July 4th Guerilla Theater in Akron : Cleveland IMC (((i)))

Over a dozen activists with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Akron came to the annual fireworks celebration in downtown Akron to display an anti-war message critical of US Empire to thousands of Akronites. The "captive audience" was watching the Akron Symphony play a variety of musical pieces while activists flipped through various slogans twice. As one picture below shows, there were literally thousands of people in our vicinity, nearly all of whom watched us or were at least aware of our presence.

The first messages were designed to warm the crowd to our presence, so we displayed messages more-or-less friendly, uncontroversial, and apolitical ("Hello Akron" and "Happy July 4"). Then, we moved onto more political messages via a "Support the Troops" message (this is the one message that the group had mixed feelings on; it's ambiguous as to just *how* people should support them, as individual people? as human lives? as potential resistors or AWOLs? as conquerors and occupiers of Iraq?). This message was intended to introduce the following political slogans, and to project a sort of "disclaimer" that the group was not anti-American. The group then clarified how U.S. troops should be supported: "Bring Them Home". The rest of the messages were slogans often found in US peace marches and rallies.

Crowd reaction was mainly passive--as one would expect. There was the occasional cheer, particularly for the first two apolitical signs. The "Support the Troops" got a polite applause, while the following "Bring Them Home Now" got less cheers, but louder ones from certain audience members. The rest of the signs were met with little reaction. One group of early 20 year old males (those who are at the perfect age to goto Iraq and die for "a cause" or a "flag") who were snickering off to the side gave a quick, yet audible,cheer when the "130,000 Iraqis Dead" message was shown. We were not surprised by that jingoism however, and were pleased others did not join in with similar racist jeering.

We're recommend others try this at other places where large numbers of people are. Even if there's little reaction, it still is an opportunity to rattle people's perspectives a bit and inject a stronger critique to what would otherwise be a mere flag-worshipping event. But, remember to practice beforehand. We did two run-throughs before going to the throngs, and it helped immensely. Also, remember to make the letters big enough as to be visible to those far away.

Finally, on a "lighter" note, the Sympony's musical choices were often hilarious, particularly when they were playing the Imperial theme from "Star Wars"... it was an ironic twist to our anti-imperialist signs that hopefully others noticed, too.

Cleveland Indy Media Center