Last week during my spring break, I decided to explore San Francisco with some friends. When we reached the city, we wandered around and attempted to look for maps to guide us to the famous tourist destinations that San Francisco is so well known for. Instead of the Golden Gate Bridge, though, we stumbled upon a massive anti-war protest. Protestors had organized a lay-in, where they laid down across the road and prevented traffic from passing through. Across another side of the street, people in bright orange jumpsuits, their faces covered by black hoods, their heads bowed, sat next to each other like broken dolls to represent the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. The street was lined with riot police in full garb, batons at the ready. A circle of riot police had also surrounded the people who had lain down across the road. Despite the imposing amounts of security and police presence, the atmosphere was defiant and even exuberant.
As one peace group handed out anti-birthday cake to commemorate the five year anniversary of the Iraq war, my friends and I were stunned to realize that the war in Iraq had begun on exactly this day, March 19, in 2003. Five years of bloodshed, civilian deaths, and the wholesale destruction of a country’s infrastructure, economy, and national spirit had been occurring, and we had not even remembered the day it all began. Moreover, 4,000 American lives (and thousands of Iraqi lives) had been lost and billions of dollars from an already struggling American economy had been rerouted into an offensive war that had been deceptively labeled as a war of defense. In our consciousness, war had become such an ongoing spectacle that it carried nearly no importance for us. After all, we weren’t the ones risking our lives as American or Iraqi soldiers. We weren’t Iraqi civilians exposed to deprivation and living in constant fear of insurgents, bombs, and sectarian rivalries. We were Americans, and not just any Americans: we were a generation infused with apathy, a generation that had grown up in a complacent, self-satisfied America that had too quickly forgotten the activism of the 1960s and ‘70s.
The protest reminded me of everything I had chosen to forget about the war in Iraq. It had been years since I had attended an anti-war protest, even though I considered political activism an important aspect of civic life. I first attended an anti-war protest the day the war in Iraq began; the groups on my college campus had organized a walk-out and rally, and I remember being so inspired with the idea that I was part of a movement that had dared to challenge the government. People were spirited and united. Three years later, another anti-war rally was organized on campus. I stopped by but left soon afterwards, dismayed by the small number of people who had gathered together.
Somehow, in just a few years, the atmosphere has changed. As the war stretches on, and the government makes it amply clear that its citizens’ protests cannot affect its political course, people have lapsed into apathy. Even a part of me has given up the hope that I can ever contribute to change through activism. There is no point, I reason, in making myself hoarse by shouting anti-war slogans when they land on deaf ears.
My generation does not have the moral stamina to withstand resistance; instead we give up when we are not immediately congratulated with political change. We do not have the foresight to reason that political change did not come immediately after the student protests in the late ‘60s either. Even after the student protests in 1968 against the Vietnam War, the U.S. did not officially end its involvement in Vietnam until 1973. With our knowledge of history, we should know that political change will not occur overnight. Yet, we are a generation that has become accustomed to instant gratification, and so when faced with a challenge that requires patience and perseverance, we are easily defeated. By and large, we accept authority and hesitate to criticize the establishment. We view political movements as a vestige of the hippie years and remember only the long hair and bell bottoms and not the courage, hope, and inspirational vision of a better future that those activists proposed.
My faith in this generation of Americans was restored during the rally last week. As I saw young people being handcuffed and led to police vans, I marveled at the fact that people were willing to be jailed on grounds of civil disobedience in a time when civil disobedience has little role in our society. Their defiance of accepted norms indicates that the international situation has reached a nadir. The desire for change has resurfaced among my generation—all we need is the momentum to sustain it.
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