loosie: words: Still Standing

Still Standing

Greens protest the war and wait for...Nader?

by B.D. | 2003.12.24

It’s only 5:00 PM, but dusk has already descended on the looming pillars and cold stone steps of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. Any traces of warmth have dissipated with the departure of the pale December sun and the combination punch of frigid temperatures and whipping winds has created an environment so bleak that grabbing a scalpel and carving out a warm hibernation nook in the ample midsection of a morbidly obese Junior’s customer seems to make sense.

Then you hear the singing. The crooning of middle-aged angels cuts through the frosty gales and you peek your head out of the ribcage lair you’ve fashioned. The women are aligned in choral rows on the Borough Halls steps. “Shalom, shalom,” they chant gently, “we will work for peace.” Your fingers may have turned to brittle fleshsicles, but your soul has been warmed.

Only a few days have passed since Saddam Hussein was rousted from his earthen hideaway and the Bush Administration is still basking in the afterglow of the Iraqi President’s capture. Bush’s approval rating, which a week ago had dipped to the lowest in his Presidency, has quickly amassed points like Allen Houston during the meaningless fourth-quarter of another lopsided Knicks loss. Most Americans are hustling home to sip hot cocoa and gather around the family television for another hilarious and/or special night of prime time programming. But the middle-aged angels and the men who love them are bellowing in the street, singing songs with the word “Shalom” in them.

With a backdrop of Christmas tree salesman hauling their conifereal payloads into their truck, a small crowd has gathered in downtown Brooklyn to protest the United States government’s continued occupation of Iraq. They are mostly white and middle-aged – the diverse and youthful masses that swarmed the summer streets of Manhattan are somewhere less Yellowknifish. All the usual suspects are in attendance: the woman selling political buttons (i.e. “Is it fascism yet?” and “Still against the war”), the bearded Vietnam veteran, a guy in a Bush mask pawing at an inflatable globe, the young socialists hawking their union-printed newspaper. “Support the Troops, Bring Them Home” reads a sandwich board hanging over one man’s shoulders. Loudspeakers are plugged in and the voice of Patti Smith immediately floats over the small cluster.

Some mitten-clad hands are willing to pluck up leaflets for the train-ride home, but few in the after-work crowd hover around to hear the singing or converse with the demonstrators. Across Court St., an activist in a Santa Claus hat gets in a heated argument with a hunchbacked passerby. The hunchback doesn’t appreciate the protesters’ vocal opposition to the war in Iraq but can’t effectively verbalize why. Santa’s Christmas spirit evaporates and he calls the Bush administration policies “bullshit”.

Howard Dean is riding on spinnas towards the Democratic nomination largely on the strength of his anti-war stance and frequent diatribes against the President, yet his popularity among those assembled is negligible. The sign might say “Bring the Troops Home”, but the demonstrators are mostly Green Party members and Socialists who view Dean as too pro-big business for their tastes. Despite the horrors that have indirectly occurred as a result of his vote-siphoning 2000 campaign, there are some that actually hope Ralph Nader will make another run at the Presidency. “It would be a good thing if there was another choice for working people in this country,” said Bryan Koulouris, from Socialist Alternative. “We’re looking at it from the point of view of what Bush represents, which is, you know, corporations [and] capitalism. The Democratic Party also represents them. The question is whether the Democratics would make our lives any better; we don’t think so.”

With four more years of the Bush-Cheney cabal in power at stake, is it really the time for what would essentially amount to a protest vote? “We think so,” says Koulouris with a somewhat chagrined laugh.