Californians for Peace in Arizona

At the downtown Phoenix, Arizona rally where I marched today (February 15, 2003), the informal count was approximately 2,000 people amassed for peace. To inspire the Arizonans who gathered in solidarity around the stage at Patriots Square Park, musicians were imported from California, for the dance of being alive. For a desert moment, it was one world, the energy of communal drumming and song that happens on Sundays at Venice Beach, down by the water.

A couple of thousand was a brave turn out in Arizona's capital, considering that this city is:

(1) spawning ground for the civil-rights-reduction movement on the U.S. Supreme Court (2 of the 9 Justices, Rehnquist and O'Connor, hail from professional careers here, with ties to major Phoenix corporations and law firms);

(2) host to John McCain, admiral's son of a military-industrial ruling class so influential that the corporate media forgave McCain being one of the "Keating 5" senators during financier Charlie Keating's S&L crimes that defrauded American wage-earners of their life savings; and

(3) home sweet home to Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Amnesty International's poster boy for police brutality in the ostensibly free world.

Before the march began, I mobilized an impromptu counter-counter-protest to the nominal Christians bearing signs like "Give War a Chance." A couple of the peace marchers had made signs asking "What Would Jesus Bomb?," and they joined me with their placards in the Washington St.-facing group of warmongers. It took less than a minute for the pro-war faction to send their tallest men to stand in our space with their biggest signs, physically to put their pro-war signs over ours, to cover them up. It was an exercise in diminishing returns to keep standing there, because the pro-war rhetoric segued quickly to anti-abortion rage. The "prince of peace" would have laughed today, maybe cried, about those invoking a ministry they in fact defy.

The back-story I learned about the Phoenix pro-war movement is its reliance on the zeal of teen college students. One pro-war eighteen-year-old student, Lucy, told me about her terror in the dark, last night, alone, in her bed, under the sheets, on "orange" terrorist alert. The pro-war teens feel that their fears of "the enemy" are justified because their college dorms were put on "orange" alert by "our President" wanting to "protect" them.

Parents and pastors have taught Lucy and her friends to believe that these are "end times" in which Bush II governs by divine right. Lucy and her friends believe that war will hasten their place in an otherworldly kingdom that excludes those who believe differently. Lucy looked baffled when I suggested that she might be following Machiavelli's prince, not the unarmed prophet. She regained composure when an adult leader of her assemblage joined our conversation. He pointedly answered the sign's question,"What would Jesus bomb?" "Saddam's Iraq," he shouted, "and the abortion clinic up the street."

Posted by eye witness Ruth Sproull, 480-929-9564, ruthsproull@sprintmail.com, in Arizona, 2-15-03

2,000 is a bad estimate
there were at least 5,000 in phoenix

the phoenix anarchist coalition worked hard and deserves much respect for refusing to be herded

check out arizona imc