A Scrap of Linoleum

October 2001

Last week I found myself searching the narrow winding streets of the old city center of Montpellier looking for a sign. To be more precise, I was looking for something with which to make a sign. I looked in shadowy corners, garbage bins, and alleys "sans issue."

I had learned about a planned anti-war demonstration from a tiny notice in the local paper, and I wanted to participate. It was being organized by students from Paul Valery University. I went to the university and picked up some leaflets to hand out announcing and explaining the reasons for the demonstration. I announced the demonstration on the internet (at http://www.protest.net where demonstrations around the world are listed, including ones in New York and North Carolina).

The Montpellier branch of the American Library agreed to let me announce the march through its email list of members.

The demo was scheduled for Thursday. Wednesday night I began my search for sign materials. After an hour or so I decided I would have to go with plan B and buy some scrap fabric at the huge fabric shop near the train station. Somewhat disappointed I started for home. Head down, thinking about the bombing of Afghanistan, I trudged from Place Jean Jaurès along a snaking lane, and I felt something under my feet. I was walking on linoleum. Thin linoleum, with a wood pattern and, turning it over, I saw it was white on the other side. It was around 25 feet long, around 2.5 feet wide at one end, and tapered in a jagged line so the other end was around 4 feet wide. Perfect banner material, thrown away from a building site. I rolled it up and tucked it under my arm and walked home with a much more positive attitude.

The next day I wrote on it, in large letters, AMERICANS AGAINST WAR, with a black magic marker. The word WAR I wrote vertically at the wide end of the linoleum. This word was soon outlined with red magic marker.

I chose this statement because I wanted people in France to know that not all Americans support the bombing of Afghanistan. However I don’t think the word war describes the reality of what is happening. I would have preferred to write AMERICANS AGAINST U.S. TERRORISM, but I didn’t have enough space on the banner to write that message in large letters.

Currently civilians are being killed everyday in Afghanistan due to US bombing attacks. Cluster bombs, condemned by the Red Cross, are being dropped on civilian areas. Whole families are being killed. Six million people are threatened with starvation because food supplies cannot go in due to U.S. bombing. In fact the U.S. has tried to prevent Pakistan from delivering the food. (New York Times, Sept. 16) I think this justifies the use of the word terrorism.

This means, for me, that if I support U.S. bombing I will be supporting terrorism. If I was horrified by the September 11 attacks and I’m not horrified by what is happening now in Afghanistan I am a hypocrite. If I consider all human beings of equal value, I cannot ignore or support the killing of civilians in Afghanistan.

I think people in the United States have gotten so used to their government bombing and attacking other countries (Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Kosovo,) that they have become dulled to what it actually means to the people on the receiving end of the bombs. It means death, destruction of homes, destruction of clean water supplies. It means disfigurement, a landscape strewn with unexploded mines dropped by cluster bombs. It means your brother or sister or child or parents or friends are killed. It means hundreds and hundreds, possibly thousands of children dying. I refuse to support state terrorism.

Many Americans are able to accept uncritically the statements from the Pentagon about ‘surgical strikes’, and ‘collateral damage’, when in fact after the bombing stops it is reported in the back pages of the newspapers the thousands of civilians killed (millions in Viet Nam), by U.S. bombing.

I think this shows a low level of moral awareness in the United States. People say "Why do they hate us?" and refuse to look at the willingness of the United States government to kill civilians all around the world. This willingness is well documented. Anybody with access to the internet or to a good library can learn about it. The fact that people ignore it, or deny it, and in fact condemn people who point out the truth about it, allows it to continue happening with regularity.

In order to carry the banner efficiently I cut 8 short lengths of rope, made holes in the linoleum with my imitation leatherman tool, and made 8 hand loops.

I feel the focus of any demonstration against terrorism should focus first on the victims, just as people focused on the victims of September 11. For this reason, in addition to my banner, I made a bulletin board using cardboard and on it I attached a number of articles from newspapers and from the Internet about the victims of the U.S. terrorism in Afghanistan.

On Thursday October 25 I walked up to Peyrou Park, the starting point for the march, with my banner and my makeshift bulletin board. Around 500 people showed up, most of them students. I placed my bulletin board where people could read it as they milled around before the march began, and I hung the banner on the iron gate of the park, so it could be read by the cars passing by.

I met some other Americans, one of whom, Larry Portis, helped carry one end of my banner. At one point the banner was being carried by two American men, a woman from France, a woman from England, a man from Algeria, and a woman from Germany.

We marched down Rue de la Loge, some people chanting, some waving flags, or carrying banners, some playing conga drums, and spilled into the huge Comédie square, where we grouped together near the steps of the old Opera House. I was interviewed briefly by a journalist from Marseille. A television camera filmed us carrying the banner. Some students made some speeches, people chanted anti-war slogans, and then I rolled up my banner and folded my cardboard and went home.

I have no illusions that our demonstration will immediately affect current U.S. Government policy. However to me that is somewhat beside the point. By making a small effort I felt stronger in my ability to do something. I showed myself that I am not powerless. And I found out I was not alone.

500 people in a small French city is not very much of a demonstration. However even if only 100 people had shown up, they would have proved to themselves that they were not alone and they would have shown the general public on the street that some people were against the war. Even if only 20 people had shown up, that would have done the same.

And even if only one person had walked down the street with a sign condemning war and U.S. terrorism I’m convinced that that would have made the world a better place. Because we are not changed through bombing, we are not changed by the mass of people who apathetically support bombing, we are not changed by the flood of justifications for the bombing. We are changed by people or one person speaking the truth that violence begets violence, that bombs kill innocent people, and that humanity carries within itself the seeds of a different society, a society based not on organized violence but on the proven ability of human beings to communicate and solve conflicts peacefully. We do this constantly in our daily lives.

As I was rolling up my serendipitous scrap of linoleum a friend of mine commented, "That sign will last for years, and you’ll need it because the U.S. is always bombing somebody!" Perhaps. But maybe not. It depends, after all, on our actions.