WCRS Podcast - consciousvoices

Chris Gillespie talks about her participation in the Voluntary Simplicity course

In the months leading up to the most recent protest in Washington, D.C. against the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, activists and writers such as Cindy Sheehan and David Swanson have called for shutting down business-as-usual in the capital city.

But on March 20, instead of a hundred thousand or even tens of thousands of protesters, it was evident from first-hand observation that the event drew, at most, a few thousand people.

Far from disrupting business-as-usual, the anti-war protest---which took place on a Saturday--seemed to blend in with the flow of tourists and locals enjoying the warm, sunny weather in our nation's capital. On that weekend, far more prominent in mainstream news was the health-care reform showdown in Congress and the immigration reform rally which drew more than 200,000 people to the National Mall.

But some of the ordinary protesters who did show up advocate revolution or other ways of intensifying resistance against what they regard as imperialism and militarism.

“On a larger scale we need to do away with the whole capitalist system,” said Rich Mareeney who came to Washington, D.C. from New York City. He tilted his head toward a fellow activist standing a few feet away from him and said, “some people like Bob over here—he's going to argue we need a revolution to overthrow it.”

Mareeney works with the anti-war activist group, The World Can't Wait. He was dressed in an orange jump suit—-like those worn by Guantanamo Bay detainees--to call for an end to occupations and torture for empire.

At points throughout the anti-war rally the crowd chanted “shut it down.” It's not clear whether that call for shutting down the empire was heard by anyone in the White House across the street.