Today was protest day on Market Street in San Francisco. The “activists” fell into two categories - 50 and 60 somethings of the warmed over hippie variety and the slimy kids. Most of them were suburbanites. We saw a few of them on the morning train, looking confused on BART. The young ones were shrill but some of the oldsters could be engaged in conversation, at least until you asked a question like “So do you want to see another Cambodian genocide in Iraq or Afganastan?” Then they went off.
One group was passing out “STOP The War Now” kits. Paper bags printed with the words “Stop The War Now” in (what else) red. I took one (they must have cost George Soros something to make up) and fund that they contained the following:
— One chocolate Easter Egg (Nobody at the office would touch it.)
— One red, white and black “Stop the war now” sticker
— One green pamphlet that asked “What would you do with a trillion dollars (get far away from San Francisco) and denounced various corporations from the Carlyle Group (currently experiencing financial difficulties) to Blum Capital Group (not experiencing financial difficulties as long as the owner’s wife is a US Senator).
— One pamphlet entitled “What Every Girl Should Know About The U. S. Military” Headed “Consider this before you enlist”.
— One flier from the Quaker Peace and Justice Center entitled “RESIST WAR TAXES”. (Paging the IRS.)
— One heavy paper flier from a group called Peace&JusticeNow” (no spaces) dated 2005 encouraging us to all get active and providing a list of loony toons organizations and their web sites and e-mail addresses on the back.
— A pamphlet from the American Friend’s Service Committee entitled “One Day of the Iraq War” explaining how expensive the war is, things like “One Day of the Iraq War = 12,478 Elementary School Teachers”. The nice lady handing the kits out became rather upset when I explained that even though I was very critical of public education I thought it was wrong for the Quakers to be advocating selling elementary school teachers and that I didn’t think any of the things on the pamphlet were as valuable as a day’s worth of dead terrorists.
— A mauve flier (it is San Francisco) with a cool map of Iraq on the front and a multiple choice quiz on the back with questions like “How many Iraqi refugees has the US accepted”. Answers: 750, 100,000, 725,000, 1,700 (curiously, “Too Many” was not among the answers.)
— A flier entitled “Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) and San Francisco Public Schools Fact Sheet” that explained how terrible it was that SF public schools where permitting high school students to learn discipline and leadership skills while preparing for a career in the service of our country.
— One plastic toy soldier packing an M203, shackled to a paper label that said “Support Our Troops - Bring Them Home”. I freed him from his shackles and he is now pulling guard duty above my cubical.
The crowds were not as large as in the past (maybe 8 or 10 kiloloons) but to their credit they was much less of a nuisance. At lunch time I paid the bag piper who hangs out across the street five bucks to play “Gerry Owen”. The demonstrators seemed to enjoy the tune. Nobody ever said leftist were smart.
“At lunch time I paid the bag piper who hangs out across the street five bucks to play ‘Garry Owen’.”
And I hope he played it well — he probably got in a lot of practice playing it a few dozen times this last weekend (it’s always a popular request around St Pat’s Day).