[Peace-discuss] AWARE Demonstration-10 Reasons to Join the Sat Protest

[Roger Epperson]

The next AWARE protest is Saturday., September 6, from 2-4 pm, at Neil and Main St. in Champaign. The following 10 reasons to join the AWARE protest to demonstrate against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to rally in support of peace and social justice causes is adapted from a post by John Whilley on Medialens of (June 27, 2007). 

1. Continue to recall how ‘ordinary’ citizens stood on street corners knowing the subterfuge that was unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan while many of the ‘smart’ politicians and academics were taken-in .

2. Demonstrating does achieve things, albeit, often, in the long run. Believe in the process itself, and that another world is not only possible, but, in the long-term, highly likely. As Zhou Enlai said when asked what he thought of the historical outcome of the French Revolution: “Too soon to tell”. Think of yourself as part of a great and common force throughout history who did, ultimately, see their aims being realised. Walk not only in reasonable expectation that justice will eventually prevail, but in a spirit of easy humility. 

3. Consider all the great political debate and education you’re getting being amid this sea of vibrant radicalism.


4. Enjoy, in a perverse I-don’t-really-care-kind-of-a-way, that strangely Orwellian mood-moment of being watched and recorded on the police’s latest hi-tech surveillance cameras - smile and say “peace”. 

5. Stay fit and healthy, while helping the environment – walking on demos is good exercise and helps keep a lot of polluting traffic off the road for a day at least. 

6. Being part of a positive social collective is great fun and can induce significant feelings of uplift, compassion and inner happiness. It’s win-win for all concerned. 

7. Think, likewise, in generous spirit about those coerced and conditioned apparatchiks stuck inside the conference hall while you are out there expressing your view as a free-minded, liberated person. 

8. Think of all those embellished stories you can tell your grandchildren about how you marched to save/change the world. You might even have kept some of those quaint old youtube videos to prove it.

9. Remember that, while public protest lets power pretend that we live in an open, tolerant democracy, the elite would still rather such dissent was much less visible – which is why the media routinely conspire to render it ‘invisible’. 

10. Passive resistance is still the mortal enemy of the oppressor. Peaceful demonstrating, combined, of course, with multiple other forms of dissent, helps maintain the inconvenient truth that it’s we who march to oppose their violence around the globe. And, as an old WW2 veteran used to remind me: “If you’re marching, you’re not fighting.”