By Howard Monath
Via Facebook
Howard Monath [ “I’m back at the hotel. The ability to get to the demonstration site has deteriorated in the last two days, almost impossible…the fighters have been sent outside the boundaries of the Red Shirt camp to build up and widen the perimeter of burning tires. this creates a larger buffer around the main encampment, a good strategy except that it has the Red fighters in no mans land and isolates them from the leadership and main non fighting group.
I’m glad I left, my Spidey sense had told me it was time. But believe me you get sucked in; I know that it really wasn’t my fight, but on another level I felt it was. The instantaneous connections you make with people when your in this situation together (not to mention getting shot at together) is amazing; language problems mean nothing..thats why I’m glad I got hold of Red Shirt credentials instead of press credentials; sure, people respect, need, appreciate the press but also keep their distance.
Was I being naive, was I being used by the Red Shirt leaders..very possibly, and there also finally, was the realization that I didn’t want to die from a snipers bullet for ‘this.” Would I be a bit more cavalier (or even more foolhardy) about a cause that I was personally connected to? I think so. Remember, I’m 62 fucking years old, I helped organized Vietnam war demonstrations all over the country, my NY lefty parents dragged me to civil rights demos in NY and in the south…most people’s parents were the problem, mine were the solution.
I understand better now why men and women came from all over the world to fight in the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War … were they naive, were they being used?…Maybe, but who cares..they were on the right side of history.”