Demonstrations losing relevance in 21st century

James Boyd Guest Writer

Those Vassar students who listen to the “blogospehere” (during breaks from their busy schedules of skipping classes, sipping caramel-macchiato-espressos and looking as blasé as possible in eight-degree weather) heard about the Jan. 26 mass anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. In an era when government is tightly controlled by people whose interests are very different than ours, and elections are won and lost largely on the basis of lies, spin and money, the question is do these protests accomplish anything other than reassuring the participants that they are making an impact?

About 100,000 (according to the Los Angeles Times, varying estimates placed the number between 10,000 and 500,000) of the nation’s heartiest braved the cold temperature in Washington to take the good word against the Iraq war straight to the man himself, that listener of listeners, George W. Bush. CC’ed on the e-mails sent out by people too lazy or demoralized to hop on the train down to D.C. were those congresspersons deemed now to have finally mustered the Monday-morning pizzazz to stand up to the White House. One would ask were where they in 2003?

As yet, the effect of these protests remains to be seen. The first 5,000 of the proposed 20,000 troop “surge” arrived in Iraq a few weeks ago, and the ever-virile yet seemingly quite-out-of-touch-with-reality congresspersons are now proposing to pass a “resolution” that “condemns” any escalation in the Iraq war, as if to tell the president something that he and the rest of us didn’t already know: We hate this war. For a Congress that gave him a blank check to run amok in the Middle East, this is the epitome of “day late, dollar short.”

But what of the protest? Was it the sound of the dying gasps, the last paroxysms of the “protest movement” that has accomplished precious few things after the ’80s? If it is, is it to anyone’s surprise? Gone, some say, is the epoch of American politics when the president or Congress could do little more to gauge public opinion than look out the window. Now, in the era of near-instantaneous polling, focus groups, and think-tanks, the concept of marching on a capital city to prove a point is antiquated.

“How,” you may ask, “does one even get up in the morning with such a negative attitude?” Or “What, oh-political-tea-leaf-reader, do we do now?” I’ll attempt to answer the latter, because coming to any conclusions about the former will make it even more difficult for me to get out of bed. The answer: nothing that I can think of. Certainly no obvious answer exists that will immediately stem the effect of mass media and modern propaganda on our political culture.

The real decisions that will determine the future of our involvement in Iraq are being made in secret Senate sub-committees and closed-door meetings at the White House. Depending on how well the Democratic party spins its candidate-apparent Hillary Clinton, (though this writer hopes against hope) any real sea change in American involvement in Iraq can only happen in 2008. This, by extension, also depends on whether or not the court system can successfully prevent the Republicans from stealing the 2008 election (but that’s neither here nor there).

To the people at Vassar who spent their weekend in Washington, D.C. committed to fighting a war seen by nearly all of us as profoundly unjust and drawing its strength from a topsoil of lies and deceit, you have my respect because you are doing something. Take heed, however: Conventional protest has a diminished meaning in our era. It is our job to find new ways to influence politics, and every minute lost on wasted efforts is crucial.

Most imperative is that those concerned about the war in Iraq and the toll it is taking on our nation utilize the Internet, that tool of tools. It is now easier than ever for anyone with a computer to know exactly what transpires here and abroad. Contributing money to candidates who are more in touch with the opinions of this nation is a simple way to affect change. If every protester who turned up in Washington had taken the $50 they spent on transportation and instead put it towards media offensives and supporting anti-war candidates, $5 million would have gone towards a more discernible victory.

It’s no longer the ’60s, and sadly, yet pointedly, we must exert force on Washington in new, unique, and, with the help of modern technology, more powerful ways.