September 23, 2005
Tear Gas Smells the Same in Any City: Galloway on the West Coast
Todd Chretien
I’ve been very lucky.
I was there during the Battle of Seattle that shut down the WTO meeting in 1999 and put the fight for global justice on the map in the minds millions of students and workers in the United States. The police were overwhelmed by the size of the protest and the direct action tactics. Naturally enough, they decided to lob tear gas indiscriminately. While activists breathed in our share, thousands of tourists, locals and the cops themselves got hit as well. But the main victim of the tear gas turned out to be the WTO itself.
I was there during the Battle of Los Angeles in 2000 at the Democratic National Convention. Rage Against the Machine played Guerrilla Radio to a crowd of 20,000 activists just 100 yards from the Staples Center where Al Gore accepted the Democrat’s nomination for President. Halfway through the song, the LAPD started tear gassing us. We were trapped in a huge parking lot with only a couple small exits, surrounded by chain link fences with barbwire on top. In order to avoid a panic, we organized a march of thousands of people out of the area, five miles across town to the LA county jail where we demanded the release of hundreds of people who had been arrested during the week of protest. It would be a big overstatement to say that the protests sunk Al Gore’s campaign (he didn’t need much help on that score), but the Democrats certainly did lose the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of young people that week.
I was there during the Battle of San Francisco in February 2003, when thousands of people blocked the streets the day after Bush started bombing Baghdad. The police arrested 1,000 people and, for a time, lost control of the west coast’s most important financial center. In the interest of full disclosure, since my daughter was just two months old, I have to admit I steered clear of the street action that day. In retrospect, it may have been naïve to think that we could stop the bipartisan determination to invade Iraq with street protests alone. Inevitably, many of those who protested, even those who were willing to get arrested, were demoralized by the fall of Baghdad.
But, you know what? It turns out that we were 100 percent right. Bush and his Congressional supporters were 100 percent wrong. The effect of the tear gas in San Francisco and the napalm in Baghdad may be too long delayed, but it is having the same impact it had in Seattle and Los Angeles. Rather than deterring, it is rallying thousands, and then tens of thousands, and then millions to action.
The point here is not to reminisce but to remind readers that George Galloway has many more friends in these cities than the elected officials who claim to represent them. In Seattle, 600 filled up Kane Auditorium at the University of Washington (a week before students returned to campus). In San Francisco, more than 1,000 filled out Mission High School. In LA, another 1,000 filled in Immanuel Presbyterian Church. Standing ovations everywhere. If this sounds repetitive, my apologies.
Especially heartening in San Francisco and Los Angeles was the large number of Arab and Muslim people who attended and helped organize the events, thanks to the National Council of Arab Americans and to Mr. Galloway’s reputation amongst those communities. In San Francisco an Iraqi restaurant owner thanked him and an Egyptian cab driver refused to take any money for speeding us from the KGO radio station to City Hall.
At City Hall in San Francisco, Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi presented Mr. Galloway with a unanimous resolution form the city council welcoming him to the city and praising his work in opposition to the occupation of Iraq. Later that night, Gulf War One conscientious objector and Green Party leader Aimee Allison brought the house down when she called from the stage not for Bush’s impeachment, but his imprisonment.
As the song says, “There’s something happening here.” But, it’s actually pretty clear. As Mr. Galloway always points out, “We who live in the UK and the US have only one question with which to concern ourselves. Are we with the occupiers? Or are with the right of the occupied people to resist and fight for their freedom?” That opinion is growing and we will see it on the streets in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities tomorrow, September 24.
Mr. Galloway will address the mass march in Washington, D.C. on Saturday around noon. No doubt he will make some in the crowd uncomfortable because they believe we have to tailor our message to what is acceptable to Sen. Barbara Boxer so as to not “alienate” the Congressional Democrats who voted FOR the war and FOR the occupation, but are now having second thoughts. But if you do see some chagrined looks when Mr. Galloway is speaking, you will also see the large majority of people there standing and cheering and saying, “Thank god someone is finally speaking the truth, clearly, bravely and directly.”
Later that night, Mr. Galloway will speak at the First Congregational Church in DC. The venue is too small. It will be a hot ticket to get and a hot hall for the meeting. He will share the podium with Iraq veteran and war resister Camilo Mejia; National Council of Arab American leaders Mounzer Sleiman and Elias Rashmawi; Rose Gentle, a British woman who’s son was killed in Iraq; ISR editor Ahmed Shawki; and, assuming she can fight through the rivers of well-wishers and waves of media, Cindy Sheehan. Saturday night will be a fitting and powerful end to a tour that has played a part in girding the confidence, self-respect and determination of the anti-war movement on this side of the Atlantic.
On Sunday, or perhaps after a few days rest, we will have to get back at it and answer these questions: What will it take to get the US and the UK out of Iraq and Afghanistan? What do we have to do to build an anti-war movement that follows the British example of mass participation of and leadership by the Arab and Muslim community? What can we do concretely to strengthen the bond between the American and British anti-war movements? They are big questions, but the answers are too important to defer.
I’ve never written a blog before, but my impression is that the authors are allowed to add personal elements that might not be appropriate for more conventional reporting. Thus, I am going to risk abusing my mandate here.
For my part, I am dedicating this tour to Michal Myers, a teacher, a union activist, a movement leader, a comrade in the struggle for peace and justice. Today I learned that she received some very bad medical news and that, barring a miracle, her time fighting beside us is drawing to a close. There are millions of people just like Michal all over the world who spend every waking moment in the full knowledge of the daily genocide against the poor and oppressed that darkens the spirit of our little planet. She belongs to that conscious part of humanity that has, for hundreds of generations, done its best to improve the odds on the side of justice and humanity against that of greed and selfishness. She is no more or less remarkable than any of these remarkable heroes.
Michal is a bright star in a night sky overflowing with bright stars. The universe dictates that all stars eventually return to their primordial component parts sooner or later. But the sky remains, not unchanging, not static, not rigid, but alive and developing and beautiful. It seems to me that the point of politics is to bring us all one step closer to a day when our children’s greatest worry will be hoping the clouds clear up in the summer sky to reveal the constellations, or a meteor shower, or just the inspiration of a full moon. We have a lot of work to do. But we will win. We will push the wars and the poverty and the racism and oppression into the bitter past of a species that does not have to be divided into haves and have nots. No regrets. My only hope is that Michal, and the millions of others just like her from every nation on earth, know how much we appreciate them, how much we love them, how much we will miss them, and how proudly we will carry them with us in the battles ahead.
Todd Chretien is the Galloway National Tour Coordinator and a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review