Just Got Back from DC

What struck me the most was how many families with children were in the gathering at the Ellipse and in the march down Pennsylvania Avenue. Young moms and dads pushing strollers with their toddlers, all wearing "Impeach Bush Now" tee-shirts, marched next to three generations, parents, grandparents and teenaged children. It was definitely an inter-generational event. There were multitudes of high school and college students proudly defying the stereotypes of apathetic youth. Infirmed octogenarians in wheelchairs rolled along the route, shouting out anti-Bush slogans in loud voices. This was no college-aged group of radicals. They were working people, home owners, church groups, and retirees.

The speeches before the march were, for the most part, inspiring, and occasionally tear-jerking. Cindy Sheehan, George Galloway, Jesse Jackson, and about 20 other people spoke to the crowd just as it was gathering on the ellipse. That part went on too long, and everyone started to get itchy to get marching. Just then it started to rain. Not a cold rain, but a quick, refreshing drizzle, which started and ended perhaps more promptly than some of the enthusiastic speakers.

Lots of the usual groups were there in force as well. Hippies, punks, and anarchists by the microbus-load. Code Pink were dazzling. As soon as they came into sight, everyone turned and gawked, every camera focused on them. They were eye-capturing in their pink clothes, hot pink wigs, and glitter makeup. They were extremely well-rehearsed, with several dozen similarly clad women singing parodies of well-known songs with the lyrics changed to fit the theme.

People from all over the country came to represent. I was wearing my Berkeley sweat shirt, which attracted a variety of Californians, including some from San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Marin County, Sacramento. There were buses from Iowa that made the 17-hour drive straight through, only to hop right back on the buses after the march for another 17-hour trip back home. I talked with people from Illinois who drove to pick up some folks in Connecticut and bring them down. There was a group of ladies dressed like cowgirl-rockettes who I think were from Texas. They also entertained us with songs.

At one point, just in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a string of women, holding hands, snaked through the crowd going against traffic. Suddenly I noticed a blond woman in the middle, wearing a hat, with a bright smile on her face. "Cindy!", I yelled, barely being able to contain myself. She turned toward me and said, "Hi!", as if she knew me. Yes, I was star struck for a moment by the sight of Cindy Sheehan only five feet from me.

The reports I've seen so far on the number of protesters are, as we all expected, grossly underreported. For what it's worth, my on-the-spot estimation was that there had to be at least 500,000 people there. Take it for what it's worth. But certainly, definitely, there were far more than 100,000.

Oh yeah, there were about 50 freepers making frantic arm motions along one of the blocks on the route, but I couldn't hear a word out of their frothing mouths.

edit: typo

Check out the pics and story from the Anti war march and rally in L.A. from www.thehollywoodliberal.com

:hi:

Thank you for being there!

poor choice of words for an anti war protest post, IMO

:eyes:

Too easily misunderstood or used against us.

one days march in DC.

The troopers are pulling patrol and then guard duty every day for the past year. Or More

I suggest you read "The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell" by John Crawford.

Then start picking fucking nits about eyes front

but I doubt the original post was meant in any way to lessen the hell the troops are going through.

I found it curious that the one small point stuckin your craw so.

There's no need to be so nasty.

so much for representing us! I hope you had a splendid time!

:grouphug: WritingIsMyReligion

I watched it on C-Span so many of us were there with you in spirit. Cindy was here in NC week before last and we all went to a rally for her her. It was so good to meet her in person and the others with her because you can see how sincere and "real" they are.

:toast:

Death throes, no doubt. ;)

:shrug:

have no idea how neat it is to read your first-hand account. Thank you so much for taking part and making it real for me.

It's hardly a blip on MSM, but we all know that the revolution will not be televised in this day and age.

:toast:

What a day....

Old to Young, Black, white, hispanic, mideastern, asia, ect. They were all there with their signs held up high, their families held close. Babies in their parents arms, an elderly man holding his wife's hand as they walked down the streets together, yes, they were all there on all four sides of me. They were there with one common goal in mind, to end the Irag war and to see peace in this world. It was a beautiful sight and one worth seeing.

I wish I could have been your eyes, ears, your arms or feet so that you could know what it felt like to have been there with us all. But what hit me the most was the sea of faces before me and those faces that came behind me as I too marched to the White House to stand with them in our common cause. I walked in others foot steps and then others walked in mine.

The greatest experience or emotion that came home with me was that I was a part of a community of caring individuals who were there for themselves but also for those who could not be there at all. We were joined in an action of humanity that has always been and always will be greater then ourselves and only noticed by those in power if we stand side by side and march as one voice together to their front door.

Nothing is more symbolic in our country then that when we either need help or demand notice but to knock on our neighbor's door. So today we did not go for help but marched to be noticed and knock on the gate of our greatest American home, the White House. But most important in this act of the knock which can not be ignored solely due to the powerful ring of it, a single knock with the strength of over half a million strong.

This has been a very good day for the American public, for the return of the spirit which is ours to claim from our birth, the return to a American Principle held deep in every heart that beats in this nation, the acknowledged power of Jefferson finest gift to us, three words, "We The People". With this day the reclaiming our birth right and our rightful place in the framing of our country may have begun. "We The People", oh how I love to hear those three words and to see them acknowledged once more ....

That's the demographic that had been missing from earlier 'peace' protests. They were there today.

I felt like I looked a little out of place marching in DC in 2003, but it certainly wasn't the case this time. There were lots of guys who looked like they took off from their construction or office jobs to attend this march. I got the feeling that middle America is sick of yelling at Bush through their televisions and wanted the satisfaction of at least yelling at the house he's occupying. It won't end there, though. We'll demand to be heard more and more from now on.

antiwar protest and the handful of pro-war protestors, as though they were equally impactful and significant. An ABC video clip is actually called "Dueling protests." Spin, spin spin.

We need to call them on it. It's just another kind of lies and it should not be tolerated.

most of the time, but in this case, specifically, the neocon pro-war propaganda, they suddenly believe there's no such things as truth and falsehood, right and wrong. It's not about the facts and the truth, it's just matters of opinion, and the cases of both parties have to be treated even-handedly. Moral relativism: what they accuse the liberals of.

On the other hand, the dissenting assertions of this government's critics, however factual, don't even register as opinions. Heads we (the corporate media) win, tails, you lose.

stronger position, and single-handed when both sides are more evenly seen. As you say, heads we win, tails you lose.

Interesting username you have. Being in the Boston area, the "Cabot" part sort of jumped out. ;)

Socialism, left wing, Christian Gospel values, basic human decency, etc, like mad dogs at the sight of water, I thought it would be nice to hem in the Dulles clan between K for Karl and Marx.

I read that the Cabots only speak to God and assumed that they were extremely elitist, but well, maybe they're the old-school toff types, who do have some of sense of duty towards those sorely lacking in financial means.

I also like your username, and in fact, find it extraordinarily profound. It was the difference betwen the supposedly rational British appeasers and the likes of Churchill. And likewise, it is the difference between the notion of "rationality" of the corporatists, with their profoundly immoral and deeply dishonest "downsizing", and non-psychopathic economic world-views/systems.

I almost felt like I was there...wish I could have been!

Thanks for being there doing what many of us wanted to but couldn't :)

You're right. There were WAY more than 100K there. My neighbors just got back and they said it was HUGE!