NotOneDamnDifference.com -- and the need for a new Dr. Martin Luther King

Today, we wrote a lengthy inauguration guide for the newspaper (what is this?) It touches all the usual bases, from the $10,000-a-night hotel suite with "faux" secret service agents to the march of the 10,000 Jesuses.

Nobody asked us...but in our opinion, the diversity and broad array of anti-Bush protests is a blessing and a curse. The one that's been getting the most attention is possibly the worst: NotOneDamnDime.com: Why? Because it's an event that's set up to fail.

If 5 percent of all adults, i.e., 7 or 8 million people, took part, that would be amazing -- except that who would notice. The media can't cover somebody not doing something. What's more, not only will it not make a measurable dent in the U.S. economy, but if it did, the corporations would find something else -- like the record-cold temperatures -- to blame.

Indeed, as we watched the inaugural protest efforts develop during the same week as the Martin Luther King holiday, we've come to the conclusion that biggest problem with the anti-Bush movement -- and this dates back to the Iraq-war run-up -- is a lack of leadership.

Today, there are millions of Americans who are virulently opposed to Bush, the war in Iraq, and the assault on civil liberties -- and they're running around like the proverbial chickens with their heads cut off. Tomorrow, there are gas boycotts, student walkouts, black armbands, jazz funerals, and on and on and on.

Most of them will probably get a few hundred folks to participate. Just think if all those people could be motivated to do the same thing, in the same place, at the same time! That's what happened in Kiev just a matter of weeks ago -- and look at what was accomplished.

The numbers for the anti-war protests in early 2003 were impressive. But because of the leadership vacuum, some of the biggest rallies were organized by ANSWER, a fringe group if there ever was one. Here's what Salon.com wrote in January 2003.

Activists are increasingly grumbling about the Workers World apparatchiks behind ANSWER, who have thus far dominated the antiwar movement by buying up protest permits before other groups have had a chance. The group's values are diametrically opposed to the vast majority of people who oppose the war -- Workers World supported the Chinese government's massacre of "bourgeois, pro-imperialist" protesters in Tiananmen Square and celebrates such beacons of resistance as Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Kim Jong Il.

How are "soccer moms" -- millions of whom don't want their sons to die in a war that was launched under false pretenses -- going to take part in something like this? Why can'tall of the people are on the same side 98 percent of the time -- the bloggers, the Michael Moores and Alec Baldwins, the Barbara Boxers and John Conyers, the Jesse Jacksons and the Randi Rhodes -- form an umbrella group, so that when voices are raised in protest, they will be both clear and uncompromised?

Our civil rights are once again at risk. And we need a new Dr. Martin Luther King.

Posted on January 19, 2005 11:35 AM