Protesting the wedding

Yesterday about 700 anti-war protesters turned up at a seaside church in Kennebunkport, Maine where President Bush attended the wedding of his second cousin.  The protest was said to be affiliated with peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who was apparently not on hand.  No details of her affiliation were offered.

"People wanted to speak truth to power," said Jamilla el-Shafei, 53, a business owner in Kennebunk who helped organize the march.

Isn't it the rage these days, speaking truth to power.  Ever since John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, every time you turn around somebody is speaking truth to power.  And since truth, like beauty, so often turns up nowhere but in the eye of the beholder, speaking it comes easy, particularly in America. 

Contrast this notion of speaking truth to power to what anti-American bloggress Riverbend is faced with in Iraq.

For me, June marked the first month I don’t dare leave the house without a hijab, or headscarf. I don’t wear a hijab usually, but it’s no longer possible to drive around Baghdad without one. It’s just not a good idea. (Take note that when I say ‘drive’ I actually mean ‘sit in the back seat of the car’- I haven’t driven for the longest time.) Going around bare-headed in a car or in the street also puts the family members with you in danger. You risk hearing something you don’t want to hear and then the father or the brother or cousin or uncle can’t just sit by and let it happen. I haven’t driven for the longest time. If you’re a female, you risk being attacked.

I look at my older clothes- the jeans and t-shirts and colorful skirts- and it’s like I’m studying a wardrobe from another country, another lifetime. There was a time, a couple of years ago, when you could more or less wear what you wanted if you weren’t going to a public place. If you were going to a friends or relatives house, you could wear trousers and a shirt, or jeans, something you wouldn’t ordinarily wear. We don’t do that anymore because there’s always that risk of getting stopped in the car and checked by one militia or another...

I realized how common it had become only in mid-July when M., a childhood friend, came to say goodbye before leaving the country. She walked into the house, complaining of the heat and the roads, her brother following closely behind. It took me to the end of the visit for the peculiarity of the situation to hit me. She was getting ready to leave before the sun set, and she picked up the beige headscarf folded neatly by her side. As she told me about one of her neighbors being shot, she opened up the scarf with a flourish, set it on her head like a pro, and pinned it snuggly under her chin with the precision of a seasoned hijab-wearer. All this without a mirror- like she had done it a hundred times over… Which would be fine, except that M. is Christian.

If M. can wear one quietly- so can I.

One does not speak truth to that particular power, and everybody knows it.  One does not invite death when it can be so easily avoided by tying on a scarf.  So the world, including the anti-war bunch marching in Kennebunkport, chooses to accept this sort of terrorist intimidation as Islamist militias just doing what they do.  It's only natural and none of our business anyway.  No surprise, but the truth in the eye of Riverbend is, this too is the fault of George Bush.  He, after all, liberated the militias who now demand this outward show of Muslim devotion as the price for breathing in Baghdad. 

Recently a commenter here informed me that "statistically you are way far more likely to die from chronic cardiac disease" than from an act of terrorism, and while that may be true here, it's probably not true in River's neck of the woods.  But as Riverbend's story points up, the fight against terrorism is not simply a matter of avoiding death.  It's the fight for how we would like to live. 

It's not a fight that River can do by herself.

Meanwhile back at the wedding, in typical media fashion of speaking truth to power, the Washington Post, based on nothing, hinted that the incessant protesting must be getting to the President and his family.

If Bush or the family was irked, they gave no public indication.

But others were irked.  Protester sentiment is not universally shared. 

Ednamay E. Taraba of Alfred, Maine, summed up one local sentiment in a posting on the Web site of the Portland Press Herald: "I think it is terrible that people are going to protest the President at the wedding, the couple that are getting married have nothing to do with the presidents [sic] policy, they are just a young couple who happened to be related."

Undaunted, the speakers of truth pressed on.

Organizers rejected that complaint. "An inconvenience for President Bush?" asked Shafei. "My God, the Iraqi people are inconvenienced. The military families are inconvenienced. That's very telling of the self-absorbed culture we're living in that people would be miffed because a bunch of rich Republicans would be inconvenienced."

And so the party continued uninterrupted.  Bravely making a day of it, activists spoke, wrote, and sang truth to power. 

The protesters carried handmade signs with slogans such as "Stop Killing Our Children," "Bring Them Home Now," "We Have Nothing to Fear But Bush Himself," and "Liar, Liar, World's on Fire." In a school field where the group rallied after the march, speakers called for Bush's impeachment and sang specially written songs such as "Where is the Rage?"

Oh, by the way.  Some guy named Walker Stapleton got married to Jenna Bertocchi, whoever she is.