Protesters re-enact bombed wedding scene
By Greg Zeman STAFF WRITER
In response to Fleet Week and the accompanying aerial exhibition by the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels acrobatic flight squad on Oct. 10, a small but vocal group of protestors gathered at Union Square to denounce the Angels and the U.S military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The protest was organized by local members of The World Can’t Wait, a left-wing activist organization known for its theatrical demonstrations. WCW decried the Blue Angels aerial stunt show as illegal and immoral.
One non-WCW protestor, who declined to give her name, said she had been a peace protestor for 60 years and was there to support WCW’s demonstration.
She characterized the celebration of Columbus Day weekend as a militaristic celebration obscuring the genocide of American Indians that followed Columbus’ arrival.
“If you look on the Navy’s Web site, they admit they’re here to recruit,” the protestor said. “Most San Franciscans oppose the navy-blue death squad above us. The rich, white war-mongers are so powerful at City Hall, they have city workers paint the Italian flag all over poles in what is now a Chinese immigrant neighborhood.”
The event was also used as a platform for criticizing President Obama and what WCW sees as his failure to reverse the policies of the Bush administration.
“Obama just won the Nobel Peace Prize, and now he’s listening to the generals, willing to send tens of thousands more young people to fight; to die in Afghanistan,” said WCW organizer Stephanie Tang. “This is the war you hated under Bush and Cheney, and it’s still going on under Obama.”
Keay Davidson, former science writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, voiced his frustration with what he sees as Obama’s continuation of failed Bush administration policies.
“I’m 56 years old,” he said. “What do I have to hide from? I think the country’s in the hands of militarists. Our president is a man who just won the Nobel Peace Prize and he’s bombing Afghanistan.”
Halfway through the demonstration, Tang was approached by San Francisco Police Department officer S. Kim, who informed her that WCW had no permit for the protest. The officer asked her if she could take the protest outside of the square to the corner. Tang refused because it would make the protest less visible.
The group’s method of protest was a “wedding party/die in,” a simulated air strike on an Afghan wedding party. WCW demonstrator Maria Ahmad portrayed the bride.
“These planes flying above? People enjoy that, but there are kids who can’t sleep because of the sound of these planes,” Ahmad said. “They’ve heard bombs fall from them. The American army has bombed weddings and funerals there.”
The group had planned to time the “death” of the wedding party with a flyover by the Blue Angels, to make a statement about the fighter jets present in other countries. But the fog had the last word when the aerial exhibition was canceled for the day due to the weather. However, the die-in continued without the planes.
As demonstrators lay motionless on the ground of Union Square, groups of tourists, including many children, listened as Tang recounted the horrors of the incidents that inspired the wedding party protest.
“If this was real, there would be forty, fifty, sixty people dead; body parts everywhere,” Tang said. “If this was real, you would be in Afghanistan asking, ‘Why do the Americans hate us so much that they drop bombs on our villages, that they send the unmanned drones overhead?’ You would be waiting for the next airstrike and the next.”
After a few minutes, Tang told the demonstrators on the ground to “rise up.” As the protesters stood, they joined together in a shouting chant, “Rise up! Stop the War!”
A UC Berkeley student, who chose not to provide his name, said he was indifferent to the protest and skeptical of WCW’s message.
“She’s just presenting a bunch of different ideas with no real solutions, kind of repeating herself,” he said of Tang. “It’s sad what’s going on, but it’s a reality.”
Annette, another onlooker, said she couldn’t stand the thought of young people dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“It’s bad enough that we went into Iraq illegally and immorally, and now to have an escalation and kill more innocent people when it’s never going to help the people there,” Annette said. “I’m from the Vietnam War era, did it help anybody? No, and they’re doing it all over again.”
