Sunstar Essay: The grit of rallies

Saturday, September 24, 2011

NEWS on the Middle East is about the continuing fight by rallyists for freedom from dictators, at the cost of lives. Just last week, the Yemen leadership cracked down on Yemen rallies and killed over 45 people—both rallyists and plain observers. It’s an ache in each rallyist for a new life in a country that would hopefully and eventually be free. The call, as in many other Middle East countries resounding in protest rallies, is for the removal of a dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled Yemen since 1978.

If we had the complete data in review of the years in the life of the world, I wonder how many rallies had been held—local, national or international—for people to protest something in droves. But surely, they didn’t come so close one after the other, and more than in any other time earlier or later, than in 2010 and 2011 in the Middle East.

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But even earlier in 2003 regarding the same spot in the world, there was the international protest against war in Iraq. All of it didn’t work eventually but it is part of history now, the war and the fight by Iraqis for freedom.

The 2003 anti-war protest was expressed in rallies held almost everywhere in the world, beginning in 2002, protesting the invasion of Iraq by the US, UK, among others. BBC said there were “between six and ten million” anti-war rallyists throughout the world in almost 60 countries just on a weekend, on the 15th and 16th of February. It’s said that in Europe, Rome alone had a rally with around three million people, making it to the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in history.

The Philippine militants pitched in. On Valentine’s Day in 2003, a total of 6000 women’s groups and other rallyists in Manila marched to the US Embassy calling for “love, not war.”

Of one of the more major nations, it was in Mainland China that there were no anti-war rallies, except much later, but organized by foreign students in small demonstrations.

Recently, rallies against present leaderships in countries in the Middle East have come oftener than at any time in history, one protesting country after another, at the expense of lives but for the good of the majority, as hoped for.

How effective are rallies?

Protest rallying is also like a statement saying, “Hey, we’re here, listen!”, especially with regards to bills and executive actions impinging on people’s rights.

A protest makes people look and listen, even those who don’t care a whit about what’s going on around them. In a protest rally, you get attention, but not like getting on a platform the way senators and congressmen get stuck on the microphone for hours.

Protests expressed in rallies call attention to a fact. Or it could be a salute, celebrating a glorious feat in a nation. Or it’s any mode of calling attention to a message.

But in a protest rally, nobody sings, it’s set to be pushy, the protesters walking in dissent and shaking a fist. Still, a protest rally could also work effectively in peaceful demonstrations.

There was probably a time when people in far and small villages didn’t care about issues and didn’t need leaders. Or when communities came together and chose leaders, a citizen could talk to the chief of the land quite easily. Perhaps, the leader, too, was more honestly aware of the needs of his people in such a small world—he stopped, he listened.

But people live big now, in a sense, and the spirit easily flies, or zooms. A people’s rally could fall short of success, but it leaves a track. And a successful one, like the Philippine’s People Power, is a show of the people’s heart.

(ecuizon@gmail.com)