All Out In Boston For The Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade On March 15th 2015

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

Not all political wisdom, left-wing political wisdom anyway, comes from the masters of such thought like Plato, Rousseau, Bentham, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and their ilk. I once picked up a piece of such wisdom, at least indirectly, from the leader of the Devil’s Disciplines outlaw motorcycle gang in North Adamsville, Red Riley, in the days when I was a corner boy and enamored (from a distance) of such things. He said every once in a while you have to show the “colors” to let people know you are around and ready for action (and here he probably meant any other outlaw motorcycle gang that wanted to “infringe” on Discipline turf). And that piece of wisdom is a roundabout way of calling one and all to attend the upcoming Veterans for Peace (VFP)-led Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the only one in the country, now scheduled to go off at noon on Sunday March 15^th in South Boston. (This noon start time is subject to change since VFP is now in federal court in Boston seeking declaratory action on its application to the City of Boston to start at noon which will be decided on March 2^nd by the judge hearing the case according to my sources.)            

In thinking about writing this little introduction to the accompanying flyer for the event (see below) I was startled by the fact that it has been a very long time since there has been a massive anti-war outpouring in Boston, New York, Washington, anywhere in the United States probably since back in about 2006. Not that there have not been many occasions to do so with the various Bush/Obama escalations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the intervention in Libya, the myriad drone attacks, the intervention into Syria and the build-up to the fight against ISIS but a by all accounts war-weary, war-wary people have not taken their righteous anger to the streets. Sure there have been many small-scale one hundred, two hundred participant marches of the greying anti-war faithful (the little old ladies and gentlemen in tennis sneakers as we used to call them in the old days before we got “religion” on the war question), and I have participated in a number of them in various locations around the country. Over the last five years the biggest and best anti-war event in the Boston area, maybe anywhere, is the VFP-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade which is directly counter-posed to the official parade which tips its hat to the military in every way. So if you or your friends are anti-war, are against this massive military budget which sucks up precious resources, are tired of the endless wars that have no apparent purpose and certainly do not make us one whit safer then come out with the mass of the anti-war community in Boston on March 15^th to “show the colors.”