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Equality March Shows What Grassroots Can Do
Without even one cable news outlet promoting the event and even without Glenn Beck--even without corporate lobbyists sending in activists by the thousands, and corporate advertisers publicizing it--the National Equality March on the D.C. mall on October 11 drew one hell of a crowd.
If for-profit media had given each equality marcher the air time dedicated to the 60,000 or so teabaggers that came to D.C. a month ago, they'd still be hogging the airwaves, dawn to dusk. Most reports estimate October 11's turnout at between 100 and 200,000. The DC Fire Department put the September 12 crowd at 60-70,000, max.
If we had seen commensurate coverage, we might have learned that October 11's march was organized by locally-focused, nationally-connected activists representing every race, class and faith. Everyone keeps calling it a gay rights march, but that was not actually its name.
The National Equality March was named as it was for a reason. Organizers see themselves as part of something larger.
Said one speaker after another: We want Justice but not just for us.
Equal Protection. Equal Rights. We need to add Equal Coverage.
If we'd seen it on the news, we might have learned that the Equality March wasn't called by the big established DC organizations: it was pushed by the fringe, and the youth, and the not-established-yet. Decentralized organizers, with a close eye on Congress, and an agenda that's national, local, and still has time for state-based stuff? Fancy that. It seems like the kind of structure that could change politics. Imagine what we'd learn, given half a chance.
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4 Comments so far
Show AllWhile I probably would agree with Laura Flanders on most matters, she always seems to be a day late on most issues, doesn't she?
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The equaity march only shows what can be done if the issue is an innocuous one which doesn't hurt the wealthy and their economic system. Contrary to what Ms. Flanders wrote, it got very good sympathetic media attention compared to any other recent organized protest.
There is the perception (albeit not necessarily correct) that gays tend to be affluent single "professionals", with no children of course, with lots of money to invest in stocks and buy expensive goods. So of course the equality march was well-recieved.
Comparable marches to end war and promote economic justice (with the peculiar exception of Dafur, Sudan) have been, and will continue to be, ignored by the media and government and attacked by business.
Oh, the National Equality March, with one of its two central goals equality in the empire's global murder, torture, ravage the earth military machine. Quite a lofty goal. Just can't wait till open GLBT people are right there helping out water boarding operations at the Empire's numerous gulags or a freed and liberated GLBT person is honored for being a superb drone pilot doing proud citizenly duty by sending bombs and Hellfire missiles into Afghan weddings and funerals and 12th century mud homes. With the empire's ever expanding wars of liberation, there will be plenty of positions for everyone to help deliver "freedom and democracy" at the point of an M-16 or by drone delivery systems.
One has to wonder if the liberals like Flanders have any moral criteria in matters of empire or do they just reflex respond to any group's claim to "equality" in delivering death and destruction? Would one feel less condemning of the Nazi regime had they accepted GLBTs and incorporated them into the operation of their war machine and concentration camps? "After all," the liberal historian would say, "we have to remember that the Nazis did open their military and prisons to full participation by GLBT people, so that was indeed commendable." As US global operations sink to ever lower levels of moral depravity, will mushy minded liberals wake up and ask themselves and their listeners some radical---to the roots---questions? Or have they drunk so deeply of the empire's kool-aid that they can't make clear moral distinctions?
I believe the proper solution to the injustice of not allowing gay people to serve in the military is to prohibit ALL people from serving in the military.