> from the ne'er-do-wells this morning, though. Saw some Darth
> Vader-style riot cops emerging from armored personnel carriers parked
> right in front of our hotel (at 17th & Eye).
The ones at Lafayette Square had enough Robocop-style gear to make them look like walking Cubist paintings or something.
Rally was great, with the perfect admixture of neo-national insurrection and multinational subversion. The red, black, white and green colors of the Palestinian flag were everywhere, matching the diversity of the protest.
At the rally on the Mall, Fadia Rafeedie, the valedictorian at UC Berkeley who famously ambushed Madeleine "500,000-Dead-Iraqis" Albright back in 2000, gave a standout speech, but two Palestinian sisters, age 15 and 16, stole the show. Dressed head to toe in national garb, they told the crowd about growing up in a refugee camp, what they've learned from recent events, and their commitment to the cause, all in Arabic, in the richly nuanced gestures of a culture which still treasures the spoken word (one of the organizers provided a real-time translation). The effect was unearthly -- you could sense that a mighty power was stirring, which the Sharons of the Earth, with their lies and bullets and bloodshed, will never be able to touch.
-- Dennis