"I'm not satisfied," said Shaw, a Green Party activist who in February 2003 led 20,000 anti-war protesters into the streets of Chicago. "I was expecting a sea of people -- at a bare minimum, 50,000 people to show up."
But Thursday's march was a far cry from the crowds in Los Angeles during the 2000 Democratic National Convention. The day's most tense moment came when about 400 protesters who had walked to the wire-mesh walls surrounding the FleetCenter burned a two-faced effigy depicting President Bush on one side and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry on the other, and engaged in a brief shoving match with police officers. The march -- the largest since 2, 000 peace activists rallied last Sunday -- left activists wondering: Where have all the protesters gone?
"It's a Democratic convention in a Democratic town, I guess," shrugged William Dobbs, the spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, a nationwide coalition of more than 800 anti-war groups. With most Democrats united in the name of defeating Bush, many people think it counterproductive to protest the Democratic convention, Dobbs suggested. -- Michael Pugliese