Today in Boston’s Copley Square, hundreds of human rights activists participated in a rally protesting the abuse of U.S. prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay. The event, sponsored by JusticeWithoutPeace.org, featured numerous leaders from civil liberties groups, as well as anti-war congressman and former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.
Jean Gallo began the event by reading a poem to the crowd. “A lament for the dead of war,” she said. “We march among the thundering hypocrisy…. Let our lament be a new awakening, a moral call.”
Gallo was followed by Dr. Michael Paasche-Orlow of Physicians for Human Rights, a psychiatrist who specializes in counseling torture victims. He has worked with patients from Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and other countries ravaged by human rights abuses, he explained. Now, he said, these same patients are returning to him, haunted all over again because of seeing the pictures from Abu Ghraib and the reports from Guantanamo. “The United States has violated international law at Guantanamo,” he said. “It has violated its own uniform military code of justice… Human rights must be put back on the national agenda.”
Nancy Murray of the ACLU then came to the stage. “The penal colony of Guantanamo Bay should be causing as much outrage in our own country as it is around the world,” she said.
Meanwhile, as Murray continued her remarks, a rhetorical fracas broke out between human rights demonstrators and a pair of pro-Bush supporter who were holding signs behind the stage, each bearing pro-war slogans and Bible quotes. A crowd gathered around one of them – a large, bearded man sporting sunglasses. The man was shouting at a human rights protestor, “Why don’t you leave America you liberal, pinko communist!” The protestor, meanwhile, poked his finger into the man’s chest and screamed back, “Though shall not kill! Thou shall not kill!”
“If you can’t stand it, why don’t you leave America,” the Bush supporter repeated.
“I am a veteran and I love my country!” the human rights protestor replied angrily.
By this point, the debate had attracted a crowd of media and protestors, perhaps 50 people strong, and the emcee of the official event took notice. “These are people who seem to think that Jesus would want to bomb and kill,” he told the crowd.
Meanwhile, the second Bush supporter, holding a sign bearing quotes from the New Testament, was engaged in a much more civilized debate with a young woman. Neither of them raised their voices, engaging in surprisingly subdued discourse. “I trust Jesus, I believe in Jesus,” the young woman said to the man. “But I just don’t understand how you can quote the Bible and support this war.”
Just before 1pm, Rep. Dennis Kucinich arrived in a black van. He waited inside the van until the current speaker finished his remarks, then was escorted by security to the stage.
“We must maintain our moral integrity by having a commitment to human rights,” he thundered to the crowd. “We need to review exactly where we are as a nation… From Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, we know there is a consistency of policies that deny people their humanity.”
Kucinich spoke passionately, his volume and gesticulations ratcheted up with each subsequent sentence. By the time he finished, the crowd was applauding and shouting in approval. Musicians then took to the stage, as more than 20 protestors carrying an enormous puppet of a spinal column approached the crowd. The puppet, covered in white cloth and stretching at least 30 feet, hung in the air like a Chinese New Year dragon in mourning, each of its vertebra sporting slogans demanding changes in U.S. policies…. -andy