Washington, D.C.–Tomorrow, Americans will march on the White House in protest of the ongoing war occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Demonstrators Thursday called Bush and Obama’s wars an “illegal war for empire.”
The ANSWER coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has been fined $7,500 for putting up signs in a move by the government that Brian Becker of the ANSWER Coalition said is “trying to limit or eviscerate or criminalize grassroots organizing itself.”
They were fined for handing out leaflets and putting up posters and signs, which the Department of Public Works has demanded the organization’s members remove.
Becker said that for eighteen months they have been targeted, accumulating between seventy and eighty thousand dollars in fines.
President of Veterans for Peace Mike Ferner said, “We will not be leaving Iraq and Afghanistan unless enough people in this country stand up.”
Organizers say the Afghanistan conflict is “Obama’s War,” just as Iraq was Bush’s war, and there is no difference between the two Presidents’ war policies.
Becker said a growing number of people oppose “the expanding war in Afghanistan, the continued occupation Afghanistan, [and] the continued occupation of Iraq.”
Cindy Sheehan, who garnered public attention in 2005 for camping outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Tex. said, “Some people have abandoned the antiwar movement, have abandoned peace, since Obama’s been president. But we need to re-create a movement.”
Pondolfino of Military Families Speak Out said Thursday, “I’m the proud mother of an active-duty infantry soldier…We love and support our troops. And it is because we do that we will vocally show our opposition whenever our government sends them to ill-advised, immoral, unwinnable wars.”
Tyler Bass will report in to The Elf Wax Times via cell-phone, sending large photographs of the demonstration as it unfolds throughout the day, starting in LaFayette park across the street from the White House, and throughout the march on Washington in which tens of thousands of people are expected to participate.
Richmond, Va.–“Protesters” gathered behind the VCU Student Commons last week where they rallied around their anti-hate values.
Automatically failing to realize being anti-anything is a form of hate in itself, students and activists, mostly lesbians, unquestioningly stood around holding signs carrying messages of peace, or of hatred for anti-loving attitudes.
The demonstration was staged as a counter-protest to the Westboro Baptist Church picket in front of the Holocaust Museum, where cold Richmonders apathetically gazed on in bewilderment at how religious fanatics are still more educated on current events than themselves.
“Where are the Westboro Baptists?” our reporter asked a bystander shortly after arriving at the event, which was heavily publicized on the social fuckworking site Facebook.
“Oh, they aren’t here. They were at the Holocaust Museum earlier today around twelve,” replied the hate-hating lesbian whose sign read “I SAW FRED PHELPS NAKED AND NOW I’M A LESBIAN.”
That’s right. Nobody saw each other, in spite of the fact one group gathered as a counter-protest to the other. You can’t make this up. Let’s consult a map.
Fortunately the police maintained control of the situation
WBC were at the Holocaust Museum, denying the Holocaust on behalf of Iranian Dictator Ahmedinejad. It sounded like a good spot to rally, so why didn’t any counter-protesters with signs show up there instead of between school buildings where nobody could see them?
“I believe the museum asked people not to bring signs and keep that sort of thing on the downlow,” said Midlothian resident Niki S. who did not attend the counter-protest because “it sounded lame.”
And it was. There were choirs preaching to choirs, singing the gospel of their anti-hate agenda.
“I am proud to see so many of you come out today. Your unity restores my faith in people, even though, uh, you have shown up where there is no specific concept to get behind, you have all still come together. And that so many of you showed up tells me something.” -male speaker who bravely attempted to intellectually justify ambiguities of the peace protest
Most everyone stood in a semi-circle around a group of people holding signs with one word per person that read “VCU STANDS TOGETHER AGAINST HATE”, holding their signs up pointed at each other, apparently protesting themselves.
Soviet-Russia was well-represented. Enthusiastic Communists held a flag over the banner facing toward the podium. They said it represents freedom. Our reporter agreed.
This event was actually so bad we took equally bad video footage so you could believe it for yourselves. We’ll post it as soon as it’s ready.
Freedom ain't free. It's regulated and redistributed by the government first.
Some girl got on the microphone and said, “You do not have to be a rug for someone to walk on with their big, muddy, hate-filled boots,” and that was the last thing Elf Wax could stick around to report. Not because it was intolerably stupid, which it most certainly was, but because we were illegally-parked and the meter-maids have a personal vendetta to kill our reporters slowly with towing fees and child molestation charges.
[Editor’s note: he was acquitted of those charges.]
In conclusion, VCU’s silly bring-a-crazy-sign-day is an insult to all forms of protest and serves only to de-legitimize true protest when people who really stand up for what they believe in aren’t taken seriously, diluting the effects of actual protesting around real problems like war, genocide, and corporate takeovers.
Do you people even realize what you did? You made stupid signs and stood around other people who made stupid signs and fucking pretended to protest. Some of you wore iPods. This is what people associate with protest now – masturbatory, self-serving meandering that gets literally nothing done. It literally brings tears to my eyes to recall the memories of how you “protested” on that day. Oh Lord you people are terrible. Get fucked.
Do you want to stage a protest? Get a can of gasoline, make an effigy of members of your local government – or who cares, Obama – and get to work. Don’t let the word ‘work’ scare you dirty anarchohippies, because you will gather enough supporters by simply copy-pasting Elf Wax onto posterboard and ranting it continuously over a burning Dennis Kucinich doll. This kind of work does itself, gets results, and gets you fucking laid, bitch.
Once you have been forced off the grid by your legal obligations to the uprising, you will find support in Lebal Drocer’s password-protected, hyper-encrypted closed local networks in key underground areas that will be emailed to you by the [email protected] listserv when the time is right.
So protest is ruined. However, a molotov-cocktail through the back windshield of a squad car has always sent a stronger message than protest songs, anyway. Why’d we ever stop that?
This is Elf Wax Times signing off, requesting violent revolution.
If you want the change you had in mind while voting for Obama, you’re going to have to organize yourselves and take it by force – Elf Wax style. Then, maybe one day the pawns might become the knights, and we will ride together, storm the white house gates, the corporate high-rises, closed-off hotels, and Silicon Valley boutiques, and our new order will force the king to cook for us and the queen will serve as the town’s newest whore, and our skin will become greasy and tight, our souls shut off by the newfound power vested in our elected military leaders by the gun and hand grenades; until we become uglier than the pigs we overthrew; coups-d’etats will occur on a near-weekly basis heralding the collapse of Western Civilization once and for all under the suffocating forces of newly-required anarchosocialism that just won’t seem to work no matter who we kill. So go to the grocery store and don’t forget Hot Pockets…and posterboard.
Today, Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes were scattered off the South African coast in a ceremony 62 years late. This was an all too appropriate metaphor for the state of peace in today’s world. India is an emerging country full of promise and growth. However, it is engaged in a nuclear cold war with long-time enemy Pakistan. Both countries may soon go the way of Gandhi. At any moment, every man woman and child may be reduced to nothing but radioactive dust spread across the high seas.
Martin Luther King’s remains are currently buried in Atlanta Georgia at The King Center and by all reports are undisturbed. Books and resources such as t-shirts and mugs can be found adjacent to his grave in the book store or purchased online.
Malcom X towers impressively over Martin Luther King Jr.
Malcom X, communist and black supremacist is widely known for his friendship with dictator Fidel Castro and high rank as a terrorist spokesperson for the Nation of Islam. In his struggle for the advancement of blacks, Malcom X achieved the greatest success of any American of the time through promotion of violence and hatemongering. Powerful echoes of his philosophy still ring today from other members of the Nation of Islam, such as John Allen Muhammed, the DC Sniper.
Cesar Chavez, the most prominent proponent of non-violent protest to die peacefully, is buried at the National Chavez Memorial located at Nuestra Señora Reina de La Paz. The gift store sells mementos and memorabilia which honor the life of Cesar Chavez and help fund construction of the complex on the 186 acre site. Work has not yet begun on an online gift store.
Because these “living memorials” nickle and dime grave visitors in the name of peace, the legacy they seek to uphold has been washed clean from American society. Every year America spends nearly as much on “defense” as every single country in the world combined, and this is not an issue. The issue, Elf Wax analysts say, is that non-violent protesters simply didn’t get the job done. “The government’s still around, and still stamping all over the constitution on which it was once founded,” said Elf Wax Revolutionary, Jay Chimera.
“What the nation needs is a call to arms, for Americans to rise up violently and take a bloody stand against their government. No more pussing around; if you hold a sign over your head today, then tomorrow it is your duty to send that message with a gun, or a flaming cask of Vaseline.”
If our instincts as journalists are correct, which they undoubtedly are, then Chimera was right when he said non-violent protests don’t accomplish anything. If they have any impact at all it is certainly negative. When the U.S. Government wants something, it takes it by force. The Government has never scored a big win by “protesting.” When China jailed its leading human rights activist, America protested. But when Elian Gonzales was discovered to be hoarding valuable American resources in his illegal home, America brought out the guns.
Who's taking care of their business here?
So when the government sees peaceful protesters on the streets chanting and carrying signs, they assume we must not want it that bad.
And that is why The Elf Wax Times is here to report on the issue of non-violent protests. If you want peace, then you must kill for it. This is now the primary directive of our mission statement.
“But one must always remember,” said Chimera, “Nobody likes a warmongering hatefaxer. So when you go on the warpath against the government, be sure that you don’t develop a thirst for murder, or else you’re next.” In essence, Chimera intimated one must learn to kill without remorse or personal emotional backlash.
Naturally, Americans have already nominated Barack Obama as tomorrow’s Peace Warrior Chief. “The guy’s built for the role. He’s already won the Nobel Peace Prize,” said Lebal Drocer Chemical Weapons Department Chair and violence enthusiast Lester Gladstone. Look at how many Afghanis are meeting their death at the hands of a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
