Missoula News

Stumbling the Walk

So Is Peace Really The Word?

By Chris La Tray, 3-18-07

The constant, most frustrating battle I’ve fought over the years as a guy doing rock shows—and it’s one all musicians face—is how to get people to come out to participate. Over the last few years, particularly since the demise of Jay’s Upstairs, I’ve come to accept that being an older guy (i.e. not particularly hip or good looking) playing a marginal style of music (original heavy rock) doesn’t fly too well in this town. In fact, one of the very things that I love about Missoula works against me; being a college town, and very liberal, it has a tremendous, artsy vibe to it. Unfortunately, the style of music that really gets my blood pumping is not a style that most “serious” art folks consider to be particularly artful. I won’t argue that, even though I disagree with every fist-pumping cell in my body. You may see a review of a Fugazi record pop up in the pages of a rag like Utne, for example, but you won’t see one for The Hidden Hand. It irritates me, but that isn’t the point I’m out to make.

Don’t get me wrong, we have had some phenomenal crowds. Generally we get the best turnout when we put together an event that draws people despite our name being on the bill. For example, a few years ago we did a show with SoCal rockers Fu Manchu, and the crowd was beyond capacity. It was awesome. After our set, we had a parade of folks approaching us, telling us how great we were, how amazed they are that we are from Missoula, etc. “I’ll definitely be back to see you next time you play!” is a common phrase shouted moistly into my face from drunken lips. The reality, though, is that while they enjoy what is going on with live music in the moment when they have come out to see a Fu Manchu/Nashville Pussy/Insert-Tribute-Band-Name-Here show, when it is over most people disappear back into the woodwork, their gotta-get-up-early-in-the-mornings, and their Survivor tivos. Meanwhile, all of us pay-to-play wannabes are left rocking cavernous rooms with not enough bodies in them to soak up the PA backslap coming off the walls across the void, wondering, “Where the hell is everybody?”

Missoula has some great local bands that people come out to see, and that is fantastic. Those bands have worked hard and deserve the recognition, and I am proud to have shared the stage with a number of them. At the same time, Missoula comes out in droves for other events as well. In a matter of weeks early last fall we hosted a couple huge events that seemed to suck everyone in the city together into a huge embrace. The grand opening of the MOBASH Skate Park kicked things off, with thousands out on a gorgeous day to see the launch —as successful a grassroots effort as you can find anywhere in the country—with celebrities like Tony Hawk and Bam Margera on display. Follow that up when a little band called The Rolling Stones came to town, and it was nigh bedlam. Passions run high, especially when an event earns the coveted title of “Once in a Lifetime!”

Have we accepted, then, that being in a state of war is something that should not be billed as “Once in a Lifetime”? Or do we simply choose not to care because we don’t think there is anything we can do about it?

Worse, is the state of war something we are content to live with? THAT is what bums me out the most.

I’m wrestling with a huge knot of disappointment toward my hometown today, and trying to reason my way through it. I attended the “Missoula Peace Rally to Commemorate the 4th Year of the Iraq War” event at Caras Park today, and the turnout was, in my eyes, bitterly disappointing. I arrived 15 minutes or so before the event began, and while the sparse crowd filled in some during the hour-plus I was there, it still couldn’t have numbered more than 200 people and their dogs.

According to CNN, roughly 60% of Americans want to end the war; if not immediately, then within a year. Less than half of us believe the war can be won, regardless of how long we stay. I’m not up on Missoula’s latest population number, but let’s say there are 60,000 of us in range of Caras Park. If we are in line with those poll numbers (Missoula being as liberal as it is, my guess is the percentage is probably higher), then that would tell us maybe 36,000 or so want us out. Even if a paltry 5% could be bothered to turn off the TV or steer their gas guzzler off Reserve Street for an hour or two, that is still somewhere in the neighborhood of 1800 people. 200 bodies isn’t even 10% of that!

I don’t understand it. Where did the I-don’t-give-a-fuck epidemic come from? Is there a vaccine for that? It isn’t even so much that the end-it-now crowd wasn’t well-represented, it is just that any concern for what is going on over there AT ALL was not represented. Hell, if Higgins Bridge had been crowded with pro-war people waving signs and chanting how they feel, at least the people would be speaking. This event seemed as much like a piss into the wind as any Tuesday night no-name rock show at The Far Side Tavern in Seattle ever did. Where is the root of this apathy grounded?

Since this is America, let’s find someone to blame.

The media is always a great target, regardless of which side of the aisle you are on. If you are conservative, you blame everything Bad that happens on the liberal media. If you are liberal, you blame everything Bad that happens on the corporate media. Back and forth the arguments go, and while I tend to agree our mainstream media is a mighty conglomeration of SUCK, that is no excuse. If you are motivated as a citizen, there is plenty opportunity to follow up on what you care about, factual or otherwise. Perhaps that is it; maybe everyone has found plenty of reasons to justify why they don’t need to be part of the debate on the war, and those justifications allow them to sleep at night. After all, aren’t you doing your part as a citizen by keeping the economy booming with regular trips to the mall? Does the yellow sticker on the back of your mini-van holler, “Hell yeah, America, I’m doing my part!” Somehow, I don’t think this is it (though it may be a subliminal justification to some).

Should we really start with the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center, who organized the event? Did they do a poor job getting the word out, so few knew it was happening? Maybe the 200 in attendance are the diehards who seek out events like this. I know as a member of the peace center, the number of email alerts I get about such events are minimal. Frankly, I don’t even know if I am still a member, the communication is so sparse. I take full responsibility for the breakdown, though, and I realize that as a non-profit the JRPC leans heavily on volunteers; perhaps I need to step up and volunteer my services in helping get the word out. Then again, it’s possible that the organizers were pleased with the turnout, that maybe my rock show-oriented brain saw the headliner (in this case, a 4-year war of mounting death, destruction and overall sorrow which shows real signs of expanding across another border - Iran) as being a bigger draw than what it got. I really can’t imagine the JRPC being any more satisfied than me, though.

Maybe the blame is that there are other events going on, and people are stretched too thin. I know there is a rally at the U of M this week, so hopefully all the students who weren’t there today are planning to attend that one. After all, one can’t be expected to be sober enough by noon the day after St. Patrick’s Day to come out, when a second opportunity to represent looms on the horizon. For those of us with squeezed social calendars, it’s even possible that St. Patrick was a bigger draw than the war. After all, this holiday only comes around once per year!

Speaking of St. Patrick, where are all the churches in times like these? Some were represented at the rally today, and that is excellent to see. I’m no Christian, but it seems to me that the only way one can really be a member of the flock and support the war is if one goes full-on Old Testament, names the war a holy one, and vows to be there until we have killed or converted all the infidels. Don’t try and justify it as part of the “War on Terror” either, because if that were the case then we should be seeing footage of tanks rolling up the gilded streets of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, any day now.

Maybe Christians are fully aware of the moral quandary they are in, and for whatever reason are choosing to turn the other cheek on the mess this has become. Because make no mistake, this war is not any more a political issue than it ever was—it has always been a moral one. If you have a strong commitment to stay the course because you believe in your heart that exiting will cause too many more deaths in the alleged civil war bloodbath Iraq will become if we leave now, then that’s fine . . . you will still need to face your maker for your initial support when the time comes, if that was the position you took at that time. Either that or you are just one of those Sunday morning Christians.

Finally, where are all of Missoula’s Buddhists? What about the Wiccans, the Sufis, and all the rest of the dirt worshipping, tree hugging Pagans? I know Missoula is home to, if not a lot, then more than the usual share of all of the above. Where are you these days? Isn’t harming no one a key ingredient in all of those spiritual paths? Last I checked it was.

I think Americans are lazy. I think we like to do easy, little things when faced with difficulties, and that’s about it. We like to write checks, maybe say a little prayer here and there, maybe put a stupid sticker or ribbon on our car, or maybe even turn up at a rally now and then to show where we stand. Clearly we are not doing enough, because things are not going the direction that our polls tell us most of us (supposedly) want to go. I’m as guilty as any; what the hell have I done? Yeah, I voice my opinion when opportunity presents itself. I’ve attended a couple rallies, a meeting here and there. Is that enough? Molly Ivins, whose recent death is still something that saddens me, wrote in her last column:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

Dammit, Molly, I’m with you . . . but I’m at a loss. Short of sending a deluge of letters to Washington, DC, I don’t know what else I can do. My faith in my government is long gone, and I’ve acted at the polls to do my part to change that. But what can I do for my faith in my community? Is the message we want to send really that there is no message? I don’t want to believe that.

Chris La Tray tries to walk the walk, but usually he just stumbles.

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