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Protesting on the fringe and from the heart
© St. Petersburg Times Joe Bohren wasn't like the others. He didn't shout slogans. He didn't pace back and forth. He stood silently Wednesday on Bayshore Boulevard sidewalk with a slight smile on his face and a large American flag in his hands. His silence and the flag led me to think that Bohren had maneuvered himself behind the enemy lines of protesters to aggravate them. He had no tattoo, no pierced nose. From his looks, he could have been grandfather to half the people lined up on the sidewalk. I guessed wrong. Bohren was once a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and an intelligence officer in Vietnam. He is retired now, and is firmly against the war in Iraq. "We used to say we had to destroy the village to save it," Bohren, 70, said of his Vietnam days. "Now we say we have to tear up Iraq to save it." Yes, history repeats itself. Standing on that picket line, while President Bush was a good ways south on Bayshore at MacDill Air Force Base, was like passing through a time warp. I heard all the old slogans of 35 years ago. People were wearing armbands, marked with the ubiquitous peace symbol. An earnest-looking man was passing out newspapers from some socialist political group. The only thing missing was the Grateful Dead music. And except for the few like Joe Bohren, peace was the province of the college crowd. People came from the University of Tampa, the University of South Florida, even from the University of Central Florida. I met a husband and wife who are organic vegetable farmers in Webster. Omali Yeshitela took a break from his protests at the federal courthouse in support of Sami Al-Arian to stand on Bayshore and chant, too. But if Wednesday's protest is any indication, the antiwar movement isn't what it used to be. It's hard to wage peace in a city so bound up at the moment with waging war, by way of Central Command headquarters at MacDill. What's more, the hippies are aging. The kids coming up behind them only know the glory days of protest, during Vietnam, from a textbook. The protesters lacked even the taste for arrest. When a cop asked some of them if they were planning to block the street, several said no, quickly. The police ended up standing around with nothing to do. The only space that got blocked was the sidewalk, the usual province of joggers, in-line skaters, bicyclists and mothers pushing strollers. "In other countries, you'd be shot," a woman said as she snaked her way through the chanters and sign carriers. But nobody surpassed the anger of a custodian, Vincent Assalone, who did manage to invade the line of protesters. He yelled obscenities in a rhythmic counterpoint to their chants. The protesters mostly ignored him, as they did the drivers who now and then shouted angrily at them as they passed by on Bayshore. I don't understand why the protesters are regarded as such a threat. There weren't very many, perhaps no more than 200, and whatever they say of themselves, they are on the fringe of the public debate over this war. Whatever doubts the rest of us have about it, we're not likely to feel comfortable enough to go stand by Omali Yeshitela with a sign. We live and breathe in the middle of the road, in a world gone darker, grimmer since 9/11. The protesters live by a different playbook. They like living on the fringes. It didn't seem to trouble them that their shouts were shouts into the wind and won't change the course of the war. What matters to them is taking a stand. I talked to a woman who teaches literature at the University of Tampa, Martha Serpas. This is how she summed up her purpose on Bayshore while the president was in town: "I may not change one mind," she said, "but I will reaffirm my spirit." -- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com
or (813) 226-3402.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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Times columns today From the Times Metro desk |
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