Demonstration

I found myself in the middle of a good old-fashioned demonstration at lunch today.  I was out for a walk - after a morning indoors, it felt really good to get out.  I was walking along Washington Ave. with no particular destination except that I needed to get a cup of coffee.  I was intending to go to Dunn Brothers but alas, they were closed.  This didn't trouble me greatly since I don't think you can walk more than half a block without passing a coffee shop in Dinkytown.  My kind of place.

As I continued on from the closed Dunn Brothers, I became aware of the sound of someone using a megaphone.  Up ahead across the street, I noticed a group with banners and such in front of a flower shop.  The biggest banner I could see read "Recruiters Lie, Students Die".  This, along with the chants from the group, led me to believe that this was an anti-military/anti-war group.  As I continued walking, I realized there was another group, on my side of the street.  They were standing in front of the Army/Navy recruiting offices.  They too had a megaphone, although they weren't really using it much.  This group was made up lots of people holding flags and wearing clothing with eagles and stars and such.  The group was mostly young men and women, some with baby strollers.  I assume there were babies in the strollers but I did not peek to confirm.

The anti-war group was clearly more organized.  They had fancy banners and nifty response cheers between the megaphone and the crowd.  I'm sure the flag group was thrown together at the last minute to counter the others.  Their banners looked a tad less thought-out and they had no real cheers or shouts.  Still, the crowds were pretty close to the same size.  I was just making my way through the flag group when the anti-war bunch decided to escalate things.  They began crossing the street en masse, signs out in front like shields - megaphone behind cheering them on.  Ironically, the pro-military group was somewhat caught off guard by this frontal attack.  The guy with the megaphone tried to turn them back with fine shouts like, "You guys shouldn't come over here!", "Stay on your side!", "You shouldn't be in the street!" and the always effective, "You're going to block traffic!".

As I crossed the street and ducked into a Caribou the two sides were nose to nose, shouting at each other.  The anti-war group was still chanting their chants.  The pro-military group still didn't have an organized shout so they each appeared to be doing their own thing.  When I came out of the Caribou, the pro-military group had finally settled on the simple cheer of "U. S. A.!".  This was working for them until the anti-war bunch co-opted it and started shouting "U. S. Out!".  You could see the frustration on the faces of some of the flag group.

As I returned to work, I thought about how completely effective the pro-military group had been.  Even though they had appeared to be inept or at least inarticulate, they had mounted enough of a stand to draw the attention of the anti-war group.  The anti-war group lost its focus.  They should have been trying to convince and educate the public at large to their concerns.  Instead, they focused all their energy on the one group whose minds they were least likely to change.