On Ambivalent Imbroglio there was a post about the National Parks Service allowing only Bush supporters access to the inaugural parade, permitting dissenters only if there's space left over. I find it incredibly plausible that there would be such a policy, given similar preclusive behavior by the sitting administration towards protestors attending his campaign rallies.
But the dissenting group whose difficulty in obtaining a permit was cited was A.N.S.W.E.R. Although I don't think their particular views should affect whether they can be present at the parade - just as I don't think anyone's views should be vetted before being allowed to attend - it would be a mistake to permit A.N.S.W.E.R. to be the proxy for all those who disagree with Bush, particularly in his foreign policy, for they are not the ambassadors of peace they purport to be.
What I posted on the other blog:
The access issues are important, and I don't trust this administration to not clamp down those who disagree with its policies.But be careful about holding up A.N.S.W.E.R. as the epitome of progressive thinking. I went to a huge protest of theirs once, just before the war in Iraq when ~100,000 people marched through the streets of San Francisco to a rally at the Civic Center. We came to lend our mighty presence against the imminent war, but at the rally we were instead regaled with an anti-semitic attack against Israel. That our tremendous turnout now appeared to be supporting.
At best, it was a confusing of the issues counter-productive with making headway on the matter at hand.
It was also imbalanced and inaccurate, and full of hateful invective and uninformed bias against anyone Jewish. Even the thousands and thousands who were there in attendance, committed to the cause of peace.
It was so clever of them, to use a rally where everyone in attendance was attuned to nodding affirmatively and saying "Amen" to every cheer that was led, and then using that momentum to trick people into cheering for their anti-semitic rhetoric.
We need more protests against the war, and more demonstrations for peace. But we should not be lending A.N.S.W.E.R. the legitimacy of organizing them. They're little more than a hate group in disguise.
It didn't make sense why, at a protest against the war in Iraq, A.N.S.W.E.R. had invited a panel of speakers whose mission was to rail against Israel. While in a rigorous discussion of Middle East politics it's worth including Israel in the analysis, to do so here confused the issue. We had a singular purpose: to stop the war in Iraq. Even if the Israeli issue had been fairly and accurately represented (and it wasn't) it still would have been ill-advised. As it was the US still went to war in Iraq despite this huge protest - all that civic energy needed to have been directly applied to stopping it. Diluting it by focusing on other issues simply wasn't constructive towards that overall goal.
Of course, it's not that I would have expected perfect hegemony among the protestors. Of the 100,000 people in attendance there were probably just as many agendas represented. Different people were there for different reasons, and that's fine. But the organizers of the rally, A.N.S.W.E.R., had a responsibility, to its purported mission and to the people who had answered its call to be there, to live up to its advertised promise of being against the war. Pure and simple. Dragging in the other issues derogated from its duty, and allowing hatemongers to take advantage of the crowd to derive tacit support for their politics was inexcusable.
We who had attended had been duped. We had been lured to the rally by false pretenses. Thinking we were going to weigh in for peace, we found out to our horror that our weighty presence was instead going to be thrust in favor of unpalatable, inaccurate, and hateful rhetoric. Peace turned out to be the last thing on the agenda.
It was truly terrifying as the speakers ranted about Israel and Jews. In addition to misrepresentations, the rhetoric contained a tone of "nudge, nudge, wink wink," that anyone who thought they were for peace would also need to adopt these biases. It made my skin crawl, and I wavered between shouting out against the speakers and fearing for my physical well-being. The crowd was thick, and I couldn't tell just how much the people besides me were buying into the Jew-hating invective. It was like the speakers, and A.N.S.W.E.R., were playing "whack-a-mole" with the Jewish protestors, making us feel like we needed to duck away from the crowd and crawl into a hole. It was also confusing: I thought I had been invited to the rally to lend my support in the quest for peace but it turned out I wasn't actually welcome there at all. Except to the extent that my presence was able to be co-opted to facilitate my own persecution.
In what had otherwise been a triumph of civic participation, to have had so many people there at the rally, we should have all been standing strong in solidarity. But instead A.N.S.W.E.R. chose a path of divisiveness and hate. We should not support their efforts to do it again.
Edited 12/19/04 and 2/7/05.