An Italian Talks to an American at a Protest
"I feel sorry for you Americans. My friends, who are Americans, I feel sorry for them. In my hometown of Naples, when the people there see Americans driving in their cars, they throw tomatoes at them. They hate them right now. I feel sorry for them because I know Americans, but I also know why the whole world is so angry at all of you right now. They keep asking why your people don't you do something to stop this.”
"But what do you do? How do you stop them? How do you stop the government?"
"You demonstrate!"
"I know. That's what we've been doing. We've been protesting right on this corner for weeks now."
"And it's good that you're out here, but this isn't enough."
"But what more can we do?"
"You could...you could vote Bush out of office!"
"We didn't vote him in!”
"You could protest!"
"You're at a protest."
"I know, but they need to be bigger. This is good, but it needs to be bigger."
"Do you know about the ones that happened in New York? There were 500,000 people there. San Francisco, too. DC. Over a million. Even here in Pensacola we had about 300 people."
"Yes, but in Rome we had two million! It's just that everyone in Europe, and the rest of the world, are saying 'Why are you letting him do this?' 'Why don't you stop him?'"
"What do we do, though?"
"I don't know...But you have to do more. You have to do more."