Reply #18: I think you are missing the point about what is difficult ...

[HamdenRice]

It really is almost impossible for someone to just decide to "throw" a demonstration without an organizational context. It is difficult, but not impossible to negotiate permits and hire sound equipment and scaffolding and a stage.

What Answer and Farrakan have in common is a national organization that is pre-existing and in place. Farrakan may seem crazy to you, but he has mosques in every major city of the United States. Answer may be offputting, but they have at least a few members in every major metropolitan area. The same is true of NARAL, etc.

You could pay someone an exhorbitant amount to do some of the work if such a service sprang up, but the National of Islam, for example has hundreds if not thousands of men and women who will do things for free when asked by their organization.



One thing I find truly depressing about the way progressives think about politics today is an almost complete and total lack of emphasis on permanent organization. It's as though political participation has been reduced to spectacle (demonstrations) and voting. That's it.

If you want a non-Answer demonstration with 300,000 people, rather than focus on the demonstration, you should focus on creating an anti-war membership organization, perhaps first in your home town, then the next town, then by sending organizers to other towns and cities.

Maybe in five years you will be able to have that big demonstration. At that point, it won't just be a spectacle played out for the news media, but a manifestation to politicians, who depend on voting blocks and contributions, of the number of people you can deploy not just in the streets, but for more mundane, day to day political activity.