Funk The War: Student Dance Party Against Empire

By Lucy P.

3/19/08 Washington DC: Five Year Anniversary of Iraq Invasion

There were Iraq Veterans Against the War members with a megaphone who, after coming from a veterans march, hopped a fence to the fifty ft. ledge of the National Archives building to rant and read grievances to a crowd of cheering veterans unsuspecting school children and their chaperones waiting to get in. There was a circle blockade with bikes and a die-in in front of an army recruiting station. There was a “march of the dead” protest, with white masks, black robes and names of war victims, ending in an intersection blockade of melodramatic postures, in which all participants got arrested. And in the morning, a march to the IRS building led to a defiance by tax resisters, who broke through a police blockade to the IRS doors, only to get grabbed by homeland security and thrown in the paddy wagon.

But my proposed highlight of the “5 Years Too Many” antiwar event on March 19th in Washington DC, and what I feel was one of the best demonstrations of the new anti-war movement and one of the best times I’ve had in a while, was an afternoon student lead street dance party that took over the streets of downtown DC for about four hours.
Funk the War, as I believe, originated out of a sort of spontaneous moment during the October Rebellion in 2007. It was agreed by about a hundred or so of the protesters that a marching dance party and a game of capture the flag in the streets would be an exciting and meaningful event to conclude the evening. We ended up only doing the dance party up and down Adam’s Morgan in the middle of a busy night club scene, it was too fun to stop, and the cops were now swarming and following us. I’m guessing the fun and friendliness of that night sparked the Funk the War thing, and it’s achievement on March 19th sealed the deal. It was lead by the new Students from a Democratic Society, and joined by Baltimore Algebra Project, Campus Anti-War Network, and other student activist groups.

Coming from the metro, I ran across McPherson square and up the block to catch up with the party line of 500 or so students as it departed. I was so winded, with the heavy backpack my arrested partner left me and all, but I immediately started dancing anyway. There was a speaker and some other equipment hooked up to an iPod on a little red wagon being pushed around by a person in a polar bear suit dancing profusely. We were ecstatic and free, dancing to hip-hop, punk and all forms of pop in between, dancing with and “without” rhythm. Students of different races and cultures, grooving and shouting in a harmony most had never experienced before.

We danced down with banners and signs into the business district with its office buildings, stopping traffic, startling drivers and bus passengers waiting at intersections, flabbergasting and perhaps scaring poor drivers stuck in the midst of us` as we boogied around their cars. I remind you, this was an UNPERMITTED, unlawful assembly, therefore completely unexpected by the DC civilians just going about their daily routine. The point was to disrupt “business as usual”, interrupt the daily life, stop the routine, remind people of the world outside, of other possibilities, and, most importantly, that there IS a resistance, a creative and active and youthful resistance to war and injustice. This resistance is not content to be herded like sheep in safe but limited permitted marches sectioned off from the rest of the populace, to be unseen and unheard outside the left, except for a short and underestimated blurb in corporate media. This resistance wants to be a nuisance, loud and colorful and unabashed. We won’t let people go on to the office or their high class consumption as if nothing else mattered, as if thousands of people weren’t dying and suffering in our name and our inaction. We are putting ourselves in your face, thus in danger, yet remaining unafraid of your threats and your police forces. We knew when we were breaking the law and we were willing to face the consequences; and we were willing to hold firm when the cops pushed us around.

They did push us around, but there was still only so much they could do, thanks to copious lawsuits, you can have unpermitted marches most places in DC, and they shy from doing mass arrests. When we danced to the first major intersection, we stayed, jumping and wriggling all around, chanting and singing, writing messages and peace signs with chalk, placing anti-war stickers everywhere, with no doubt frustrated drivers halted for blocks. And then the cops began to push and yell, moving in on bikes to scatter us, knocking over our red wagon. We propped it back up and simply kept on dancing down another street, then stopping at the next intersection until rammed again. This pattern continued for a couple hours, and included a stop at the armed forces recruiting station and a war profiteer’s office above a Starbucks. Both of those received big happy blobs of red paint thrown on their windows, paint which also found it’s way onto cops and cop cars, and decorated on the sidewalk and students’ faces.

When we danced back near McPherson Sq. the police got nasty and, as much as we snarled at them and tried to refuse, shoved us back onto the grass. But Evil Empire, a Rage Against the Machine cover band, was suddenly on a small stage in the park and playing the police brutality hit “Killing in the Name”. The kids went mad, danced and shouted and moshed along passionately. Then, with renewed gusto we got back into the streets again, as the rain started to pour.

With our numbers still the same, we ended up at another intersection. Folks jumped playfully in the puddles as the throng waivered up and down, vague as to exactly what was happening. Abruptly out of nowhere, students swept into the crowd with a load of about a dozen elementary school desks painted bright yellow and black with “Students for a Democratic Society” and “Money for Jobs and Education”, etc. In a blaze they enclosed a circle in the center of us, a student in between each desk, kneeling, wrists padlocked to holes inside. Others dashed around securing locks, spacing the desks, and spreading out to take up as much space as possible. Groups lined up at the cross walks to block police, and two rows of us sat, arms linked together, around the desks, myself included, to create as impenetrable a bastion as we could.
We took up all of the broad intersection and more, as the law enforcement regrouped. A nice middle aged, gray-bearded man who I rode down with a the huge van delighted me when he linked
my right arm, the only one I know of his age to join in the blockade. At first I knelt, reluctant to sit down on the wet pavement, but as the rain continued to come down on me without a raincoat on, I figured I should just get drenched. Eventually though, after I was sneezing and fearing sickness, I put on my poncho. But before that, who cared? No one cared about the rain. It was hot and sweaty in that crowd, it was the sky falling on the district for us and we were celebrating. The gathering danced and laughed wildly around the circle in swirls and congo lines, photographers and unexplained video cameras in rain gear swooped by, lord knows whose behind the lens. A kindly boy came and brought mysterious donated sandwiches, I ate one until it got too soggy. The music was still going loud on that red wagon, and I heard everyone “Stop the war, yes we can! Disco music’s back again!”
I felt as if no one was even the least afraid then, rather there was indisputable joy and mutiny. After twenty minutes or so, a friend came around with the news that the cops had given up, and indeed they had been told by a higher-up not to bother and not to arrest, just re-direct traffic. We won! I guess. Unfortunately nobody from the outside the crowd could see the what was happening on the inside with the desks and all. No major news media I’ve seen got the scoop either, although I didn’t search everywhere. But we all knew they wouldn’t get it, tomorrow’s news pretty much covered more the early morning events and then went home. There was some coverage of the dance party, mostly from the nearby media, but we all know how the media works. Are you at all surprised that it was vague, narrow-minded briefings that started out with “there was not as many as past protests, therefore the antiwar movement is fading”!
I’m not going to go any further with that topic, but needless to say anyone witness to the student takeover was probably not initially thinking the movement was fading (especially since they usually never see protests anyway since they happen by the capitol and away from the public). For anyone participating in the protest, the feeling was one of rejuvenation and inspiration. What we lacked in numbers we made up for in passionate force and creativity, and it was 95% students and youth, not older ex-hippy bourgeoisie, green party politicians, or indoctrinated intellectuals. Yeah it’s not going to stop the war, but it was the beginning of something more, and a damn fun protest way better than most of us had ever been to. We stayed locked down in the rain for about an hour until we decided, on our own terms not the police’s, to end a successful lockdown and continue the dance party down the streets for about another hour. Back to the recruiting station, with a few old ladies and young men counter protesting, then the fuzz again got violent and pushed us back on the grass of McPherson Sq. It was just in time to disband for another protest at the capitol, but it’s always sad to end such wonderful things. We went home that day, though, with a new hope and fresh enthusiasm for our own respective organizations and the streets we hope to soon take over just the same. Now groups all over the country are repeating the idea with their own “Funk the War”, like in Providence, RI. and New York City. It would be an amazing feat to pull off one here in CT, I’ve been throwing around the idea with my friends. If we spread the word and get enough excited people, it could be possible, though still risky. I can’t help but hope that if this sort of thing really catches on, growing and combining into even more creative direct action, connecting more youths to each other and to other pressing injustices, that it will be the beginning of a truly great movement. Because, even for people not that into politics or being anti-war, we all love a good dance party.