Thursday, June 25, 2009
Out of Gas [Michael Warren]
A finicky motor-generator couldn’t stop the protesters at today’s Torture Accountability rally from speaking truth to power. Every time the gasoline-powered motor stalled and the microphone cut out, someone was on hand to give it another crank. Between the 15th generator malfunction in 15 minutes and the half-hearted “Accountability for torture!” cheer, one thing became clear: Left-wing protests ain’t what they used to be.
A coalition of groups, including Code Pink, Amnesty International, and the Progressive Democrats of America, organized the rally this morning in Washington. It was supposed to begin at 11:00 in John Marshall Park (next to the Canadian embassy), but about 20 activists were already milling around a couple of hours before. By 11:00, the plaza had swollen to almost 50 protesters, most of whom were no doubt drawn in by the dancing Dick Cheney impersonator in prison clothes and the musical stylings of New York singer-songwriter David Ippolito, who sang some uplifting ditties about torture, Cheney, and how “a small, committed group of people can change the world.”
This small, committed group skewed older, suggesting that the protest crowd is going the way of Western Europe and aging faster than it is reproducing. There was a tinge of sadness when the MC spoke of Cindy Sheehan in the past tense, as if she were a figure from a long-gone era. The crowd was deflated and unenergized, still fighting yesterday’s battles. A Tea Party this was not.
— Michael Warren, a Collegiate Network intern at National Review, studies economics and history at Vanderbilt University.
06/25 06:49 PM
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