Today there was a rally in Bangor. It was called a war rally, but it seems like it should have been called a peace rally. Anywho, we were asked to perform for 10 minutes. Easy enough.
We all hopped in Shreeman's Jimmy. It seemed like it would hold five people comfortably, but Larrance begged to differ.
Here is one of two drums that you could hear punctuating anything that was said on the stage. "We need to get the soldiers out of Iraq!" *BOOM BOOM BOOM*
We got there around 12:30 and it was set to start at 1:00. There we a lot of signs on the ground for people to use/wear.
These women had created what appeared to be a ghost or a Klan member, it turns out it's a dove...of peace. You know the one. The one that eats the branches? That one.
Not only were people making signs, but they were making costumes as well.
I wish I would have talked to this kid to ask why he was here...just to see if he knew or if a parent had brought him with.
And no rally, no matter the cause, is complete without...umm...a monkey on stilts?
This is the "BRING HOME THEM" stage we performed on. Now, for more of the story...
Let me start off by saying I'm all for getting the soldiers back and I cannot wait until 2008 when we can pick us up from this shitty Bush era and dust ourselves off. But...a Bangor peace/war rally? Is that going to end it? I've never been a part of one of these before...maybe they had more merit in the 60s/70s...but this seemed mostly like an excuse for everyone to do arts and crafts, put on costumes, and do some wishful thinking.
Once the women who were emcee-ing this rally took the stage, one of the first things said was "this is a peaceful protest. If we get any hecklers, just ignore them." The very first speaker then said "WE SHOULD ALL BE ANGRY!" and proceded to teach two chants that would be used instead of applause after each speaker. This made one of the guys there angry, but because we were told to be angry.
Here (above) is the guy talking to the two emcees. Deanna overheard some of the conversation...something like
"this should be a peaceful demonstration, not anger."
"I'm sorry you feel that way."
"Well you need to do something about it! Tell them not to solve things with anger!"
"Aren't you trying to solve THIS with anger?"
BURN!
Here are the peaceful ladies (Deanna was listening to the guy and the emcees...Jen was posing for the pic).
I'm not sure what Shreeman is looking at...probably a cute girl nearby.
PEACE!
And here is the view from stage. We did a madrigal...where each person gets a phrase of some sort and sings it. As we keep going through our phrases change by combining in words from the other people's phrases. I think the three starting phrases supplied by the crowd were "Get Rid of the Evildoer." "Don't eat where you shoot." and "Love Thy Neighbor."
We ended on "Shoot the Evildoer" which the crowd loved...except for that one guy who told us as we were getting off the stage, "I can't participate in this if this is how things are going to be." He got into more of a discussion about it with Deanna, but I'll let her put that in her blog.
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