On peace rallies, including the one coming up this weekend in PDX

The Portland Peaceful Response Coalition is sponsoring a peace rally this Sunday, on the third anniversary of the US attack on Iraq, at Waterfront Park.

The topic has come up several times in conversation this week, including at our semimonthly Drinking Liberally get-together, and in another phone call this evening with a genuinely-pissed-with-the-
Democrats-even-more-than-with-the-Republicans-these-days
friend.

The recurring question seems to be: What's the point of a rally--even a big one?

I sympathize to some extent--they're certainly not much use if what you specifically want is to capture the attention of Big Media or the Democratic Party's national brain trust. But I'm still not giving up on the concept, or the practice, of the Big Honking Rally.

I wrote about this last fall after a spate of peace vigils around the country during the Cindy Sheehan vigil in near Bush's Crawford TX vacation retreat (both her vigil and, eventually, his vacation were interrupted by Hurricane Katrina, as you may recall). In exchange for not dragging you through the full argument here, I invite you to go read it there.

But I just . . . can't . . . resist--so here's a little excerpt to get you started:

Observers of middle eastern politics talk about the gap between the political elites and popular opinion by referring to "the Arab street." Juan Cole asks about the "American street:"

Critics of the [DC anti-war] event derided it as a carnival, but what popular movement in history has not been Rabelaisian? Crowds and their performers clown and mug, ridicule the sacred and celebrate the deity all at once. Carnivals of protest create their own bubble of consciousness, in which the unspeakable can finally be shouted, the powerful parodied, and the status quo turned upside down.

Here's a point that many Professional Pundits and Beltway Insiders should paste in their hats: Most Americans aren't Professional Pundits and Beltway Insiders.

For most Americans, political participation comes somewhere after making the mortgage payment and looking after the family. They relate to the media not as "content providers," but as consumers--which means that the media aren't a vehicle for them to network and shape opinions, but rather an experience that often leaves them feeling more helpless and alienated than they were before.

So when a rally comes along that lets them shake a little Rabelaisian booty, they may well take it for what it's worth. And the carnal/carnival aspect of rallies, marches, vigils, boycots, sit-ins, etc. allows people to put their individual bodies out there among other bodies--an ancient strength of public demonstrations that never needed television or blogs to exert itself.

So my advice to you is this: If you're undecided, go for it--get your body down to Waterfront Park (or wherever you are) on Sunday and get Jeffersonian/Rabelaisian on their ass.