The Japanese Take Manhattan, Protest Nukes

Another bump, just as a reminder: Give Peace a Chance!

As it's the season for peace I thought I'd bump this one to the top of the queue.

Yesterday (May 2010) I marched in my umpteenth protest march. This one was organized by United for Peace and Justice and took place in mid-town Manhattan, starting in Times Square and ending up near the United Nations building. As things would have it, this march turned out to be my first Japanese anti-nuke demonstration. It wasn't planned by the Japanese, nor was it planned to be Japanese, though Japanese organizations were intimately involved, e.g. the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (RENGO), and Mayors for Peace, an international organization started by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I expected this demonstration be like every other protest march I've been in these past few years – though, not, for example, on the scale of the March 2003 anti-war protest, the one that didn’t prevent the invasion of Iraq under the pretext that it harbored nukes. That is, I expected to be marching with mostly North American descendants of European immigrants, but with the visible presence of the Japanese and Koreans, among others.

But the North American Euros didn't show up, maybe because to do so would have been to repudiate the 8-year rolling disaster that was the Bush presidency. Or maybe they thought that we didn’t have to hold Obama’s feet to the fire on all this hope he’s been offering us. Whatever. The upshot is that Japanese out-numbered everyone else by three or four to one.

And they were insistent about Article 9 of their constitution, the constitution we gave them after WWII. Article 9 forbids the Japanese state from engaging in warfare. There was an exhibit about the article in the meeting area near the United Nations building and many Japanese were giving out decals and packages of facial tissue (a common promotional item in Japan) promoting Article 9. As you might have expected, there was also at least one Japanese in a Doraemon costume. Pop culture is pop culture, it’s everyone, and certainly at anti-nuke protests.

Article 9 Decal

I was there with The New York Path to Peace performing "Peace Now", a band of guerilla musicians dedicated to making music for good causes.

At one point a block’s worth of marchers were singing "Peace Now!" along with us. Of course we didn’t know it – we were told by one of the dozen or so people who hooked up with us along the way – because we were in the middle of the crowd playing our keesters off. The most gratifying moment, however, came when a Japanese group passed us (we were playing from the sidewalk at that point) singing “We Shall Overcome.”

We joined them. Of course.

That’s music.

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See Jamming for Peace!
More Peace Posts

Peace Symbol: Nuclear Disarmament

The peace symbol is one of the most widely known symbols in the world. It was created in 1958 by Gerald Holtom as a symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The symbol combines the semaphor (signal flag) symbols for “N” and “D” (nuclear disarmament). In the “N” the flags are held pointing diagonally toward the ground and, for the “D” one points up and one down, forming a vertical line.

The symbol was used in first anti-nuclear march in London (to Aldermaston, where nuclear weapons were manufactured) in 1958. One of Martin Luther King’s associates, Bayard Rustin, attended that march and brought the symbol back to the US. It was adopted by anti-war movement and has since become a universal symbol of peace.

Note that the symbol has not been copyrighted. The CND explains:

Blow Your Nose for Peace

I attended yesterday's (2 May 2010) anti-nuke demonstration in Manhattan, at which the Japanese contingent out-numbered all others by three or four to one. Some of the Japanese were handing out small packets of facial tissue, like this:

I can't read Japanese, but I recognize the number 9 when I see it. In this context that means Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, the constitution imposed on them after WWII. Article 9 prohibits the state from waging war. Perhaps the Japanese are telling us that the U.S. Constitution needs a similar article? Here's the other side of the pack of tissue:

. . . where you found this insert:

The Hibakusha are the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.