Rob Exercises his Right to Peaceful Assembly

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

Have you ever participated in a protest?

Given our current political climate here in the US, it may not be a good idea to talk about this, but 22 years ago, X1 (my then-wife) and I went to Washington DC to take part in a major protest of the then – impending invasion of Iraq by the United States military.

I did not support the invasion of Iraq, and I still don’t to this day. This is not to say that I did not support the troops. Far from it. In fact, I wanted the troops home safe and sound; rather than participating in an invasion that was built upon the lies.

I remember seeing the “evidence” the George Bush and Colin Powell presented to justify invading Iraq. To me, what they showed wasn’t proof of anything. And the fact that the United States never found any weapons of mass destruction, in Iraq only proves my point.

I’m sure that I angered a few readers with those comments just now, but let me get back to the protest itself. This was really the first time I got politically active and was reading a lot of stuff online regarding protest and things of that sort. This was just before social media made its way into all of our lives, so at this time, I was still reading websites in discussion boards and chat room groups.

I remember hearing about the protest. X1 and I both felt very strongly against this invasion, even though my brother-in-law, ex one’s brother, was in the military. I’m thinking at the time it seemed like a pretty crazy thing to do; to drive 12 hours to Washington DC to take paragraph protest it, quite frankly, probably wasn’t gonna make any difference.

But we were feeling a little bit of the spirit of the 60s at that time. I felt that this might be my moment to get involved, and our only opportunity to do something like this. So we went. It was kind of a strange experience from what I remember. There were a lot of regular everyday people there, but then there are also a lot of the typical radical whack-a-doos that one would expect to see at an event such as this.

Mostly what I remember is walking the grounds of the national mall, the grassy area in the facility of the Washington monument. Apparently footage from the march and rally was being aired on C-SPAN. I remember X1’s mother calling us to tell us that she was watching. Of course, she didn’t see us, as there were a lot of people in attendance that day.

Another thing that vividly stands out in my mind from this event actually took place on our way driving to Washington DC. For several miles, we saw a group of four black SUVs with heavily tinted windows, driving almost almost as if they were planes in a diamond formation on the freeway. That’s one I were convinced that these were feds. I believe they had Washington DC license plates, but I can’t remember for sure. The way that they were driving, and maintaining their “diamond formation” seemed way too suspect to be a coincidence.

In the grand scheme of things, the march and the rally proved fruitless. The invasion still took place; not that anybody in attendance really thought they were going to convince the president, or Congress, to call it off.

I mentioned before being possessed by the “spirit of the 60s”. I think it’s debatable how successful the whole anti-war movement of the 1960s was. Vietnam Vietnam was a fairly popular war. Bad, however, I think was more due to the fact that this was the first time Americans were seeing a war on TV. It wasn’t just the hippies in the radicals who were upset with the war. It was everyday people. People were sick of seeing Their kids go off to war, and some of them never come home.

My point is that even though the Vietnam war protest may have been futile, people to participated in them anyway. People wanted to exercise their constitutional right to peacefully assemble. I think that’s all that one and I really wanted to do at that point. We wanted our voices to be heard. We just wanted to say that we did something.

Given the state of American politics today, I thought that this topic was timely. I don’t know whether or not I would take part in another major protest like this. And some ways I feel a little bit like Roger Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon. -I’m too old for this shit. But at the same time, I think I would do it if either kid 1 or kid 2 wanted to take part. I would be there with them, and make sure that they stayed out of trouble themselves. We were only one month or two Trump’s second term, and I know that there have already been numerous marches and protests around the country. I’m certain more to follow as well.

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The article: “Rob exercises his Right to Peaceful Assembly” first appeared and Rebuilding Rob.

Rob Exercises his Right to Peaceful Assembly ￼

Have you ever participated in a protest?

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