Why I'm Marching

If you haven't guessed already, I'm no Labor apparatchik. In fact my entry into politics was through the old Nuclear Disarmament Party.

It was the mid-eighties and the super-powers were facing each other off with the geo-politics of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).

In our tie-dyed T-shirts and masseur sandals, we'd debate US foreign policy with lapsed CIA operatives who Bay of Tonkin incident was a set-up.

We took our peacenik signs down to Woolloomooloo Bay when the USS Missouri was in town, but got stampeded by the Mums and Dads taking their kids to climb all over the military hardware as if it was a fun park.

And every year we would march through the streets on Palm Sunday, along with the families and churches and community groups who believed there must be an alternate way to run the world other than threatening to blow each other up.

Without realising it at the time we were arguing for globalisation before it had become a term to be demonised. We believed we were all in it together and no cowboy on an A-bomb had the right to end the party for all of us.

We weren't very cool and we weren't very electorally successful, but we were right.

When the Cold War ended so did the super-power face off and the imperative of the movement seem to be resolved. The marches stopped and Palm Sunday just became a weekend before the Easter break.

Now more than a decade on, we have a US President drawing up a nuclear hit list against a swag of 'rogue' states that may or may not have their own capability.

In the post September 11 environment we have a military-industrial complex again in the ascendancy, with a US administration committed to expanded defence spending.

We have an Australian government elected on 'border security', now shown to have manipulated the issue and misrepresented its advice from the military to feed the populous;' fear and ignorance.

Underneath it all we have forgotten the truth that drove the peace movement of the eighties - we are all on this planet together and until we can show compassion to the Other we can not expect security at home.

That's the message behind the Palm Sunday march and it is why the organisers are to be congratulated for reviving the event. I look forward to marching with you on March 24.

Peter Lewis

Editor

Workers Online

From Workers Online http://www.workers.labor.net.au