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NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2005Bush visit protestMemphis, Tenn.--George Bush came here in March to try to sell his privatized Social Security plan. We came out about 200 strong on a chilly morning--activists, working people, Black, white, young, old, and in between--showing the diversity of people and reasons to oppose the divvying up of the diminishing social safety net that is left in this country. We all met at a local bar near where Bush was going to be pontificating, and staged a rally sponsored by, among others, the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, AFL-CIO, the newly formed Democracy for Memphis, and News and Letters Committees. The Shelby County Democratic Party helped "organize" the event, which really means attempted to siphon the energy of everyone there into run-of-the-mill party politics. While yet another representative of some district or another was getting up to speak, someone yelled something like, "Hey, Bush and the cameras are out there down the street, let’s quit talking to ourselves and show them what we think!" It captured the energy perfectly and we rolled out of the bar, leaving the politicians looking kind of perplexed. We weren’t sure about how close we could get to Bush’s sermon, so we split up in two groups and took the long way around the block. It turns out that the police let us get pretty close, and we ended up meeting right in front of the building, turning the plaza into a singing and chanting anti-Bush parade. Many I talked to there were above the supposed age of those who will be affected by any privatization of Social Security, in a show of inter-generational solidarity. And the many of us who would almost definitely be affected showed by our signs and chants that we weren’t narrowing it down to a question of only Social Security. The awareness of some of us younger people about the system and what it wants to do with our hard-earned money and hard-spent time is just what people like Bush don’t want to see, because it would mean some kind of discourse was taking place among those his policies affect. --Brown Douglas |
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