Nowtopian

This coming Saturday is a big demonstration in Washington DC and as is often the case, we’ll have a smaller parallel one here in SF. It’s organized by the ANSWER coalition, but as most of us like to say, they make the reservation but they don’t necessarily determine the dinner or the tone of the meal… The “spontaneous” march from Powell Street on the night of Bush’s escalation speech was really abysmal. About 200 people, which wasn’t the problem, but the tone was so off-putting. What is it about ANSWER and its minions that prevents them from figuring out that there’s hardly anything worse than actually turning up to a protest only to be barked at in a scolding tone by unimpressive orators with amplification?

Anyway, in spite of the ever-offensive sounds we have imposed on us by these self-deluding enlightened ones–or maybe because of them–we like to show up and drum. We don’t have signs or name tags but we go to anti-war demos with our drums as one of the many, largely informal incarnations of the Committee for Full Enjoyment. I know there’s a bunch of tired leftists who lament the arrival of the “hippie drummers,” partly because we are out of step with the barking self-importance and self-righteous tone of the march. Well, pshaw on that…

Demonstrations are mostly a dead form. When I go to demos without a drum, they make me feel puny and stupid and weak. If I go with friends and we lay down some serious rhythm, get people dancing with us, it doesn’t matter how lame and shallow the politics of the surrounding march are, we’re literally bringing a Dionysian impulse to the experience, tapping a deep-seated need for public celebration, conviviality, dare I say ‘joy’? Happily, Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book “Dancing in the Streets” is about this exactly. In fact, she notes that in recent years political demonstrations have increasingly harbored the kinds of behaviors that were once more commonly associated with parties or festivals, showing that the need for public sharing of spirited life cannot be shunted aside or suppressed. It’s neither wrong nor extraneous to the reasons why we publicly demonstrate.

Continue reading Drumming at Demonstrations