Upwards of 100,00 people came to Washington last week to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But they didn’t all come for the same event. Indeed there were so many things going on that there is no way to count how many people came for something. There were at least two marches and two celebrations at the Lincoln Memorial, as well as several exhibits, numerous conferences and conventions and a few protests. I went to many and took photos at several.

By August it seemed that everyone wanted a piece of the commemoration pie, but first out of the gate was an amateur without an institutional base. Van White is a civil rights attorney in Rochester NY whose late father frequently talked about going to the 1963 march. As much in memory of his father as anything else, early in 2012, White decided to replicate the march on the actual date, August 28, even though it was a Wednesday. That’s a hard day to draw a crowd, but about 10,000 people got up early to march 1.6 miles to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

He filed for the ideal domain name in June of 2012 and requested the permits two months later. Once his webpage was up, he invited people to comment and get in touch; that’s how he found a couple dozen of the original marchers to lead his legacy walk the morning of August 28. He also ran a civil rights conference the day before, attended by about 150 people and staffed by a couple dozen students from Alabama State University (an HBCU in Montgomery) as a school history project.

White was going to do a presentation at the Lincoln Memorial, but the National Park Service nixed that idea. White eventually found out why; the White House wanted that spot on that day. He did get permits for his march, but only after the King Center did its best to kill it.

The King Center was created in Atlanta after Dr. King’s death to memorialize Dr. Martin Luther King and house some of his archives. As a family business, it has mirrored a lot of the family disputes. That may be why it didn’t file for a domain name until late in June of 2013, and had to settle for officialmlkdream50.com. For many months, anyone who googled variations of “March on Washington anniversary” to find out what was in the works got Van White’s webpage, not the “official” one.

To pull off an event the size of Reclaim the Dream, MLK III, the current CEO of the King Center, partnered with Brooklyn’s Al Sharpton and his National Action Network. NAN handled most of the logistics and the Rev. Al was the keynote speaker. While they wanted their event to be on Saturday, when ordinary working people could come, they didn’t want any competition. The old dogs didn’t like that new puppy, Van White, poaching on their territory. But he had his permits and wouldn’t go away.

As was true in 1963, organized labor provided major resources. Unions were about half of the official organizational sponsors and probably brought more than half of the participants to DC. All 500 bus parking spots at RFK stadium were filled on Saturday. The UAW alone paid for 106 buses. Other organizations sponsored buses, but their riders had to pay for their passage. Anyone who could get a spot on a union bus road for free and got fed along the way. Saturday’s speakers included a lot of union leaders. If a speakers list had been provided to the press or posted online I could do a count, but that never happened.

Since the speeches started early in the morning, anyone coming from far away had to travel all night or come early. Those that did found plenty to do. The DC Commemoration Committee held its own forum at the African-American Civil War Museum the preceding Tuesday. On Thursday and Friday the Coalition on Black Civic Participation held a two day training session for black youth at the National Education Association. Friday night an anti-war group lighted up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial until the U.S. Park Police made them move. That’s just a small sampling.

On Saturday both sides of the reflecting pool were packed with people. While there is no longer a count given out by any disinterested party, my guess is that there were about a hundred thousand people. A few hundred drifted across the street to see the exhibits at the “Freedom Festival,” but most just sat in the sun, watched the speakers on a large screen and waved their signs. Most of these came from the NAACP, whose logo appeared on at least half of the printed posters. Major themes were “End Racial Profiling” and “Justice for Trayvon Martin.” The march that began when the speeches ended was an anti-climax. Led by bigwigs and mounted US Park Police, the crowd walked pass Dr. King’s statue to disperse at the Washington Monument.

Wednesday’s commemoration was called Let Freedom Ring and featured a bell-ringing ceremony at 3:00, the hour of Dr. King’s 1963 speech. While bells were rung all over the country, the one placed at the Lincoln Memorial had once been at Birmingham’s 16^th St. Baptist Church, which was bombed on Sept. 15, 1963. President Obama spoke afterwards. In contrast to Saturday’s almost slapdash style, Wednesday’s event was carefully orchestrated and timed so that all the other speakers and entertainers finished right before 3:00. The weather was less predictable, with frequent light showers and only occasional sun. Despite the rain, people dribbled in. When the speeches began, there were only a few thousand members of the general public on either side of the reflecting pool. When the President spoke, both sides were full.

Those listed as sponsors of Wednesday’s “coalition” included more black organizations and few unions, but the Secret Service was the power behind them all. Access to the area between the reflecting pool and the Lincoln Monument was limited to press, staff and people with tickets. Press movement was severely restricted; audience tickets were given out to pre-selected people; umbrellas were removed when everyone went through the metal detectors; men stood on top of the Lincoln Memorial scanning the crowd with binoculars. For the final staging, when three Presidents and a first lady were on one side of the speaking level and members of the King family on the other, a three-panel bullet-proof screen was placed in front.

At this semi-centennial celebration of a protest march, there was something for everyone, from the President on down. The only thing I didn’t see, hear or read about were counter-protests.

Neil Postman was a famous media critic.  He thought that the problem with television was not its content but its formal qualities as a medium. It presented a clear and present danger.  Because of it, we were Amusing Ourselves to Death.  In thinking about the role of television in contemporary politics, specifically as it is facilitating new kinds of major media events, I am struck by the fact that television’s effects may be quite the opposite, when it amuses us, it gives life.  When it is deadly serious, it is just that, deadly.  I am having these dark thoughts thinking about Glenn Beck, John Stewart and Steven Colbert, and their respective demonstrations on American sacred ground, the Washington Mall, between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials.

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally, held on the Washington mall, with speakers on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial, was seen as a serious event, an abomination for those who were pained by the hijacking of the legacy of one of the great mass demonstrations in American history held on the same place, on the same day of the year, forty seven years ago, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, highlighted by “The I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr.  But viewed from the right, even from a skeptical conservative observer such as Ross Douthat of The New York Times, it was an encouraging development, affirming important cultural values, showing that the right was “free of rancor, racism or populist resentment, the atmosphere at the rally resembled that of a church picnic or a high school football game.” (link)  Of course, on Fox the enthusiasm, the celebration, was less restrained.

Stewart and Colbert

On the other hand, the planned Rally to Restore Sanity, promoted by John Stewart, and the “counter demonstration,” the March to Keep Fear Alive, promoted by Stephen Colbert, are clearly meant to be funny, and there is truth in packaging, since both of the principals work for the cable network, Comedy Central.  But it is being taken seriously. Arianna Huffington, of the famous Post, let the world know that her organization would provide free bus transportation from New York to the Rally, appropriately on Stewart’s show. (link)

And President Obama even lent his support (o.k., perhaps with his tongue strategically planted in his cheek).  And the demonstration is likely to draw tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, because of a widespread sense that our politics has become insane, and there is a need to protest this.

Deliberate Consideration

These two media events show how far we have come.  The boundary between entertainment and politics has never been more tenuous.  But I admit.  I find one of these media events encouraging for the prospects of American democracy and the other extremely dangerous, and I don’t think it is just a matter of my political commitments.

Beck has his power because he is outrageous. He receives public attention by being a provocateur, denouncing the President because he just doesn’t like white people, criticizing healthcare reform as a form of reparations, leading people to believe with absolute certainty that bizarre readings of the American constitution and American history are the truth, and getting them to cling to the constitution as the Red Guards of the Chinese Cultural Revolution clung to Mao’s Little Red Book.  The provocative is linked with the dogmatic on the Orwellian network that calls it tendentious news productions “fair and balanced,” and mass demonstrations are mobilized.  Sometimes Beck mutes his message, as he did at the Honor Rally, sometimes he is particularly combative, but both of his faces are backed by the appearance of certainty.

Colbert and Stewart on the other hand use humor to question dogma.  Their political sympathies are clear, but this doesn’t prevent them from making fun of politicians whom they admire.   Stewart is outrageously funny by being outrageously moderate:

“We’re looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it’s appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles.” (link)

The form is more important than the content, and it is precise.

Postman thought that network television necessarily needed to amuse its audience to keep its attention.  He thought that “public discourse in the age of show business” (the subtitle of his book) would necessarily be un-serious and diminished as a result.  I was never convinced, but I am sure that we are seeing something else, a contest, now, in which the cable news programs that preach to the converted are polarizing and atomizing our politics using a form which is dogmatic and deadly serious.  In this situation, the forms of comedy, amusement and satire are life-giving antidotes, as Stewart and Colbert reveal.