1) I've been to this rally before. I think that ANSWER cloned that IAC rally against the Kosovo War from June 1999. This time they forgot to spend money on heat. 2) My estimate is 200,000, which I think is generous towards ANSWER. I've been looking at aerial photos tonight of the Promise Keepers rally. I know think that 200,000 is extremely charitable. Lots of people, nonetheless. My local activist friends and IMC people agreed with me on the 200,000 figure. 3) Never thought I'd see the day when ANSWER would set up a "toll plaza" to collect donations on Pennsylvania Avenue. Yet, there it was: two large trash cans parked in the middle of the street with volunteers asking people to throw money into them. This was accompanied by more volunteers wielding orange donation buckets on the sidelines. 4) Age range of the protesters was very broad. Lots of older people. Racial composition was more Midwest, white bread than usual. ANSWER probably focused on getting buses to show up and less on using groups like the Palestinians (like last April) to diversify the protest. 5) One of the local activist said to me that lots of middle Americans were there and that the protest was broad in scope. I beg to differ. It was more broad than usual, but judging from the clothes, signs, and banners, I'd say that most of the older peace movement turned out. I'm from the suburbs. There weren't alot of suburbanites at this protest. 6) Boring and cold. We called the IMC to report that nothing was happening. Later, the IMC breaking newswire coordinator told us that people were just calling to ask, "is anything happening?" 7) Chumbawamba opened the protest with two songs and then left. Lesson number
15 in how to waste an interesting part of your program before anybody gets there. 8) Metro trains were packed, but then we discovered that half the people on the packed trains were going to the auto show. 9) Police were guarding the Starbucks, McDonalds, and Sunoco gas station, showing that they still respect the anti-globalization movement more than the anti-war movement, at least the one run by ANSWER. 10) Many people attended this protest thinking that ANSWER would finally organize something outside of the box with their Navy Yard "weapons inspection." Not only id *nothing* happen at the Navy Yard (no banner were even hung on the fences), but the march marched by oblivious to the existence of the facility. They didn't even have much in the way of security for the "target." 11) ANSWER chose to deposit the march in a poor black neighborhood, which is under seige and facing the threat of relocation (Hope VI project). The march subjected the neighborhood to an escalated police presence. ANSWER did very little, if anything, to work with the residents of this neighborhood. 12) The march ended in chaos and confusion, with many people milling around, trying to figure out why they had just marched two miles in the cold, only to wait in line to go into the Metro station. 13) There were lots of creative signs and everybody mostly marched in a mixed block. The ISO gets the vanguardists of the year award for keeping their block tight to the end of the march. If the ISO gets drafted to fight this war, they should excel at parade ground drilling.
Did we stop the war?
Chuck0
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"The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free..." ---Utah Phillips