OxBlog

Friday, April 11, 2003

# Posted 10:43 AM by Patrick Belton  

BANDWAGON. JUMP. REDUX. The lovely and always insightful EG writes in this morning from the Lower East Side:
I stop in every now and again at Oxblog when I can take some time off from
grad school (ie, when I can justify utter procrastination.) As I'm not a
foreign affairs expert, I usually don't feel the need to argue. However, as
a New Yorker I do feel fairly confident in responding to your post about the
recent, and anomalous, "pro-war" rally at Ground Zero. I'd see the rally
more as an interesting case of local political factions using highly
symbolic, contested turf as a staging ground for domestic struggles over (at
most) state-wide financial issues. My read: "the war" is a red herring [for
the union members who staged yesterday's rally in support of the war]. The
real issue is, as usual, the money. Pensions, health insurance, and budget
cuts are in danger, and the union wants to remind Pataki -- a far more
doctrinaire Republican than Bloomberg -- that he in part owes his reelection
in largely Democratic New York to union endorsement. What better way to
drive the message home than with a public demonstration in favor of a cause
that most New Yorkers are at best lukewarm about? Two weeks ago, New York
was recovering from huge, diverse (120,000 plus) anti-war protests that saw
protesters and bystanders alike indiscriminately hauled off to jail. While
it's true that some New Yorkers support the war, before this union rally
there's been no institutional efforts (like, say, the Clear Channel rallies
in Texas) to create public pro-war spectacle. Big rallies require immense
amounts of planning and coordination. I'd argue that many of the traditional
pro-war factions don't see any local political benefit to staging a rally in
New York. Only people who need to reinforce their ties to Albany have the
motivation. Ergo, the union rally.

Yours from the ambivalent left,
Liz


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