Last Sunday my housemates and I protested at Ft. Huachuca, a military base about an hour outside of Tucson. The purpose of the protest was to call attention to the fort's role in writing manuals on how to torture people that were used at the School of the Americas in Georgia to train, most notoriously, military personnel from Latin America. The protest also called for an end to torture everywhere. About 100 people were protesting with us, and there were two smaller groups of counter-demonstrators: a group of motorcyclists that would ride by with American flags and another group with signs and American flags.
 |
| Our side of the protest |
 |
| The entrance to the fort was barricaded with orange and white barricades |
 |
| Counter-demonstrators on motorcycles |
My feelings on the act of protesting are mixed. Generally speaking, I feel that it is good to speak up for what one believes in, but that protesting usually,
usually, doesn't bring about significant changes. Since this was my first real protest, it was interesting to see. My attention was attracted to the counter-demonstrators, who waved lots of American flags and "Support our Troops" signs and said things to us, like, "The military is the reason you can protest!" I kept thinking to myself that maybe we should have brought some of those signs and American flags ourselves. After all, I think men and women in the US military are doing a very brave thing, and I am proud of many things about the US. Maybe our protest against torture was misunderstood by our counter-demonstrators as a sweeping denunciation of every person in the US military, I don't know. In any case, it was a strange contrast: we holding signs saying "end torture" and others holding the American flag. Why are these things on opposite sides?
My feelings on the act of protesting are mixed. Generally speaking, I feel that it is good to speak up for what one believes in, but that protesting usually, usually, doesn't bring about significant changes. Since this was my first real protest, it was interesting to see. My attention was attracted to the counter-demonstrators, who waved lots of American flags and "Support our Troops" signs and said things to us, like, "The military is the reason you can protest!" I kept thinking to myself that maybe we should have brought some of those signs and American flags ourselves. After all, I think men and women in the US military are doing a very brave thing, and I am proud of many things about the US. Maybe our protest against torture was misunderstood by our counter-demonstrators as a sweeping denunciation of every person in the US military, I don't know. In any case, it was a strange contrast: we holding signs saying "end torture" and others holding the American flag. Why are these things on opposite sides?
No comments:
Post a Comment