Marching to Different Drums
Leonard, Sarah
NOTEBOOK Marching to Different Drums SARAH LEONARD When you find yourself caught between a "9/11 Truth" banner and the contemplative face of Mumia Abu-Jamal, you may reasonably question your...
...So march we did, and, once we hurried past some glassy-eyed 9/11 truthers, we saw a number of other indignant young people, old New Lefties, and entirely reasonable signs about defending interfaith solidarity from its unhinged attackers...
...The fringe happily filled in, capitalizing on liberal discomfort and the hard work of Muslim groups in New York, further ensuring that fighting Islamophobia would be a far-Left issue...
...It was a media grotesque, and perhaps it was mere self-indulgence, but we wanted to yell with a crowd, "Bigots out of New York...
...And Chambers Street on this contentious September 11, 2010, was awash in the dregs of lefty activism...
...To the average onlooker unattuned to left sectarianism, here were a couple thousand people standing with the community center...
...These accusations included, but were not limited to, hating America...
...The tenuous bonds of righteous political camaraderie ended when the speeches started...
...NOTEBOOK Marching to Different Drums SARAH LEONARD When you find yourself caught between a "9/11 Truth" banner and the contemplative face of Mumia Abu-Jamal, you may reasonably question your political judgment...
...The tremendous energy and enthusiasm, unchan-neled toward any action, dissipated in all the hot air...
...This was the moment to say, "Hey, Glenn Beck, if you want the center somewhere else, you try finding an affordable piece of Manhattan real estate...
...giving aid and comfort to terrorists...
...An interfaith vigil had gathered with a similar purpose and quieter approach the night before...
...The Tea Partiers who defended "American values" by making a mockery of the First Amendment were as maddening as the rationalized racism of mainstream commentators...
...They did not appeal to the millions of Americans who surely sympathized with the cause of the community center...
...Sarah Leonard is an editorial assistant at Dissent and an editor of the New Inquiry...
...The "so-called United States of America," we heard, was bent on indiscriminate worldwide imperialism...
...This was the moment for solidarity with fellow New Yorkers, people who actually knew how many blocks Park51 was from Ground Zero, and who weren't campaigning for office in Florida...
...And if the fringe organizations filled the streets, they also filled the silence with hysterical invective worthy of our most despised right-wing opponents...
...The pronouncements, by and large, had little to do with the mosque...
...and failing to act as if the September 11 attacks caused revulsion and grief only for members of the Republican Party...
...Democratic Party officials were nowhere in evidence, perhaps avoiding association with such a motley assembly of lefties and seeming to embody Obama's nearly agnostic stance on Cordoba...
...waging a secret war not just against Christ, but against Christmas...
...But you didn't have to be literate in sectarian acronyms to know that you were not being asked by these speakers to contribute to any serious conversations...
...Several families of September 11 victims had in fact requested that no protests take place on the anniversary, perhaps encouraging some people to join the September 10 vigil or stay home...
...For secular lefties, the vigil emphasized the wrong commonality: we sought the free and vigorous expression of equalities described in American law, rather than mutual respect among faiths to which we did not belong...
...The protesters hoisted banners, chanted, called back and forth, and generally did what political marches do best: forced mass solidarity into the public eye, throwing new weight into an issue that balanced precariously between two poles of popular opinion...
...Hundreds of participants may have been unaware of the particular organizations present...
...We wanted to reclaim our sanctuary of relative tolerance from people who excluded the liberal site of a September 11 attack from "real America...
...The Democratic Party barely condemned the thinly disguised racism suffusing the debate, and the decent Left to its left was not organized enough to be visible...
...After some initially supportive remarks, the president had said, "I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there...
...Further, this latest battle in the war between merciless right wingers and retiring lefties scared us...
...Variations on this theme, with varying levels of plausibility, played from the speakers until we headed toward the subway, our bags stuffed with free copies of Workers' World, our heads filled with ringing indictments of American sin...
...Like thousands of other frustrated New Yorkers, my friends and I—faithfully left-leaning twenty-somethings—had come to this rally in support of the Cordoba Community Center, the deceptively named "Ground Zero Mosque...
...Ignoring the existence of two overcrowded mosques that have been in the area for years, this was close to the Anti-Defamation League's statement, explicitly in opposition to the center's location...
...The acronyms—RCP, ISO, WWP, PSL—spelled out a realm of sectarian, "revolutionary" organizing, ever-present on the anachronistic fringes of the Left...
...The march had served a portion of its purpose, to stand with a beleaguered minority that major political institutions eschewed in order to duck a range of ludicrous accusations...
...We were sick of Glenn Beck's self-righteous hysteria and Republicans' shock and horror on the stump...
...What have the last few years shown, but that public opinion does not yield to reasoning pleas...
...Ultimately," that ADL statement explained, "this was not a question of rights, but a question of what is right...
...And until more densely populated parts of the Left spectrum are willing to condemn Islamophobia unambiguously and to hold up America's own highest standards to combat it, these will be our bedfellows and the loudest voices on the street...
...But if the beauty of faithful communion was clear, so was it clear that my political home was elsewhere...
...The real organization of the protest (as listed on the protest Web site) told an old story of ideological degeneration...
...Joining hands across faiths elegantly countered the way right-wingers had described variations in worship as the difference between civilization and barbarism...
...The default signage, for those who had left their frustrations unstenciled, was provided by antiwar coalition A.N.S.W.E.R., which has quietly supported such committed revolutionaries as Kim Jong Il...
...The ever-energetic and maddeningly effective organizing of the fringe had brought out a generous representation of the political Left...
...I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding...
Vol. 58 • January 2011 • No. 1
