"And then there's the one about the smirky war-happy oil-drunk American president who shrugged off the disdain of pretty much the entire world and humiliated us all on a global scale and went ahead and blasted the living hell out of an otherwise worthless oil-rich nation with no real proof of serious wrongdoing and for no justifiable reason, except for the oil and the power and for Daddy and for the face-saving faux-macho pride, and the oil.
This is the guy. This is the president who cares not a whit that just last weekend, over a million people rallied in London -- the largest political gathering of any kind in British history -- to protest his (and Tony Blair's) little multibillion-dollar war.
Or that 500,000 gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, chanting slogans against his fearmongering ego, or that another 500,000 attempted to gather for a huge protest near the U.N. building in New York but, lacking a permit, were partially blocked by police.
This is the smirky Texas executioner-president who looked on while even in God-thumping pro-family ultraconservative Colorado Springs, Colo., land of the Born Agains and the heavily uptight, police fired tear gas into a crowd of war protesters, even though children were in an adjacent playground. Isn't that nice? And Christian? Shrub just shrugs. Damn hippies. God bless America..."
I took an excessive amount of cabs yesterday (it just came down to wanting to avoid the 3 feet deep slush puddles, really), and I got into discussions with two drivers. The first one was from Iraq, living in the US for about ten years. He saw my "No Blood For Oil" button, and we started talking about things. Most of the things we talked about were the things everyone that is against the war has been talking about. When it came to the topic of Saddam himself, he said to me, "The thing is, there was a king in power before him who was just as bad as him. Killing people left and right. So the US comes along and puts Saddam in there, and then we have him for the past 20 years or so killing and torturing everybody. That was OK with the US until their oil was threatened. Now all of the sudden, he's a terrible man."
Then he turned around and said, "You know, normally I don't talk about this stuff with people in my cab. Most people see my name, see that it's from the Middle East, and they already think maybe something bad about me, I don't know. And then if I talk about stuff, they think, 'What are you, a terrorist?' I got a wife and a kid, you know? I can't talk about it, because I'm afraid."
The second cab driver was a middle-aged white guy with a thick New York accent. We cruised all the way down Second Avenue as we chatted, and in midtown I pointed out all the points of flare-ups and encounters with the police that I experienced this weekend. He said he'd heard about it, but didn't see much on the news, and only knew how bad it really got from talking to people (on both sides of the argument) in his cab. He said he was shocked at the amount of people in the city who are pro-war. He chats with most of his fares about politics and current events, just to hear all sides of the story. He's heard it all, he said, and it still hasn't changed his mind.
Cab drivers are some of the most interesting people in the world, I think. Which reminds me, completely off-topic... "Taxi Driver Wisdom" is a great book.
"We've marched in the streets of New York. We've marched in over 600 cities around the world. Now it's time to bring that noise to Washington, where the President and Congress can't escape it. On February 26th, you can join a massive march on Washington without leaving your living room. Just go to:
The Virtual March on Washington is a first-of-its-kind group effort from the Win Without War coalition. Working together, we'll direct a steady stream of phone calls -- about one per minute, all day -- to every Senate office in the country, while at the same time delivering a constant stream of emails and faxes. Think of it as a march -- one by one, we'll be passing through our Senators' offices and the offices of the White House to let them know how we feel about this war."
"The crowd so frightening was made of people who mostly never had protested before, who were too young for the Vietnam protests and who cannot be classified under any of the old words, "demonstrators” or "anti-war,” because they are new and they are real."
"Size of protest, it's like deciding, 'Well I'm going to decide policy based up on a focus group.' The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security — in this case — security of the people."
Funny, I thought the role of an "elected" leader was to carry out the wishes of his constituents. On top of that, I don't want to hear them referring to public opinion polls that support their views anymore.
"[Ari Fleischer] also told reporters that former President Franklin Roosevelt overcame protests from isolationists to lead American into World War II.
'Often the message of protesters is contradicted by history,' he said."
I found a really interesting discussion blog while looking for other anti-war blogs this morning. Check out No War Blog. News items, debates, opinions from both sides of the political spectrum, mostly leftist.
"Additional reports of the NYPD’s behind-the-scenes attempts to disrupt and even thwart the coordination of the demonstration have also come in as of late. Main organizers United for Peace and Justice (UPFJ) note that their phone lines went down Saturday morning, just as the 67 feeder marches were getting underway. Each feeder march had a liaison but UPFJ couldn't communicate with them as they were being cut off, corralled and in some cases arrested.
And Democracy Now reports that two NYPD officers were caught yanking out the phone lines of host network, Pacifica Radio, just after it began its nationwide coverage of the day of protest at 11 a.m. Resourceful technicians were, however, able to get them back by noon."
Well, here I am again, another anti-war protest under my belt, and I'm ready to give y'all the synopsis of the day. Some pretty insane things happened out there that I've never experienced before (think: pepper spray and horses), and a lot of it you won't see on the evening news. I wish this could be a positive, happy write-up like I did for the DC rally and march, but I'm afraid that the day simply didn't turn out that way. First of all, here's a map of the route that we took once we got to midtown.
I started out the day by going to drugstore for poster board. I suppose I should've done my signs sometime this week, but... I didn't. In any case, they didn't have any, and it was too cold to walk to the next closest store, so I cut up some boxes I had at home and covered them with yellow paper. Ghetto, but hey, it worked. One sign made while on the phone with Jen: "Bomb Texas, they have oil, too" with "Let Exxon send their own troops" on the other side.
I met Jen and her sister Kristin in front of their apartment at around 10:15am; Nate joined us at the good ol' Happiness Deli on Delancey for breakfast food and all-day supplies. Yes, I learned my supplies lesson in D.C.-- bring them. I wasn't going to suffer throught another protest on some Cali boy's twigs and bark (*poke poke,* Nate) and fallen tzatziki, so I got me some caramel corn and Nutter Butters. Oh yeah, and a banana.
We got on the train and met Libby and Travis (who got so excited when they saw protesters heading up First Avenue that they called us to see if we wanted to march up to the rally... 50-odd blocks... in the cold... no.) We assembled in front of the New York Public Library with about 1,000 people, organized by www.complacent.org-- all kinds of people. Musicians and performance artists alongside workers from the World Trade Center who survived and opposed the war, families and college students, all ages. Jerome and Bill joined us and we finished another sign: "Brains Over Bombs" and "Preemptive Impeachment." Libby hugged me as she told me that this was her first protest rally ever. A man with a digital camera from MNN (local cable access) interviewed me for a show sometime this week... errrr... watch for it.
When the crowd started making their way east, we decided it was time to move. There was a bunch of police officers watching over us and guiding us through crossings. Well... herding was more like it. There was traffic on Fifth Ave, but we eventually crossed to the east side of the avenue and started heading north. We walked first with the Raging Grannies (And Their Daughters) group, then with a group of kids would started marching in the avenue chanting, "Whose streets? Our streets!" For anyone that hasn't been following the development of this rally, the organizers were granted a permit to rally on First Avenue and 49th street, but not to march. Numerous appeals were made to city throughout the week to no avail, so instead, we all had to find our own means to the rally. The United For Peace website distributed information about the legalities of non-permit-oriented marching; the basics were that we had to stay on the sidewalk and not block it at all. Not a problem, for the first 10 minutes of our walk.
We turned east at 51st street; between Park and Lexington, we started to walk in the street, as there was no room on the sidewalks. Everything was full; it was an amazing sight. By the time we crossed Lexington, 51st street had been overrun with protesters, leaving people sitting in their cars and completely packing the street shoulder-to-shoulder. There was a cab sitting there, and the driver was talking to everyone that passed by, and I ended up giving him a little money... I felt bad that he was losing money because we had no better means to get to our peaceful protest, since a formal, organized march was not an option. A few other people behind me followed suit. There was also a very unhappy man sitting in his SUV with a bargain-warehouse-sized package of paper towels. (Best MST3K quote for that guy, from Nate: "Honey, I'm just gonna run out for some paper towels... No, I know it's not that far, I'm just gonna take the truck and be done with it.") Some protesters slid a sign under the back windshield wiper that said something to the effect of, "War for oil? Sure, draft SUV drivers first."
We spent about 45 minutes getting from Lexington to Third Avenue. (Non-city folk: this is one block, normally about a 2-minute walk.) My friend Stephanie called me from 3rd Avenue and 54th Street to report that the crowd was simply being pushed north by the police, with and entrance to the rally at 59th Street. All other streets were being blocked off one by one. The cars we were surrounding inched forward, and I turned around to see that 51st was being blocked off at Lexington, and protesters on the other side of the barrier were being directed north by the police. Libby and Travis had to duck out at that point, since she was teaching yoga that afternoon downtown. (By the way, ye city folk: it's the best yoga class on earth, if you're interested.)
We were stopped at the intersection and then herded north onto Third Avenue, using the sidewalks only, even though the avenue had been shut down from cars. Stephanie called me again to say that they had broken the barriers down at 61st Street, at which point the police just started letting people through, and they got another block east to 2nd Avenue. It was already about 2:00pm at this point; the rally had started at 1:00, and it didn't look like we were getting closer anytime soon. At 53rd Street, we were blocked from continuing north or east. (I'm not totally sure if north was blocked by the police, or the sheer amount of people.) This is where the first interesting round of events happened.
We were fairly close to the barriers next to the newsstand for quite a while, and the crowd was restless... when all of the sudden, we saw a group of people trying to push through. I couldn't see what was going on, other than a slew of cops running over. A bunch of people from the front line pushed back through us, and a group of teenage girls swept up in front of us, crying.
"What happened?!" we asked.
"We got sprayed," they said, grabbing tissues and t-shirts. We whipped out our water bottles to help them as they explained what happened. Some people were pushing them from behind, and they ended up locking arms and pressing against the metal barriers. The police came over and pepper-sprayed them down their line immediately, and grabbed a few people to arrest them. Upon news of the pepper spray being used against us, a few people left the front lines. We stayed pretty much where we were, trying to get a handle on what was going on. Most of the crowd, though, just got angrier. Groups started trying to bust through, as protesters on the other side of the barrier held up signs that said, "Push Through - We Did" before being shooed away by the police.
The crowd was chanting and pushing more when suddenly, a guy to my right moved a barrier to try and go through. A cop moseyed over to close it up again, leaving a fairly unguarded space, and everyone in front of us pushed through the barrier. We took off running forward as the police swarmed in. I saw Nate and Jerome ahead of me, and a cop running towards me. I jumped a broken part of the barrier and kept running, getting shoulder-checked by the cop and kicked in the shin by another runner, but (for once) I didn't fall and just kept running. When I saw the 7 or 8 people in front of me slow down and turn around, I did too. Only 10 or 15 of us made it through, and people were being led away in handcuffs. It was getting more than a little rowdy at the intersection back there. I called Jen and told her what happened, and she said that she, Kristin and Bill were still trapped in the middle of the crowd, and that she didn't want to take her sister through pepper spray and barriers. Later on she told me what happened shortly after we made it through: another heaving push came from behind them, and they squeezed off to the side to get out of the way. The crowd was pushed up against the barriers and people started jumping them and pushing them; the pepper spray came out again from the police, who just started spraying everyone in the crowd. Many of the cops even started grabbing people from inside the penned area and pulling them over the barriers and arresting them. It was an ugly, ugly scene.
We made it to Second Avenue rather riled up and ready to get to the rally, only to be greeted by more barricades. There seemed nowhere to go except north, and I suggested we try the 59th Street entrance to the actual rally. It was about 2:30 or so at this point. We walked first on the west sidewalk, where all of the sudden cops started herding us either north or south -- off of the sidewalk, where we were supposedly allowed to be. At 55th Street we crossed to the east side of the street, and started north again, only to be stopped at 57th Street by a huge barricade of riot police and mounted police. Tension ruled the air from a previous disturbance that I later learned about, and people started chanting, "First Amendment, First Avenue." I told Nate and Jerome that I wasn't sure I could do another barricade jump, especially with the horses there. They agreed, and we turned south, hoping to find a less crowded side-street to try and cross through. Only one more avenue to go, right?
At 55th Street, a small group of people were waiting by the barriers, and the police officers guarding them opened them up and were letting small numbers at a time through. We hurrayed and thanked them as we walked in towards our beloved First Avenue. About five yards in, another policeman blocked us and told us to turn around. We explained that they had opened the barriers for us, that we were allowed to pass by the other officers.
"I don't care what they said," he replied, being joined by another two officers. "That's a different unit and we don't care what they're doing."
That's probably not the best way to deal with cold, tired protesters who have been denied their right to rally for the past 3 hours or so. People started to get upset, begging and yelling at the officers to let us pass. Nate pulled me and Jerome up against the building, when two mounted policeman arrived and stood in front of us, telling us to turn around.
We didn't turn around. We stood there and kept yelling that the other unit had allowed us to go through, and someone should go talk to them and verify. The first cop on the horse got pretty angry pretty fast, and started pushing us with his horse, while the second one followed suit. People got scared and angry (always a good combination in a big crowd-- way to go, crowd control), and five or six more mounted police swooped in on us, pushed against us, and trapped us. We started to try and turn back, but were blocked by the barrier. A group of regular officers stood by as we got further trapped, and the barrier broke. People started falling over it as the horses came at us, and there was nowhere to turn. We grabbed onto the falling people and pulled them up as we pushed back through the broken hole, greeted by more mounted police officers holding us in. Nate got some footage of this entire incident with his digital camera, which I'll post a link to as soon as it's ready.
At that point, the crowd was stable physically, but emotionally riled. We started yelling at them, screaming about how badly we could have been hurt, how they were breaking the rules of our right to rally. Someone started us chanting the slogan of the NYPD: "Courtesy. Professionalism. Respect." They simply stared smugly at us.
After a few minutes, a captain arrived on the scene. We watched him converse with the officers there, and he ordered them to open up the barrier. All of that happened for nothing. We thanked the captain and finally headed over to First Avenue.
When we arrived at the actual rally -- at around 3:45pm, which would make it about four hours that it took us to get there -- we were greeted by a relatively uncrowded avenue, some wandering protesters, and a few police officers. We turned south and saw the rally stage for the first time, and the wide-open, sprawling space in front of it. There was a crowd of people at the block before it, and another in the next block, but nothing like we had experienced up to that point. Had the city granted the march permit, none of what happened would have happened. There would have been one march that fed into the rally that the police could have easily managed and controlled the flow of. Instead, they dealt with hundreds of points of flare-ups and confrontations, and took away our right to protest peacefully.
Approaching the rally presented us with another barrier. Nate and Jerome looked at each other and said, "Level Three: Batons." We laughed ourselves silly at how much this had been like a video game... "Level One: Pepper Spray. Level Two: Horses. Level Three: Batons." And then it made me... well, it just made me incredibly sad. I had made the comment earlier, shortly after the horse incident, that if we were in China or some other country, we would probably already be dead. Nate made an interesting point: "The thing is, we, as Americans, are supposed to be the example for the rest of the world. It's not good enough that we're not dead."
The police officers at the final barrier opened it up and started letting small groups through, our group being one of them. Another group of officers came over and started yelling at the officers who had opened the gate, yelling for them to close it up again. It was ridiculous; there was plenty of room on the other side for at least 200 more people to come in. We hurried through before they closed it again, and I heard one of the officers from the second group say, "You can't just keep this open!" The first officer simply said, "Why?" I didn't stick around for the response. I'd had enough unit-bickering for the day.
The rally was still going strong at that point, and though we could barely hear from where we were, we stayed for a bit. Standing still again made my body just collapse from the physical and emotional exhaustion, and I told the boys that I wasn't going to be able to hold out much longer. We stayed through a few speeches and then decided to head out. On our way out at 52nd Street, we saw hundreds and hundreds of more people who were being denied access to head down further into the Rally. They were jumping and swaying to the beats provided by a collective of African drummers and musicians, chanting and singing for their rights.
We exited and got a bite to eat at J.D.'s on 52nd Street, a traditional Irish pub with great sandwiches after pleading with a police officer to let us turn back into 52nd Street from Third Avenue. At 4:30 in the afternoon, we had to plead to be allowed to enter at an intersection with no one else standing there but cops. I assured him that we were simply going to J.D.'s to eat, and that he could escort us if he wanted. He deliberated, looked around, thought about it some more, and just waved us in... ah, the people skills that the NYPD has been trained with.
J.D.'s was warm and accommodating, and other protesters were hovered over their beer and burgers. We chowed down and a woman interviewed me for her website. We meandered back to the subway, where we met up with Uncle Sam who we'd seen in D.C. I got my picture taken with him shortly before our train arrived, and soon I found my way to my bed for a long nap.
I'm sure that the tactics of the police department were somewhat deliberate in their intent to divert people away from the rally: keep us out in the cold, tire us out, get us scared of them, and get us to go home. It didn't work for most people, but I found out later that I was actually lucky to have made it to the rally at all -- many simply never got there. I'll be posting more on my thoughts of this weekend soon, after my brain recovers and I process the information a bit more. Till then, have a look at my pictures... Nate's pics and video will be posted ASAP.
Note: this what this the write-up I did of the DC protests that took place on January 18th, 2003, before I got this blog up and running.
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So, I actually did it. I got my butt up at 5:00am and headed up to 14th Street to get on a $35 round-trip bus to DC to protest the war in Iraq. (Thanks to these folks: http://www.internationalanswer.org/) The URLs to pictures will be posted at the end of this little article. (Tease, tease, tease.)
The morning started out well, with Nate being smart enough to buy a huge super thermos for coffee, and me being smart enough to have the coffee set to brew before we got up. We stopped at the Happiness Deli, picked up breakfast food (Rachel: the deli guys say hi and were wondering where you were), and waited for a cab to fly off the Williamsburg Bridge and pick us up. Much to our surprise, a cab just coming on duty honked at us from down the block and backed up to pick us up.
We rode up to 14th Street, and told the driver to drop us off where all the buses were lined up. "Where are you going?" he asked us.
"We're going to Washington, DC," we said.
"What for?"
"To protest the war against Iraq."
He turned around to us as he shut off the meter and said, "Thank you. Thank you so much for going. I am from the Middle East, and I wanted to go, but I can't because I have to work. You're going to go for me. Thank you." I offered him the fare, but he refused it. "No, this ride is free, because you are choosing to do something very good today. It's on me." After a few more attempts and then much well-wishing, we got out of the cab.
Fourteen buses or so were lining up in the eerie calm of before-dawn-downtown, and we groggily picked #3 to get on. We got all situated and took a picture of ourselves, and it sort of hit me what we were doing for the first time: I was going to Washington to protest a war. Despite it being Saturday, despite the frigid temperatures, despite a lingering sense in the back of my mind that no matter what I did or said, the government would do as it pleases... despite all of that, I was going, I wasn't going to sit back this time, I could say to myself at the end of the night: I did something today that I believe in.
We rolled out of the city and both Nate and I fell promptly asleep; the sun warmed us through the windows, and we pulled into a rest stop somewhere on I-95 in Delaware. The stop was teeming with busloads of people from all over who were heading to the protest as well, and we all stocked up on Cinnabons and sunglasses and snacks. There was an air of community, even miles away from the actual protest. We got back on the bus, ate our Cinnabons with our fingers (someone, ahem, forgot to get us forks and knives, but we won't mention any names). Before long, the nation's capital snuck up on us, and we found ourselves gawking at the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building.
We layered up (last count: two long sleeve shirts, two pairs of leggings, two pairs of wool socks thick jeans, a hoodie sweatshirt, and a wool cable-knit sweater covered by my big wool army coat, two hats, and two pairs of gloves), and walked into the rally portion of the protest. Even just entering, I saw people from every walk of life: upper crust matronly looking women; good ol' boys from West Virginia; an elderly man being pushed in a wheelchair; a group of Baptist parishioners from South Carolina; Middle Eastern women with their husbands and children; granola-crunchy college kids; Vietnam vets; a group of Korean people making signs in both English and Korean. This is America, I thought to myself.
Nate and I whittled our way up towards the front of the rally, where the emcee announced that Chumbawumba was going to open the rally with two new anti-war songs. Chumbawumba! Who knew?! We listened to the speakers, not all of whom I can remember at the moment, but they colored the stage with the exact diversity and complexity that surrounds this war: Native Americans, Koreans (North and South), African Americans, Palestinians, Eqyptians, white people, disabled people, labor unions, politicians, male, female. I was most inspired by the Rev. Jesse Jackson's simple statement: "Brains over bombs." They talked of the US's thirst for oil driving this war; the fact that minorities are offered little other avenues of growth besides entrance into the military, and thus suffer the most during war; how our leaders are not truly giving the inspectors a chance to provide truth; how misleading terms like "pre-emptive strike" confuse the American public by not admitting that we are the aggressor in this situation; how a war will cost the taxpayers $200 billion, but we still don't have enough money, it seems, for the job development, education, health care, or housing of our own people.
For anyone (and I know of at least one person) that feels these sorts of rallies dilute the main cause of an anti-war protest by bringing too many issues to the table and possibly alienating fence-sitters, I can tell you that I've now experienced this first-hand and this is not the case at all. In fact, it was the exact opposite at this rally. There are so many things wrong with this war, and most Americans feel that there is something inherently wrong with attacking Iraq. By showing the variety of arguments, we are able to bring everyone together under one umbrella. Imagine (as with the WTO protests) labor unions standing together with environmentalists. They may not agree on the nitty-gritty, but they feel that the main purpose is wrong and are able to set aside other long-standing disagreements for the sake of the larger issue at hand. By offering up a host of reasons at once, people are given the chance to see something that they just can't swallow anymore, whether it's the environmental impact, or the racial injustice that's wrought.
Our toes started to go numb, then hurt, then go numb again, and we got antsy for the march to start. It did, and we slowly made our way out of the National Mall. I talked to my cousin Cheryl, who lives in DC, as she was following the protest on the news, and she gave us some updates... and asked if I had dressed warmly enough. (Thanks, Cheryl.) I started taking pictures of my favorite signs-- "Sex Toys, Not War Games" and "Bomb Texas-- They Have Oil" -- and we walked with the Ben and Jerry's folks for a bit. The chanting started as we got out onto the street and walked past the Capitol and other federal buildings. "Hell no, we won't go, we won't die for Texaco" was a crowd-rouser, and Nate and I made jokes about the slower one that I just couldn't get into... "Peeeace... noooowww.... peeeeace... nooowww..." I said to him, "Oh, great, the Legalize Pot contingent is leading the chants now..."
Any time I started to get cold, all I had to do was think about the guy who was marching in nothing but red briefs, having people draw peace signs with permanent marker all over him. That's dedication. We floated in and out of different groups to see everything; we walked with the Vietnam vets, a Buddhist contingent, several Unitarian-Universalist churches, a Latino anti-war group (I actually started chanting in Spanish once I learned how it went), and some drummers and rappers who were slamming on the street.
One of the more personally entertaining moments of the day was when I got hungry. There are those of you who know what happens to me when I get low blood sugar (sugar being the key word in my diet)-- I get craaaaaanky. I had forgotten to get my own sort of snacks before we left NYC, and when I went to investigate Nate's stash of food, I found trail mix and wasabi peas. (Hereafter known as "twigs and bark.") As we approached a strip of convenience stores and restaurants, I made a break for a Greek place that didn't look as crowded as the others. When I got inside, I learned why... the food was taking forever. I waited a bit, and then it became one of those "Well, I've waited this long, I might as well keep waiting" things. I decided to not order anything that had to be cooked, and opted for some tzatziki (yogurt + cucumber + garlic) and pita bread and a lemonade, but even the pita took an ice age to come out. Nate, outside happily munching on twigs and bark, sent me a text message: "They killing a cow for ya?" I finally got my food and headed outside.
I showed Nate what I'd bought and he looked at the plastic container of tzatziki and the bread. "Wait, lemme get this straight," he said. "You bought *dip* to march in a protest with?"
I thought about the logistical difficulties of this for the first time. "Well... yeah..." I mumbled. "I didn't want to get anything cooked because it would have taken longer."
"Right," he giggled. "How are you gonna march with... dip?"
I scrunched up my face and proceeded to open the container. "You just hold onto the lid, OK?" He did, and I took a bite of pita and tzatziki. It was heavenly. And then some winds of fate blew through, I fumbled for a half-second, and then watched-- in horrifying slow-motion-- my container of tzatziki fall to the ground. It landed upside-down with a muffled "splut," and we stopped dead in our tracks and stared at it. This made other people marching around us stare at us, and then the fallen food, and I couldn't help but completely split a gut laughing. Of course, when you started laughing so hard that you can't breathe and your belly hurts, it can look like you're crying and in pain, so some people started to wonder what the hell was going on. Finally, after several minutes, Nate had the good sense to take the lid and scrape most of it back into the container, while I took some napkins and wiped the street up so that no one would squish in it on their way through. We hurried over to the side of the street, and both of us debated silently for a few seconds on whether it was still edible. Nate looked at me and said, "Well, not *all* of it touched the ground..." but then squinted and shuddered and we both shook our heads at the thought of several hundred thousand people having walked on that street. Tossed became the fate of my poor tzatziki. At least I still had the pita.
We marched over to the Navy Yards, where another round of speeches was supposed to take place, but the organizers ran into snags with the police there. It seems that the local police had said that they hadn't registered the second sound system at the Navy Yards, even though the organizers insisted that they had. Then it became an issue of the types of cables that they were using... in other words, nit-picking. So, there were no end-of-march speeches; we all milled around for a bit and talked to one another, and took pictures of the sun setting behind the buildings, and the smaller landmarks that had been decorated with anti-war sentiments.
Finding our bus home became a bit of a freezing-cold saga, as we had been standing and walking since 11:00am (it was now about 5:00pm), but we finally got in touch with our bus captain who gave us the location of the bus. Everyone fell into their seats one by one, and I was out cold before we even left the city. A rest stop near the New Jersey border showed news coverage about the rally, and everyone in the stop (again, overflowing with protesters) cheered and whooped at our success. I was asleep again for the rest of the trip, and woke up when the bus slowed for the big curve into the Lincoln Tunnel. I opened my eyes to see a glorious, crisp New York skyline welcoming me back home.
But, as was said at the rally, showing up is simply not enough. Too many people are not talking about this issue, and it is up to us to open up the dialogs in our communities: at work, at play, at church, at home. In a time when patriotism is key, we must remember that it is our patriotic duty to express ourselves and to debate with one another. That is what it means to be a free American. That is what the Constitution has afforded us, this freedom that so many others in the world do not have, this freedom that we so ridiculously take for granted. If you are against this war and have a reason, say it. If you're for this war and have a reason, say that, too. If you don't know how you feel about it, say it. Talk about it. Don't be sheep in either direction. Following the herd is the most un-American quality in the world.
For those of you that can make it, by the way, there's an even bigger rally being planned here in NYC for February 15th. For more details, visit International ANSWER's website, or drop me a line. Anybody that needs a place to crash, let me know.
And now, since you made it this far... the pictures!
