A few essays

January 22, 2003
Marching with Maddie

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It's four days later, so now I can think back on it, instead of being in the middle of it. Indeed, on that day no matter what you did you were in the middle of it, right in the thick of things. That was the part that felt the best -- that you were surrounded by so many others who were there, just like you. 

And not like you, either. There was the self-proclaimed "transsexual vegan lesbian epidemiologist punk for peace." There was the woman of about 60 who stopped to greet my 11-year-old daughter and said she was just waiting for the rest of her Unitarian Church group to catch up. There was a black man in a wheelchair snapping photos as we passed. (Yes, it's true, the crowd was mostly white or tan; I saw one group of African American teenagers yelling and whooping as they joined the march at the Embarcadero station, but after that very few dark faces.) There was a group of Hispanic protesters chanting slogans about "Palestina" in Spanish. There was an elderly World War II veteran walking near Civic Center, using his cane but moving along steadily. There were two toddlers in a yuppie double-stroller tooting kazoos while a photographer walked backward in front of them, catching cute close-ups. There were 40-something parents in woolie Banana Republic vests and 20-something girls with painted faces and bare midriffs and hard-chested gay men in tight pants and grandparents with sensible shoes. 

Maddie and I marched. The pace was slow at the beginning, and we stopped often as the streets before us were cleared. It picked up gradually but steadily, so that by the time we turned onto MacAllister, just before the Civic Center, you could stride forward at a fast clip if you wanted. People marched, people stopped to stand on garbage cans or newspaper stands or public sculptures to watch for a while. One woman shouted to us from atop a bus shelter: "I've been here for an hour and a half and I still haven't seen the end of the line!" I couldn't see it either -- it had no end, it had no beginning. It was part parade, part performance art: a party and a group hug. A group of young men and women carrying a bullhorn took turns shouting slogans both new ("Bush needs a brain! Cheney needs a heart!") and old ("Pea-ea-eace no-o-o-ow!" vamped one fellow, turning it into a long, breathless growl). A stocky man carried a boombox playing hip hop. Somebody strummed a guitar. A young guy with an old high school marching band hat and dickey banged a drumstick on a cowbell, while a retro-hippie in beard, glasses, and bright-colored poncho improvised on trumpet. 

And the signs. Scribblings with felt pen on poster board or paint on cardboard, quoting Einstein ("You can't simultaneously prepare for and prevent war"), getting sassy ("Bush can kiss my tush"), getting personal ("Forget Iraq -- I want my job back"). One woman had painted an elaborate portrait of Bush's head, with a jaw that moved when she pulled a string, to reveal the word "Oil" between his lips. I saw three other signs using the same recycled slogan I had chosen for my own, though I threw in an extra word: "War is still not healthy for children and other living things." My daughter patiently carried the sign for me every time I saw something else I wanted to photograph, like the little girl sitting on her dad's shoulders holding up a sheet of binder paper on which she'd drawn a colorful peace symbol, with radiating lines like a cartoon sun. 

We marched. We ate our lunch from our backpack as we walked. We drank our bottled water, we ate our little tortillas. We joined in the chanting. We shouted as periodic whoops passed through the crowds, like verbal versions of the "wave" that people pass through an audience at sports events. We didn't know what we were whooping about. We smiled with the people next to us, whom we'd never met before, as we shouted. 

Finally, we reached Civic Center Plaza. Hundreds had done so before us; hundreds more arrived behind us. I promised Maddie we wouldn't stop long to listen to the speeches as we threaded our way across the far end of the plaza, near Larkin, and stopped near a group of orange-clad men and women (Hare Krishna?) sitting in a circle, eyes closed, meditating. Maddie sat down next to them to rest. Joan Baez was announced and began singing "Let Us Break Bread Together," a song I've sung over the years with various choirs. The plaza buzzed, but listened. I sang the song with her, by myself at the back of the crowd, first the melody and then the harmony. I was singing with Joan Baez. I was remembering being 11 years old, like Maddie, in 1968. I was recycling hope. 

My father emailed me today. Like any thinking person, he doesn't want war, but he thinks we're right to try to scare Hussein out of power, and writes, "I'd like to think demonstrations do no harm because peace is still an option and Saddam is smart enough to know that Bush won't be swayed by them." I agree with my father on that last point. I don't think a march in San Francisco (bastion of wacky white tax-loving liberals) will sway Bush either. But I suspect our removing Hussein could be just as catastrophic as our putting him in power was years ago, and I'm damn sure war will mean death. And I hope that some other politicians may count the numbers (50,000 in S.F., 200,000 in D.C., more here and there) and think, "Hey, it may be small now, but there is another constituency." So I march anyway. And I bring my daughter, so she can learn that people do speak out, foolishly, even futilely. I am perfectly aware that I could be completely wrong, but even if I am, I can still commit to it. 

Joan stopped singing, and Maddie and I walked over to one of the playgrounds, where (just as the signs instructed) only parents accompanied by children were standing or playing. We climbed on a bench and I took some photos of the crowds filling the wide plaza, with people perched in every one of the sycamores, then we wandered over to Market Street. We rode BART back to Colma and drove home, passing the military graveyard on our way. The fog had lifted and the sun was shining.