We Are Many is a documentary focusing on the global anti-war protests in 2003

Originally published at: We Are Many is a documentary focusing on the global anti-war protests in 2003 | Boing Boing

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I participated in those protests. While they were important and necessary and made participation in demos a more widespread phenomenon, they were also the last gasp of a lot of ineffective and counterproductive tactics and assumptions by organisers in the U.S. that tended to play straight into the hands of the corporate media and the cops and the neoCon warmongers. A lot of American protestors and activists wised up after that.

That change in American activist culture is the reason that International ANSWER – an organisation dominated by avowed Stalinists – is no longer the primary organising force behind mass protests in the U.S. It’s the reason that demos are now far more focused on the issue at hand, with far fewer “usual suspects” participants and speakers showing up to ride their (at best) tangentially related and (at worst) off-putting hobbyhorses. It’s why black-bloc anarkiddies*, “merry jester” clowns, puppeteers, and others who are more interested in attention-seeking for themselves are now told to go home by organisers and serious participants.

As a result, mass protests – even experimental, more ad hoc ones like Occupy – have evolved to have a lot more impact while making it a lot more difficult for TPTB to spin things in a way that suited them. The 2006 immigration protests provided an immediate counter-example to the Iraq War protests about how do do demos effectively and get results. The Women’s Marches, marriage equality, Fridays for Future, and BLM have only continued to up the quality while carrying on with quantity.

[* in contrast to serious anarchists]

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Finally viewed this in 2021 after trying to track it down for five years. Decent doc with a few new outrage-inducing tidbits for those who follow such films. Mostly from a European viewpoint, so I was a little disappointed it had almost nothing of the march in DC that I was a part of.

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I was also in DC on Feb. 15 and Manhattan on March 22.

Watching this trailer brings back a lot of anger.

Useless, preventable war of choice.

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The ANSWER organization was never recognized as the ideal leadership organization for a peace movement in any circle I was apart of, but it did attract a lot of hopeful souls, and perhaps lead them to disillusionment. Some of my friends had mixed feelings attending the mass demonstrations led by that group. The aggressive, violent chanting and battle cries they heard were during those demonstrations were off-putting to peace-minded people. However, unaffiliated demonstrations I attended were much smaller. Nonetheless, despite the various demonstrations that were publicized in our media here in the US, it was shocking indeed that the US representative government leadership mob appeared to give no pause or reconsideration to its target-shooting in Iraq with such scant evidence. It’s a testament to other free press institutions that the truth came out. Unfortunately, before then, a lot of people sacrificed their lives.

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