behind the progressive candidates who promised an abrupt end to the fighting and carnage. They elected Nixon, and continued on the same path of huge body-counts and deficit-spending to pay for it.
What does all of this mean? It means we still have a long struggle ahead of us; the war(s?) will not be over quickly; and its going to take a hell of a lot more than marching in the streets.
NO
MORE
WAR
PEACE
print up a few dozen business card size …peace signs! Really…and place them around and about. A small business card sign is like a bumper sticker everywhere but on a bumper. Stick it on with a bit of tape behind it and it won’t blow away…lol.
NO MORE WAR
or or WE OWE 10 TRILLION UNDER BUSH
WE WERE LIED TO
or THEY OWE 2 TRILLION TO SOCIAL SECURITY
or
Is that a carrot or are you just glad to see me? Your gal Fuffy Puff is one hot wabbit! Give me a call, I’m an Independent. Here’s my number …oh no wait a minute …hmmn…I was looking for that number…um…don’t use that one …
I marched in both the Solidarity protests in DC for organized labor (yes- when we shamefully refused to allow the air traffic controllers first place in the line of march!)and can never forget the lack of coverage.
The government has suppressed us LONG ago and just now we are coming to our senses?
The protests against the Vietnam war were peopled by young baby boomers. The median age is far older in the US now. Another change is the economics. People are struggling to care for their families. They have neither the time nor the money to be taking off from work to attend protest demonstrations. For many of us older citizens, health issues are a strong factor in avoiding attendance, both our own and the elderly family members we need to look after. All these factors impact smaller demonstrations. I am a windmill tilter. I have been for years. I contact my representatives in Congress and in my state. I attend hearings when I’m able. I’ve worked on elections. Most especially, I network information. But I have never attended a large protest demonstration. My medical conditions won’t allow it.
Well, my wife and I were both marchers, amongst many thousands of others who were, like us, born in the thirties and earlier. Not exactly baby boomers, but definitely people who knew what war was, and wanted Vietnam stopped!
Many of us protested Iraq I, and Afghanistan, and the start of Iraq II and now Iran.
IF two hundred million people want an end to war, want no more “preemption,” no more aggression, want a return to democracy and negotiation, and a few hundred of the brain dead in DC and the CEO’s of the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Oil Complex say it is good for business, guess who wins.
Democracy is dead, representation is a myth except for the exceedingly wealthy, the Constitution has been shredded and burned. The nation has been bankrupted.
Can you say fascist dictatorship and oligarchy? I knew you could.
Hey Guys!
I get mailings from Move On and follow this site daily. I didn’t know these events were happening.
Why didn’t CommonDreams or Move On announce these rallies and more than once???!!!!
Democracy might be possible if it were comprehensible that the most humble flag-burner is likely a thousand times more patriotic than gwb. B. stands for the name of a family committed to Alolph Hitler.
Maybe the world will be a more pleasant place with another species on top of the food chain.
If there was a god, wouldn’t he have warped himself long ago to some distant part of the universe, to not have to listen to this endless crap.
Life has some good moments, but generally it sucks (and then . . . .); so most people try to remain out of touch with reality??? (and succeed!)
Why is this an ‘interesting question?’ Seems to be something very well known and expected to me.
I think the left and the antiwar movement has some very basic problems in not understanding the world around them. The corporate media coverage of these protests was very, very predictable. If we are even asking this question, then we have a big problem.
If we have an inaccurate understanding of our world, then our tactics and strategies can only be correct by sheer luck. We must have a realistic view of the world in order to correctly make decisions.
There are major differences between America of the 1960’s and today and it has nothing to do with the age of the protesters. The way the news organizations are owned and structured is very, very different. In the 1960’s, ‘news’ was considered a public service provided by the networks. It was understood that the news divisions would lose money. And the news divisions, instead of being tasked to make profits, were instead supposed to provide information that citizens need to function in a democracy. That’s the world that the Edward R Morrow’s and Walter Cronkite’s worked in. The news divisions were independent and took journalism and their integrity very seriously.
Today the news divisions are supposed to be profit making centers for the corporations that own them. And on top of that the output of the news divisions should also enhance the profits of other sectors of the owning corporations, or certainly not detract from them. So, when NBC reports, do you really expect them to run stories that might upset their advertisers and drive down the profits of GE’s weapons making industries?
Also, the very nature of our government has changed. In the 1960’s, there was a legitimate belief that the government would pay attention to the protests. And we know from the internal documents that they did. Today, Bush flies off to Crawford or Camp David for the weekend and could care less. And its also clear that the Democrats could care less also.
Which explains the difference in turnout numbers. In the 1960’s, anyone could assume that having a large turnout would make a difference. The news organizations would report on a major event simply because it was news. And the government could legitimately be expected to take some notice. Today, most Americans know that the protests won’t be reported on in the media and that our government is out of town for the weekend and could care less. So why take time out of a busy life in order to do something you know is going to be completely meaningless and ineffective in stopping the war? Most Americans have figured that out even if the organizers of the perpetual and useless events haven’t yet.
This is the most successful anti-war movement in history. We’ve already convinced 70% of the American people to oppose this war. What more do you want? The problem is that we no longer have a system of government which cares or listens to what the citizens of this country want. Getting 10,000 more people to come to a protest won’t solve that problem. And until we learn and accept the true nature of the world around us and the true problem we face, then we’ll continue to see tactics that are completely ineffectual at creating the change we want. Repeating the same tactics from the 1960’s in a completely different modern world is about as smart as the generals who are always studying to fight the last war and building aircraft carriers that would do a great job of fighting the 1940’s Imperial Japanese navy.
This just goes to show you how conservative the corporate mainstream media is.
Even when their audience is anti war, they still ignore the “program”.
You don’t want to televise disobedience to your consumers. They might get the idea that this country is about free thought. It’s not.
BugsBBunny III,
There are a couple problems with your thesis:
* Washington didn’t “peace” America’s way to separation from the British Empire.
* In any case, the people always want peace — for the simple reason that they do not profit from war. They pay for it.
Yet there remains a class of psychotically greedy who profit immensely, having no scruples whatsoever. It’s unclear that they yield to either peace or reason. Though this is clearly the preferred route.
Some of my own random thoughts on how to proceed.
– Attack the credibility of the corporate media at all times. That to me is the weak link of the system. Get the American people to the point where they automatically distrust anything the corporate media says. Don’t look for a magic bullet to do this all at once. Just grind away at it day by day and person by person until it gets to the point where if the corporate media says the sun rises in the east everyone gets up early and looks west just to be sure. Getting to that point would be a huge gain. And we aren’t that far from it. Reporters are always considered about as trustworthy as used car salesmen and politicians in polls.
– Quit holding these things on Saturdays. Who the heck cares if a crowd marches along between police barricades on a Saturday when everyone is out of town? Yes, you should get more people coming to a Saturday event, but we already know that doesn’t matter until you started to hit some really huge numbers like a million or so in DC on a Saturday. Instead, if these were on a workday, the smaller numbers that could come would have a much bigger impact on the daily life and business of a city. The disruptions caused would be a bigger gain than any cost from the smaller numbers. And guess what, if the American people saw us doing something that could really have an effect, they’d take a day off work to join in.
– Work the political system, but its time to make it clear that we reject both major parties. We know they both support the war, its time for us to go somewhere else. Nothing gets the attention of a politician than the chance of losing. And if the 70% of Americans who oppose this war were abandoning the Democrats and Republicans, they get that feeling of an upcoming loss real fast.
– Work on our own communications. It doesn’t have to be as fancy as a new network. Email works just fine. For the people who didnt’ know of these rallies, the question should by why didn’t someone forward them an email. It could be that simple. (I think that this is just another sign of the apathy the American people have towards a protest strategy that is plainly incapable of success). Or maybe, after the event each individual who was there should write an email to their friends and family. Why rely on the corporate media to do it for us?
– What else disrupts business as usual? We know tens of thousands of people marching between police lines on a Saturday doesn’t even put a ripple into business as usual, so what does?
– What’s fun? One big problem with these marches that I’ve been to is that they are seriously not fun most of the time. We need to create things that are fun and exciting for the participants to make them want to come out.
– We have to play the PR and media game. One comment above sounded very resigned at the idea of playing this game about something as serious as war. Right conclusion but very wrong attitude. We live in a world where everyone gets deluged with information every day. So we have to compete for attention. A bunch of bored people marching between police barricades through a shutdown downtown on a weekend isn’t going to do it. We have to compete for people’s attention and be creative in doing so. What’s fun and interesting for the audience. Since most of the people already oppose the war, what are you saying to them? If you just say you oppose the war, they’ll yawn because they are already agreeing with that.
–Look for the weak links in the opponents system. That’s why I started with attacking the credibility of the corporate media. Much of the system of control and politics relies on that. What other weaknesses does the opponent have? How do they get power and hold onto it? If they get their money from businesses, what do we do to turn businesses against the war. If businesses were seeing their profits eroded in the US by anti-war actions, you don’t think they’d call the politicians they donate do and say ‘hey, we got a problem?’
Just quit doing the same dang things that were done in the 60’s. Its a different world out there. Start thinking about it. But whining and complaining about ‘they didn’t cover us’ doesn’t do any good at all.
Because I’ve posted articles from the Financial Times (of London) here on several occasions, and they are not flattering to the ignominious US establishment, now when I go there for the nitty gritty under ‘markets’ and ‘capital markets’, the stories are all 2-3 days old…not one contemporaneous story to be had by truth seekers. Obviously,
the bush-stoppo has told FT to stop aiding and abetting dissidents……. like that won’t fan the flames of inflammation. WTF, did OBL manage to drop a ’stupid bomb’ over DC and render all in goubment asinine?? Is there a mid-east secret weapon like a ‘cluster-fuckafication-induction-device’ that has been clandestinely used on our so-called leaders? Does anyone out there know of one single government representative, other than Dennis Kucinich, who has actually earned the salary he/she draws from we, the tax paying public? BUT, on a brighter note, yesterday morning I was dial-surfing AM radio, and heard a DJ ask for call-in answers to the following question: “Which government do you think qualifies as THE most dangerous”. 5 out of 6 callers said “the USA”, and one said China”…… it was on FOX RADIO!!!! BWAAAHHAAHAHAHHAA
Why complain about your owner’s lack of coverage of your complaints in their propaganda aparatus when right here on this progressive site the front line of the progressive movement is not covered? Or if it is, only ephemerally. Near the top of this web page there should be a permanent section on the quiet revolution which is occurring in our southern hemisphere because that is where the empire is losing substantial ground and is in retreat. For instance, early this morning, in the UN General Assembly, Cuba won a vote against the U.S. blockade by a margin of 184 to 4. The votes against were the U.S., Israel and two tiny islands in the pacific that the U.S. is de facto owner of. Now, you expect the declining empire not to publicize that, but, here too?
Is it so wrong that the President of the United States hears God talking into his ear? Is it so wrong that God told the President to go off and attack Iraq because that would be good for Halliburton? Is it so wrong for 5 million evangelicals and 10 million Catholics are so desperate to prove that their lives have not been one, long, snipe-hunt, that they are willing to pave the road to armageddon because the blast will prove them right?
HELL NO IT’S NOT WRONG
………….IT’S FREAKIN PSYCHOTIC BEYOND ALL DOUBT.
Greenerthanthous said: “I went to the Sept, 2005 demo in Washington. I don’t know how many were there, but it was estimated at over 500,000, and it wasn’t covered!”
Angelahelwig claims it was 300,000.
Well I hate to tell you but I was there too and there is no way that 300,000 people showed up. Yes there were over 100K, I have no doubt of that, but part of the problem here is that we often discredit ourselves by way exagerating the size of our own rallies. Sorry, but if the police and the newspapers have been guilty of undercounts, we have not helped the situation by overcounting. When we go over the top saying 500K showed up and there were nowhere near that, we damage our own credibility.
Furthermore, could you please explain to me why we haven’t had a bigger demonstration since Sept. 2005? Why haven’t the demonstrations this fall been as big — not nearly as big — not even in the same ballpark?
From the outside looking in, an objective observer could easily (and fairly) conclude that the anti-war movement is running out of steam. It was said to be 100,000 at several rallies around the country this past weekend — less than we had in one place, Washington in Sept. 2005? What’s with that?
Sorry but you guys have not convinced me. And you aren’t convincing anyone else. The country is against the war according to every opinion survey out there and by lopsided margins. The problem is US. WE have failed to mobilize the masses, period. End of story.
I told the trust fund babies of the ISO about marching on Wall Street 4 years ago. It was too close to their parents money to fight there. It was a good idea then and still is good.
Look at the well off who run into the anti-war movement. It might force their Starbacks to close down. HA!
I posted the following on Alternet on Sunday. “Did anyone notice that demonstrations were held in 12 cities across the country this past weekend? I looked for reports of it on the internet. Only MSNBC and ABC had any coverage of it — and you had to dig. CNN did not mention it. The TV news? Not a word. So, effectively they threw a peace march, and as far as the rest of the country and the world know, no one came. It’s not even reported here on Alternet!”
Peculiar isn’t it?
Only economic sanctions work — it’s the only part of the rulers-of-the-world’s lizard brain that will respond. You can’t appeal to opinion, or righteousness. Money, or the withholding of it, is the only stimuli that reaches into their primitive brains.
I think there should be a unified demonstration against all major newspapers in the U.S. They have failed in their democratic obligation of providing a civic press to monitor the health of our American democracy, and they need to be reminded of that.
The 2005 protest was covered by CSpan. I looked in vain for coverage last weekend in
vain. Although CSpan also covered the
anti protesters protest (which was a pathetic amount of maybe 200 people).
The websites Impeach Bush.org always send me an email when an action anywhere in the country is planned, also I believe Code Pink, Democracy Rising (sorry I’m a bit tired) but you can sign up with these sites and you’ll always know in advance when a demonstration is planned.
This Oct 27, was promoted widely. I also sign up for newsletters from ATFP (american task force on Palestine) because the Palestinians are the ignored step child of the protest community. Also WRMEA.org (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, best archives from their magazine, which is the most informative news magazine on the middle east that I’ve come across.
I live in Pittsburgh & participated in a mini protest (in March I believe) there werent even a dozen people - but because we were demonstrating in front of a political fund raiser that already had all the media there we made it onto tv.
So success is possible at least in the limited sense of being on tv.
about my last post - I saw the 2005 protest on cspan + they also ran the pro war supporters who numbered maybe a few hundred.
I looked at cspan last weekend but there was nothing to suggest any protests were occuring.
sorry if I was confusing up above, I really should hit the sack.
My local daily paper here in the midwest ran one short article, on the back page of its second section, that for some strange reason mentioned only the 30,000 antiwar people who demonstrated in San Francisco.
On the broader issue of why peace march participation is down by comparison to the Vietnam era, and media coverage of today’s demonstrations is similarly down, I think you need to look at the changed domestic partisan dynamics that are at work.
In the late 60’s and early 70’s, Nixon campaigned as the “true” or “responsible” peace candidate. He delighted in castigating the unruly, scary, un-American, hairy dope smoking ruffians who provoked and attacked the Chicago police at the ‘68 Democratic convention, and who might just do the same damn thing next week, right here in River City, unless you don’t stand up for law and order. The Nixonian White House’s spin machine skillfully exploited the raw division between the peace wing and the LBJ wing of the Democratic Party, all the while pretending that the GOP was gradually winding down the war as quickly as was responsibly possible, in order to finally bring us all peace with honor. Tricky Dick came from a Quaker background, you may recall.
Demonstrations - particularly big ones like the pre-Kent State moratorium marches - delivered a powerful message to the Democratic Party elites in particular: either lead, or get the hell out of the way. Moderate Republicans, too, could count the votes and sense the changing mood of their constituents. Once opposition to continuing the southeast Asian carnage evolved into a perfectly responsible middle class, middle American position for ordinary concerned citizens (and public servants) to take, the growing antiwar majority within the Dems, coupled with a respectable antiwar minority within the GOP, cobbled together just enough legislative punch to force the executive branch’s hand. That’s how Richard Nixon brought an end to the Vietnam War, kicking and screaming every inch of the way.
Today’s partisan dynamics are totally different. There simply no longer are any decent, responsible public servants in positions of power, staking out principled positions, inside George Bush’s Republican regime and Congressional leadership anymore. Lincoln Chaffee was the only one, and look what happened to him. You can’t shame a government into reexamining its own policy mistakes, when internally it has lost all ability to have a sense of shame.
The Democratic beltway leadership, in turn, knows full well that the antiwar wing of its party can be marginalized, taken for granted and instructed to keep a low profile without fear of meaningful reprisal. So what if Cindy Sheehan might embarass Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco for Chrissakes? The Daley machine that busted hippies’ heads in Grant Park forty years ago outside the convention hall is firmly, comprehensibly back in control of the national Democratic Party infrastructure of today.
Rather than expanding the natural Democratic base and boiling public rage towards the GOP, the antiwar progressives can be ignored and marginalized with impunity by the beltway leadership, for those MoveOn folks have nowhere else meaningful to go. Better yet, every time we get an independent swing voter or disaffected Republican to vote Democratic by seizing the center of the political spectrum, it’s really a two-fer: one for the DLC, and one less for Karl Rove’s boys.
In a nutshell, ever since 2003 the masses are hard to turn out for street demonstrations because those demonstrations no longer effect the behavior of elected Democratic Party or Republican Party elites.
And since big antiwar marches no longer effect how political power gets distributed and decisions get made inside Washington DC, why should the media consider those protests newsworthy?
Bill from Saginaw
In NYC, the march was covered by NY1 News, Channel 7 (ABC affiliate), and Channel 9 news.
Channel 7 erroneously stated that about 500 people attended the rally. NY1 news said it was upwards of 40,000.
New York Times, is no longer relevant there’s CommonDreams. & Democracy Now! etc.
All you’re going to see on the news is Hillary, Giullani, and Romney and Barack. Forget seeing Kucinich, Gore, and others. It’s all about the coming election which has already been pre-ordained by the corporate owned news. And protestors? Forget it. It won’t be long before you won’t even get to hear progressives on the radio, and Rush continues to spew his spit with no let up. I had hoped for a radical change in thinking, but when people are only fed crap, crap is all you will get.
The Twin towers:
http://peacesource.net/Therealtwintowers.pdf
Really sad. United States is facing their full entry into fascism and police state and a government that uses fear to control its folk and lies deliverately to people.
I have found a very good article about the subject. And I recommend it to anyone who wants to see what is happening in America its causes and consequences.
“Fascism is HERE! NOW! Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007″
Here is the link: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/142555-Fascism-is-HERE-NOW-Violent-Radicalization-and-Homegrown-Terrorism-Prevention-Act-of-2007
Make PEACE visible in the ‘outside’ world.
Make a sign on your home printer and put it up somewhere.
Peace is invisible out there.
Make signs of PEACE.
Yeah…MAKE YOUR OWN SIGNS !!! Ya got a printer. Print one. Tape it up somewhere.
Printers make small labels, business cards, … stick on labels…my my… a small sign.
IMPEACH <<< That is self explanatory to everyone these days on both sides. Just one word… says it all. Odd you don’t see it print much… so people …PRINT SOME UP!
Stick on labels…one word……………. IMPEACH
We could be seeing it … everywhere. Imagine that?
Did the organizers send out press releases the week before, 3 days before, the day before?
Why didn’t the organizers mention the Noam Chomsky and Desmond Tutu talk that was scheduled the same day?
Why didn’t the organizers have a non-violent direct action training scheduled either before the action or after it?
Why didn’t the organizers invite people to plan non-violent direct action?
Why didn’t we target corporate participants in the war by marching to their offices?
Why is the anti-war movement not turning up the heat and promoting total and absolute non-cooperation with the federal government until the war becomes a direct issue for everyone’s life right here at home.
Our media sucks and we shouldn’t rely on it to do the work we are not doing–building a movement of non-violent resistance to the war that intervenes directly in the war machine every day. We go to meetings, we have conference calls, we create fancy web-sites, we have great speaking tours, but we do all of this under the horrenous veil of the empire that provides security so we can feel like we are doing something. We need to wage a war–a non-violent war–against our government-corporate merger and demand not just an end to the war but to call it as it is:
-the war on terror is an economy and a lucrative one indeed
-not another dollar should go into this economy–it must be destroyed–when we have a president who vetoes child healthcare
-cancel all free trade agreements/institutionas and begin a people led fair trade agreement process
We’ve always needed a creative and diverse anti-capitalist movement not an anti-war movement that will fizzle when the war simply relocates somewhere else. Many anti-war activists, young and old, have missed an important piece of recent US history. Do some research on the 99 Seattle protests and what was quickly becoming a new global justice movement with sound targets–corporate welfare, free trade, pillage and plunder economy, sweatshops, corproate agrisbusiness, and the military industrial complex. We need to draw upon the attitude and spirit of this movement again, which has been ignored and decimated by an anti-war movement that calls for little more than ‘no more war’.
Anyone still thinks that the war will be stopped by the Dems (or Bush will be challenged in any way), or our “news media” are really news media? Huh!
There is no way around a revolution, unless of course we decide to live in a fascist country onwards.
Why no coverage?
For the same reason that Clinton has the red carpet rolled out for her bandwagon.
One has to admit that this administration deserves A+’s for its control of the news.
I believe Hilter would have been envious.
Bush and his crime family (Cheney, Reid and Pelosi) scoff at protests, marches, petitions, letters to congress, editors, etc, they laugh at it, as they should. These methods are useless and pitiful.
Only 3 things produce results: 1-a ge*ne*ral *s*Trik*e 2-a massive economical boycott 3-refusal to pay taxes. The rest is pure, utter garbage.
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA’s FORD FOUNDATION?
On DemocracyNow,as any of you every both checking where some of the shows financing comes from.
I am concerned that shows like DemocracyNow and Mags like ‘Z’ and the ‘Nation’,are perhaps nothing more then left wing gatekeepers.
You know controlled opposition, the second layer for those who see through the first layer of propaganda on the mainstream.
Just a thought.
AIPAC is pro war at the moment, bottom line.
The media only reports on protests like a traffic report - “people were inconvenienced by the disruption in traffic downtown today”, show the colorful characters (hippie weirdos!) and never seem to get around to mentioning what the people are protesting. Boycott, strike, walkout, yeah. Take over a few TV and radio stations and broadcast some real news documentaries. Maybe it takes something like people seeing the Blackwater stormtroopers come into an American city and kill people for the masses to respond. Trying to educate people who are 60 years behind the times in terms of human consciousness, full of right wing propaganda and corporate religion’s lies would take too long - by that time Bush and his Gang of Pirates will have everything they want and will have come up with a whole new set of lies.
tetti,
You only have to replace one letter to get “General $trike” through CD’s banned phrase list…
or alterrnatviely, &eneral strike…
tetti_tatti,
There are other (fully above-board) ways to exert grassroots/populist power:
* Article V of the Constitution, in which state legislatures may act with national effect when D.C. fails.
* Secession.
I listened to Air America yesterday on the way home from work. A caller had a good idea — that we enlist a Constitutional expert, sum up a concise laundry list of direct violations by this administration (and its enabling Congress), and post it everywhere. Not simply online, but on telephone poles, in public places, etc. Thom Hartmann gave a bullshit reply — they we need only trust in authority: “We’ve got separation of powers, sounds like the job of the Supreme Court…”
Where is the separation? The Dems have taken impeachment off the table, the Supreme Court is stocked with conservatives, and this administration has made more presidential signing exceptions (according to the American Bar) than all past administrations combined. There is an awful lot of power, but little separation of it.
The bang-your-head-against-politicians time is coming to a close. They’re clearly losing the Republic. It is only a question of who they lose it to, and what emerges from the rubble. My vote goes to a modernized parliamentary democracy with the Range Vote.
Thanks Barium for the new Twin Towers poster…. http://peacesource.net/Therealtwintowers.pdf I gotta copy that and send it around.
Another reason besides the big one “it is not in the media owners interest to cover our demonstrations”, they figure we have our Internet… they consider this mostly “our thing” now.
If getting attention is your goal as a peace activist then blocking traffic or breaking windows and riots are a sure way to get it. Then the peace movement will be demonized by the media and the new fascist laws will make it a crime to even contribute to the violent demonstration. That is the best way to reverse public opinion to think we are the bad guys.
It is the little things we do in our lives that matter now and that is how a better world will come… the little things we do with out fear are much more effective than waiting for the next disappointing big march.
There is no coverage because the press is owned completely by the corporations, the corporations are looked after by the government very profitably, regardless of the party. Why bite the hand that feeds you, it is foolish?
Rick October: I think people should definitely be wary of false fronts…the media is largely compromised.
For example, every time I hear an outraged columnist shouting about the atrocity of using biofuels–because of the red herring of ’starving the world’s poor’–I can practically hear Dick Cheney chuckling and rubbing his hands together with glee. Big Oil and its corporate cronies have lots of backroom funding throwweight in the progressive and environmentalist movements.
Yep, it’s fascism NOW.
Anybody who thinks that we get a choice of who the Democratic candidate is is an idiot. Policywise a vote for Hillary is a vote for continued Republican rule.
NPR runs a pro-war segment every single day in both Morning Edition and All Things (censored)Considered. They disguise these as some sort of report on troops but there is never, ever an unabashed anti-war voice.
The last two pResidential elections were rigged by electronic ballot tampering and jim crow style vote fraud.
The Democratic congress isn’t going to stop the war because Iraqi oil is used to prop up Saudi oil production numbers. Peak Oil is here and the foundations of our economy have been undermined.
Why would you expect corporate media to care for one day what you think. College students across the USA have elected to drown themselves in alcohol whenever a real thought occurs. It pretty much works for them.
Your demonstrations are pointless until you are willing to block traffic on weekdays, day after day. You can’t do that because you would lose your job and computers would blacklist you. In the 60’s you could move to another state, cut your hair and you were employable. Good luck trying that now.