Costs of big marches- Re: [lbo-talk] DC

Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org
Sun Sep 25 05:19:14 PDT 2005


----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>

Jordan Hayes wrote:
>> Train (when it's running): $80
>> Plane: $120.
>
>A 50% premium, but still pretty decent. Note that Acela is $126.

Which also highlights how costly these marches are in both money and time. Assuming Yoshie's bus estimate of $60 roundtrip is more the average, a 200,000 DC person march cost $60 per person and probably 10 hours of time per person, or at least $12 million and two million hours of volunteer time.

Imagine if that money and time had instead been devoted to staffing a national antiwar organization to coordinate all that volunteer time in communities across the country, organizing church and community meetings to discuss why the war needed to end, doing door-to-door outreach or whatever.

No question in my mind that such use of funds and volunteer time would be infinitely more effective in both reaching the uncommited and pressuring the political class than a one-day story in the newspaper.

--- Nathan



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