On Saturday, October 27th, Answer LA will hold a “Mass March, Rally & Die-In” in Downtown Los Angeles. If you’ve ever been to a war protest, you can probably agree the comparison to a Halloween parade is easy: tons of people are dressed up, as anything from politicians to giant penises, with an emphasis on death. Some participants use full-on theatrical make-up to appear as war dead or zombies symbolic of their perceived American mindset.
Alas, in another search of the Los Angeles Times archives I found that forty years ago, the antiwar “Peace and Freedom Party” were assembling for a “Patriots Halloween festival” in Venice… again on a Saturday, October 27th, 1967:
According to Sherman Pearl of the antiwar political group, there will be a costume-making party at noon outside the Venice Amphitheatre, a parade in patriotic costumes, and a free spaghetti dinner…
See? Thats what protesters of today are missing: pasta!
Pearl said that “the Fourth of July theme of the costuming is a parody on the mindless kind of patriotism today’s super-patriots take such pride in.”
…photo by Shelley Bonoan, from the March 17th, 2007 ANSWER protests in Los Angeles, used under Creative Commons…
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