Similar impatience also emerged during the movement against the Vietnam War, but it took more than a decade of protests before some antiwar activists decided that mass demonstrations were fruitless and that direct action, mainly in the form of civil disobedience, was necessary to end the war. The movement against the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is barely two years old, but already activists like Jones are concluding that protests such as those that occurred across the country and around the world on March 19, the first anniversary of the U.S. invasion, not only do no good but actually make matters worse.

For those who haven’t read the article yet, Jones maintains that mass protests against the war are simply a “spectacle.” They make people who participate in them feel good, but they have absolutely no political impact. Jones argues, “The big demonstrations that have become so popular are not only ineffective; they actually make matters worse. By channeling the time, energy, money, and creativity of so many activists into an exercise in futility, these demonstrations and their preparations deflect activist attention from the urgent task of fashioning actual (rather than symbolic) challenges to the corporate world order and the military power that sustains it.” And what is an actual challenge? Jones seems to think tax resistance is the most effective kind of challenge, along with refusing to buy consumer goods. “The consumers of the world can bring the military-industrial complex to a crashing halt just by keeping our hands in our pockets,” Jones writes. So don’t go out and buy any cruise missiles.

Similar arguments also divided the movement against the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. The New Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam eventually decided that it would no longer organize mass demonstrations against the war. Instead, it encouraged massive civil disobedience to bring the war machine to a halt. As a result the National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC) was created, and it filled the void left behind by continuing to organize protests that drew hundreds of thousands of people to Washington, D.C., or brought millions of people into the streets in cities across the country.

In retrospect, who was right back then? What type of protest was most effective in helping end the war? We know from the memoirs and internal papers of the people who led the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon that protests of all kinds were significant, but the decisive fact was that the United States was losing the war in Vietnam. Ultimately, air superiority proved ineffective against a popular war that the Vietnamese were determined to continue waging. The credit for ending the war in the final analysis goes to the resistance of the Vietnamese.

But it would be wrong to think that the mass demonstrations in the United States did not have a political impact. Slowly, but inexorably, mass protests drew people into political activity who otherwise never would have had an outlet, except for the ballot box every four years. That mass movement became impossible to ignore, and eventually politicians had to listen. Congress became more involved in limiting the escalation of the war and ultimately in controlling the war purse.

The main thing about mass demonstrations is just that: They are massive and they involve the masses (if I can use that throwback term). Not everyone can afford to go to prison or undergo the expense of fighting the Internal Revenue Service by refusing to pay taxes. Not everyone can miss a day of work or pay fines or serve jail time by engaging in civil disobedience. In the 1960s and early 1970s, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of young people dropped out of consumer culture and lived either communally or, by necessity, frugally. Yet such economic inactivity had zero effect on the war machine.

Let’s hope that the kind of impatience Jones expresses doesn’t have an impact on organizers or participants of mass protests, especially now that many military families are beginning to speak out against the war. On the other hand, let’s not be satisfied with anniversary protests or the kind of smug and sectarian self-righteousness that the left often engages in by speaking only to itself. The task of educating people is a relentless, everyday task that fortunately organizations like CommonDreams.org and many others have taken up. As for those who have the commitment to engage in civil disobedience, more power to them. And let’s remember that the media can manipulate only so much. The blood that was spilled on the campuses of Kent State and Jackson State was not a harmless “spectacle.” That was real blood of real people who gave their lives in opposition to the war, who watered the tree of liberty, if you will.

Rod Such - rodsuch (at) hotmail.com