Nothing dramatic
Yesterday after coming back from the morning of protesting the war, I flopped on the couch. I had fallen asleep when the phone rang. It was a recruiter -- looking for somebody who could write and annotate java code samples. Too bad -- I mean, good thing -- I'm not more technical.
I spent the rest of the day keeping up with the news. The day’s protest turned into the usual evening of cat-and-mouse with the police, as excitedly reported by the local TV stations. At one point in the early evening there were at least three separate groups of over 1000 people each marching around South of Market and up Market St., blocking intersections; there were the usual attempts to get onto the Bay Bridge and disrupt traffic there, something that's been a tradition since the first Gulf War. Then we finally got really tired, though it was at least a more legitimate weariness than I felt the day before, when I was exhausted simply by watching TV all day. Cris and I both went to sleep early that evening.
I recall that before the war started I felt an urge to do something dramatic, and that I was waiting until the war started to actually do it. But I never decided on what to do, nor did I remember, when the war actually started, to do it. In fact, like everyone else, I was simply caught up in watching it on TV and the internet. So I haven't gotten my head shaved or my eyebrow pierced or done anything at all to either demonstrate publicly or mark privately this event -- except, of course, my demonstrating with the masses yesterday. And the event is really important to me, because of the fact -- largely drowned out in all the excitement and angst over the munitions and their use -- that this is the first time the U.S. has ever attacked another country without first being attacked and without U.N. authorization. That, more than the war itself or the harm it will do, is what upsets me.
People I saw at yesterday's protest: Bob and Katie, whom I accompanied, and also: Mark Freeman and his boyfriend Ken; Philip Klasky; Nicola Ginzler. Hadn't seen her in ten years or so. Philip brought me some gum.
