Editorials

Editorial: So Just March, Already...

By Becky O’Malley
Friday October 26, 2007

The weather forecast says that Saturday will be another one of those gorgeous October days we’re blessed with in Northern California. It looks like it will be a very nice day for a walk—a long walk, a walk perhaps in San Francisco. Yes, if you haven’t figured it out already, this is a restrained pitch for the peace march in San Francisco. It’s being sponsored by—oh, who is it being sponsored by? And why does it matter anyhow? There will undoubtedly be people there with whom you disagree on some part of the message, or who will behave in a way you might not want to endorse. Go anyhow, carry your own sign with your own message, act the way you want everyone to act.  

You’ll see lots of old friends there, and make new ones. You’ll get some exercise. You’ll hear some music. You’ll see some handsome buildings, and some outrageous costumes. You can get there on BART, a trip in itself. 

And, someone pops up, will it stop the war? Well, no, probably not. Will it perhaps clean up the mess in Washington? Which mess? There’s always a mess in Washington.  

The latest candidate for attorney general of the United States of America doesn’t recognize torture when he sees it, and is a bit hazy on the concept of three branches of government. Blackwater and similar private security agencies continue to run amok not only in Iraq but around the world—it seems that the people in charge, whoever they are, didn’t learn about the nefarious “Hessian mercenaries” when they studied the Revolutionary War in their elementary school history classes. Congress continues to pass laws making the rich richer and the poor poorer, even failing in the last month to ensure that kids can go the doctor when they get sick.  

It is instructive but sobering to read in Arthur Schlesinger’s recently published journals for 1966 and 1967 about his own efforts and those of other Washington insiders, including Robert F. Kennedy, to persuade the Democratic establishment of the day to get out of Vietnam. Even those with the best intentions in that crowd, even RFK himself, didn’t really sense the strength of the groundswell of popular anti-war opinion which was building against the war.  

In the current congress, the Democrats cling to a tenuous voting majority, but they seem to be afraid to do anything much with it. Leaders express a desire to bring the troops home from Iraq, but can’t quite bring themselves to vote to cut off funds. “Wait until the election” seems to be the rallying cry, as it was in 1966-67.  

Schlesinger said then that “it is not hard to assert a congressional role,” but, given the structure of the American system, it is very hard to see how the Congress can restrain the presidential drive toward the enlargement of the war. Voting against military appropriations is both humanly and politically self-defeating.” 

Things haven’t changed much. The 1960s counterparts of today’s Democrats were looking for a hero to galvanize the masses against that era’s war. Schlesinger said of Bobby Kennedy that he had “a skepticism about a mass movement. Such a movement, [Kennedy] said, would have to tie itself to an issue or to a man. The issue of widening the war, he said, was too complicated and ambiguous. LBJ could always justify each specific step of intensification on the ground that it was necessary to say the lives of American troops and that it would shorten the war.” 

A lot of psychic energy is now being focused on who will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. The mass media love a horse race. Hillary Clinton, even though not a man, is being promoted in some quarters as the leader to whom a mass movement could be tied, despite her deplorable record (or lack of one) of leadership on key questions. Obama’s initial charisma seems to be wearing thin, for no good reason perhaps except that he’s lost the outsider’s glitz. A fresh face might pop up, or Al Gore might come from behind at the last minute, but don’t count on it. The Democrats could yet manage to lose this one.  

So, back to the main matter for the weekend...what good will it do to march in San Francisco on Saturday? Well, for one thing, for better or for worse, it is Nancy Pelosi’s home district, and she is still the speaker of the House, for all the good that does. She still shows a bit of backbone, but she needs all the propping up she can get from us.  

And then there’s the sacramental effect. The old Baltimore Catechism defined a sacrament as “the outward sign of an inward grace.” Every so often, it does us spiritual good to do what some traditions call “witnessing”—to show, well, not the flag perhaps, but to speak up for what we believe to be right, regardless of the effect.  

Mr. Eliot, the chronicler of life’s spiritual journeys, put it this way: 

“There is only the fight to recover what has been lost 

And found and lost again and again: and now under conditions 

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. 

For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” 

We must continue our struggle for a lasting peace based in a just society, even though we seem to find it and lose it again and again.  

And if that’s too metaphysical for you there’s always your mom’s unbeatable reason for doing the right thing: Because I say so, that’s why. 

A friend’s husband (he’s my friend too, but not in the same way) told me he went to the DAPAC workshop last week because the Planet editorial told him to go, and he always does what we tell him to do. His wife then suggested that I should tell him to do the dishes more often, but with awesome power like that I need to be careful how I use it, so I’ll stay clear of domestic matters. But as far as the march is concerned, don’t argue with me, just go. Logistical information about times, places, and groups you can hook up with can be found elsewhere in this issue.