Whether the result of love for the late counter-recruiting champion Tom Sturtevant,
or a desire to stand next to the awesome new banner created by Natasha Mayers and Nora Tryon, or just plain good organizing by Vets for Peace's Nicole Moreau, a protest of the Air Force Thunderbirds air show drew a good-sized crowd of protesters yesterday.
Or maybe it was the chance to wear one of the great drone hats created by Bowdoin College activist Phui Yi Kong that brought so many of us together yesterday, about 75 in all.
Ironically, the air show itself was way down in attendance. Local police estimated the crowd at about 25% of past years. There were no cars lined up to get through the gate at all, whereas usually they stretch for a half mile or so along the road we walked from the Bowdoin campus toward Cook's Corner and the airfield main gate.
T.V. news gave some good coverage to the protests, especially Channel 13 WGME out of Portland
which gave me a chance to say on camera what I object to about military air shows.
Of course local news also gushed about the effect displays of military might have on 11 year-old boys, the empire's future soldiers.
 |
| Tarak Kauf and Ellen Davidson of VFP's Veterans Peace Team speaking as Bowdoin's past president Joshua Chamberlain looks on in uniform. More photos here. |
Will our sons and daughters ever see the faces of the children who are victims of U.S. military airplanes and the bombs they carry? Will they ever see the children's mothers cry?
CODEPINK members carried messages including Bring Our War $ Home, Ground the Drones, and the classic Julia Ward Howe inspired message from the origins of Mother's Day as a time to come together and oppose militarism:
Inside action is planned at the air show today. News at 11...
More drone resistance is planned for noon on Monday, October 8 when CODEPINK will sponsor a Die-in at Obama campaign HQ, 533 Forest Ave., Portland, Maine.
1 comment:
I'm worried that some people might see this demonstration as saying that Israel doesn't have the right to defend itself by all means at its disposal. Who knows what that perception could lead to?
Haaretz today quotes Prime Minister Netanyahu (not that the Palestinian/non-Jewish majority of those under Israeli administration even got a chance to vote for him) as saying that any Hezbullah "provocation" will result in a counter-attack on "the Lebanese state". See, that's Israeli self-defense. It's what you got to do to defend your right to commit genocide in pursuit of racial purity.
There's a joke on Netanyahu here. The Taef Accord, by which the 20% of Lebanese who are nominally Christian get half the seats in Parliament means that Lebanon really doesn't have a state. The only functioning state in Lebanon is Hezbullah, representing the 50% of Lebanese who are Shiite, although there are one or two Shiite warlords inside the Christian/Sunni/Druze warlord tent. But collective punishment is the way you do slow-motion genocide, which may be a good definition of slavery, too.
Post a Comment