It Rained On Our Parade Today.........
author: Jim Lockhart
 e-mail: jglockhart@comcast.net
It rained on our Parade today, nourishing the seeds of Justice lying long fallow in the American Dream.
It rained on our Parade today, germinating in compassionate hearts a resolve to further resist the illegal and immoral actions of a criminal government.
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It rained on our Parade today, rinsing Truth in a flood of Community Spirit.
Thousands of people gathered together in the South Park Blocks near Portland State University in Portland Oregon today, March 15, 2008, to commemorate the 5th year of the Iraq invasion and Occupation, which began on March 19, 2003.
Despite the drizzle, the rain, the downpours and even the hail at one point, the event was well attended.
The rally began about 2:00, with the March beginning sometime around 2:30. The few speakers distilled their message down to brief presentations, and I believe the overall event benefited by this brevity.
Escorted by numerous Portland Police the crowd filled the streets for about 5 or 6 city blocks, fairly tightly packed, as they walked the 23 or so blocks through downtown Portland back to the Park blocks. As usual the street was filled with creative signs, puppets, peace cranes, and punctuated by enthusiastic chants on peace, anti-Bush and anti war themes, and the Marching Forth Band added their special dimension to the Parade.
But,thanks in great part to the many informational tents, booths and literature being handed around, the focus wasn't merely on specific peace and anti-war issues. Empire is much more than just war, occupation and war profiteering. Empire arises in a country where Community values are subordinated to Nationalistic fevers; where fear mongering displaces the natural love people have for one another, where respect for the unknown, the different, the strange are replaced by suspicion and hostility.
The Palestinians, the Iraqi, the Tibetans, refugees from oppression worldwide stood beside and in support of the Immigrant and the beleaguered American worker, victims of unfair Trade policies and Corporate greed.
Everywhere I walked there Youth stood up and out, perhaps more than I have ever seen before, as it should be. They are the hope, not the Obama's and Clinton's, the miselected Democratic and Republican lackeys, steeped in cash and Corporruption.
And too, everywhere, Veterans stood out and delivered their message from inside the beast they once mistakenly served, these brave souls who have been to the battlefields of Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan, have arrived victorious from the battlefields of their own doubts and uncertainties and now rise above the derision and ridicule of hawks and chicken hawks.
America can never get back to what it once was, because it never was that, never really implemented the grand visions espoused in the noble words of its founding documents. But we are, as a nation, straying further and further away, from even that crippled and unfinished promise.
There are those who wonder why we march, why we protest, who mockingly ask what good it does. Yet, these events demonstrate that there are many who believe in Social Justice, who have faith in Human Nature, who believe in the equality of all people. If we can not live it as a nation, there must be those who demonstrate in the streets to keep this faith, this eventuality alive and circulating.
Yes, it rained, but it did not dampen the Spirit of Community, did not sour the mood or dim the Faith that the Human Spirit is equal to the task before us all: A World Without War.
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